A Far North chef is pioneering an unusual culinary technique - cooking blindfolded.
The meal prepared by a temporarily sightless Cesare Stella, of The Italians Restaurant in Kerikeri Rd, was one of the prizes in a fundraising raffle for the Leukaemia and Blood Foundation.
Stella chose to cook scaloppina sauteed
with bacon, fennel seeds, tarragon, rosemary, marsala wine, cream and tomato. First he organised the ingredients, had a good look to memorise where they were, then put on the blindfold. "As soon as I was 'blind', I thought, 'What the hell possessed me to do this'? But after five minutes I got used to it and I got through."
Stella said he had to use his hearing and smell to know whether he was cooking the scaloppina properly, though spectators helped with hints of "hot" or "cold" when he was looking for an ingredient - and when the frying pan was about to fall off the element. "The dish turned out good. My victim enjoyed it and ate the lot." He was considering putting the dish on the specials board and calling it Scaloppina Stevie Wonder.
The victim of the July 23 culinary experiment was Brad Sissons of Kerikeri, who bought a ticket in a raffle run by "Gingerbeard Man" Andrew Taylor.
