Hannah’s Top 5 Interactive Foods ... Because we all like to play with our food.

1. Steamboat.
Steamboat is a dish originating in China, and involves cooking ingredients at the table in a communal pot of boiling broth. It has the magical ability to not only keep one entertained for hours but also provide a delicious and healthy meal. See my review of Bazu restaurant also in this edition for more details.

2. Vietnamese Cold Rolls
Get some round rice paper wrappers from your local Asian grocer. Finely slice up some cooked meat and veggies, pick some fresh mint and coriander, peel some prawns and then wrap a bit of everything up together with some chopped peanuts and rice vermicelli. Use hoisin as a dipping sauce. Fresh and nutritious, although it takes some practice to roll them up without mini disasters occurring, and you’re going to want to learn how to dip the rice paper in hot water for just the right amount of time so it neither cracks nor disintegrates when you roll them up.

3. Crustaceans
There’s nothing quite as satisfying as peeling a fat fresh prawn, or cracking a juicy crab claw open. When I lived in Barcelona I would regularly visit the famous La Boqueria food market to choose live seafood off counters lined a foot deep with crushed ice. Massive crabs and lobsters still waving their arms never made it home with me to my student budget but the prawns got their revenge in what I can only describe as ‘the accident’ one night at a restaurant at the Port. In Adelaide, head to the Central Market to find yourself some nice ones and don’t forget to buy a lemon.

4. Fondue
Be it chocolate or cheese, it’s the same principle. You’re going to melt it down, add some booze and then dip things into it, all at the table. For the cheese fondue, get a couple of different kinds of cheese (the traditional ones are raclette and gruyere), some white wine, a splash of cherry brandy (Kirsch) and some garlic. Rub the garlic around the inside of the fondue pot, then melt down the grated cheese and the alcohol. You can add spices such as nutmeg too, then serve it up with a couple of crusty French sticks. Chocolate fondue is simpler – just add liqueur, cream or both to your fondue pot along with the grated chocolate and make sure there’s plenty of fruit, nuts or biscuits to dip. Skewers are a necessary evil for both.

5. Toasted marshmallows
Hot coals, stick, marshmallows. No further explanation needed. Not strictly only for campfires, either. One night at the Grace Emily Hotel I had gotten through quite a few Frangelicos when I suddenly ran round the corner to the servo, returning with a large bag of Pascalls and a couple of sticks cracked off a nearby tree. I spent the rest of the night happily taking orders from patrons for marshmallows toasted to their desired crispiness. I believe the fun ended when we ran out of marshmallows and I tried to toast a beer instead. Try it in your fireplace, over the barbeque, or on the beach. Not during fire ban season though.