I love food.
Thanks to my foodie friend theheartoffood for these photos
Before living in Australia, I satisfied my emerging interest by watching Top Chef, baking for holidays, browsing food magazines, and learning about gluten and dairy free eating.
Living in and traveling around Australia for a year breathed life into what had been a budding foodie interest.
I followed Aussie food bloggers on Twitter and subscribed to blog updates via email. I joined the rest of the country in devotion to Masterchef Australia. Food magazines became my reading material of choice. I didn’t hesitate to make eating well and exploring new foods a priority in my budget.
Within a few months of living in Oz, I learned of Billy Law’s blog A Table for Two. I loved his gorgeous photos and restaurant reviews.
After I returned to the USA, I learned that Billy had been selected to participate in Masterchef Australia. Along with many fans and food bloggers, I was on #teambilly. He made it to the top 10 and cooked some of the best dishes the judges tasted all season.
You can imagine my excitement when Billy announced last November that he would be writing a cookbook — Have You Eaten?
Heather the recipe tester
SURPRISE — I was selected to be a recipe tester for Have You Eaten?
Billy sent several recipes my way, and I had a couple of weeks to source the ingredients, prepare the dishes by following every word and step of the recipe, photograph the results, and submit feedback to him.
Guess what. Sourcing common ingredients is not as easy as it sounds when you live in a mid-sized location in the USA. A few items that would be easy to find in NYC or overseas were difficult or actually impossible to locate for me. Billy offered alternative ingredients when a couple of hours of calling and searching online yielded no local results.
I was afraid my food wouldn’t look anything like what Billy expected — but hey, that’s part of the reasoning behind recipe testing. Thankfully I wasn’t too far off the mark.
In future posts I’ll share a little bit more about the dishes I prepared. For now, I’ll share a few photos of the recipe Billy knew I’d love most — a macaron one!
The recipe called for a method I had not used before, and I still need a bit of practice to get it right. But the taste? Spectacular. One of my family members tried one and declared they were just as good as Adriano Zumbo’s.
I’m looking forward to finally having the cookbook in hand in a few months! For my ingredient purchasing and recipe testing efforts, I will receive a free, signed copy from Billy. I’m not sure if he’ll send me the USA cover or the one for Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, but regardless, my name will be in the acknowledgements. And that’s pretty cool.
Do you have food bloggers, celebrity chefs, or other awesome food-community people that you follow? I’m always interested in finding new people to learn from, so share your suggestions below!
Posts from fellow testers:
phuocndelicious.com
Twitter Updates
I remember him! Can’t believe I never knew about his blog. Looks delish!
Cool post babe. So looking forward to cooking these and more when I’m there! Hopefully not long now!
Missing you and your family a lot now, can’t wait to see Tempe again! 😉
I’ll get the cookbook around the time you arrive — sounds like we’ll be busy in the kitchen!
Good work on the macarons! They look delicious
The recipes you tested look fabulous! Looking forward to trying them 🙂
Love Billy’s blog – so awesome that you were able to test the recipes. I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.
Megan, I see where Billy just posted a sign up to get info on pre-ordering — with a chance to win prizes! http://www.atablefortwo.com.au/have-you-eaten-cookbook/
wow this macaron recipe looks good! i cant wait to try this!
I’m definitely going to give it a go again soon 🙂
Wow! That is so awesome that you got chosen to be a recipe tester! And those macarons look delicious — that and my recent visit to Adriano Zumbo’s have me really determined to actually try the macaron recipe in Zumbo’s cookbook (especially because my macarons disappeared waaay too quickly).
I’d heard of Billy’s blog in passing when I was watching the show but it always seemed to slip my mind before I managed to look it up. I’m definitely going to start following it now though!
Kristin, you’ll love his photography! Billy posts recipes from time to time too. Happy baking, cooking, and eating! And next time you’re at Zumbo’s, if he has a lychee macaron, please have one for me! I never got to try one.
I love the pics of you tasting gelato at the beginning of this post – definitely a great example of a picture being worth 1000 words!
I’m so proud of you for taking on the challenge of recipe testing for Billy! What a fun & unique experience. Those macarons look absolutely amazing – can’t wait to try them!! 🙂
Yeah, Simon did a great job capturing my faces when we went out for gelato one day!
That is so cool, and my ultimate fantasy full time job! 😉
Oh hey! Didn’t realise that you were one of the recipe testers. Must have been awesome to be involved with such an awesome project, as much as it was fun to participate in the live cookalong Hangout that I did with Billy recently.
Hopefully you’ve gotten your copy of the cookbook by now and are cooking many delicious recipes from it 🙂
Simon, it was so cool!
The book arrived last week while I was on vacation, and this is my busiest work week of the entire semester, so I haven’t cooked anything yet, but I can’t wait! The book is definitely one of the most beautiful and exciting cook books I own.
Missing our foodie get togethers! I enjoyed our meet ups 🙂