food

I have always had such a preconceived notion as to what constitutes breakfast. In fact, this applies to most of my meals. Salad for dinner was certainly not on my radar, and the concept of a breakfast that didn’t include some toast or milk seemed...

Potatoes are nothing short of perfect. There is nothing they cannot do, no way they can’t be cooked, and each way is best. A perfectly boiled too-young potato, straight from the ground, is one of the sweetest things I have ever eaten. A crispy hot...

Just like the sunlight streaming through my windows, the fresh flush of spring greens are streaming into greengrocers and farmers’ markets across the land. Now is the start of the glorious run of asparagus, peas, both shelling and in pods, and broad...

In the northern rivers district of New South Wales at this time of year, ash regularly falls from the sky. It’s the result of burning sugarcane – a crop that is fairly prolific in this area but perhaps not as much as it used to be. Burning sugarcane...

Back in the good old days, when you could move more than five kilometres and make plans in advance, we booked a holiday house for Christmas – 10 days by the beach with a smattering of overlapping friends. Our restaurants were closed, which meant any...

When travelling, it is often street food that catches people’s hearts. In most places in the world, apart from the ones that specialise in drive-through fast food, the history, culture and flavours of any given region or country seem to be on best...

I’m not sure if it’s a seasonal thing, but last week I ate five meals of tinned sardines. Ten years ago I would not have viewed this as decadent, but the quality of some of the seafood conservas coming out of Spain and Portugal in particular is...

I love citrus, a family of fruits all with a sour tang and varying degrees of sweetness, their history a tale of hybrids. There were four firsts – citron, pomelo, papeda and the mandarin, the only sweet one – that were mixed and interbred so...

It seems many of us have returned to a winter of discontent. Bright sparks are few and far between. As restaurant kitchens slumber or pivot, with a near-hysterical glint, to takeaway offerings, I have retreated to my farm looking for some external...