food

I like to think this recipe will make many of you “carry on like a pork chop”. It is just so more-ish that it is hard not to behave foolishly and jibber-jabber about its deliciousness, emulating the chop spluttering in a hot pan. The brine softens...

My yardstick for a refreshing drink is whether you would drink it while playing tennis. Even though tennis is a game I haven’t played since I was 16, the courtside drink that comes to mind always contained some smashed fruit with a high water...

Many of us have eaten them. Either in Spain, or when we have lashed out and bought a packet of Inés Rosales tortas, individually wrapped in their instantly recognisable white and blue paper. There is something about tradition and the sense of...

In south-west Victoria, where I grew up, there is evidence of this country’s early forms of aquaculture practised on Gunditjmara land in the form of elaborate eel traps and runs believed to have been developed up to 8000 years ago. This sight has...

Eggs. They are fundamental to my style of cooking and have been a much-loved human food source since the dawn of humankind. Today, the most common egg we eat is the chicken egg. So, what actually makes up an egg? The shell, the white and the yolk,...

In cooking, sometimes convenience is key. I now focus about 25 per cent of my time in the kitchen on building a larder of fermented, dried and smoked goods that add depth of flavour in varying forms of acid and salt. The result yields a benefit not...

Dietary requirements, food intolerances, religious decrees and plain old proclamations of personal dislikes are now all in a day’s work for anybody in the food service industry. More than ever before, hospitality workers need to be able to decode...

Possibly the best part of a broad bean is the leaf. But most often it is simply discarded, as usually the plant is grown purely for the bean to be picked at the height of ripeness and served fresh. I love cooking with everything the plant throws at...

There’s nothing like a change in seasons to send you longing for treats banished due to lack of seasonality. When I put out a call in the kitchen the other week for what sort of sweet thing I should write about, my lovely dishwasher replied with, “...