food
food
food August 18, 2018
The window in which to pick artichokes is very short. They go from being young, tender and a joy to prepare to a stringy and tough time-waster, which makes absolute sense considering they are a thistle. This, combined with their short shelf life,...
food August 11, 2018
I know I’m courting controversy and might even lose some of you immediately with the next statement, but here we go. Candied peel is absolutely delicious. I can hear the howls of horror in my head. I’ve come to conclude that it must be one of the...
food August 4, 2018
Sea urchin with cultured butter and toast
Sea urchin can be one of the best things you can eat or one of the worst things, depending on the day. The handling is so important. They go from being sweet and tasting like the ocean to tasting like, for want of a better term, cat food. If you...
food July 28, 2018
There are times when I really feel my 20th-century Australianness, and not always in a good way. Often it is when I am thinking about, or cooking, offal. Sure, I remember staying at friends’ farms and watching a sheep being slaughtered in the yards...
food July 21, 2018
Talk of nettles and most folk flinch, recalling run-ins in fields with shorts. The thought of eating or even harvesting them isn’t exactly met with exuberance. Like most things involving gardening, it draws an analogy with life, as I was once taught...
food July 14, 2018
Gnocchi Parisienne with roasted pumpkin and sage butter
There’s no denying that I love the versatility of choux pastry. Once the technique is mastered it is the key to so many dishes. First, there is the baked version, well known as the basis for cream puffs, eclairs, Paris-Brests and profiteroles. Add a...
food July 7, 2018
Pickled quince with cime di rapa and bottarga
I’m not sure how many varieties of quinces there are but I know there are shitloads. This recipe is about trying to use things during a glut, like making passata when you have excess tomatoes. One technique for cooking quinces is to do it slowly...
food June 30, 2018
There is something magical about the relationship between flesh, salt and fat. Long before refrigeration and factory farming, there was a time and a place for the life of an animal to end and its flesh to be preserved for the coming months. Few...
food June 23, 2018
Smoked oysters and chicken broth
The first thing to face is the fact that cooking an oyster is almost seen as a crime. We can blame the Monday Special – oysters kilpatrick that have been open a day too long and are hiding out with a bacon accomplice. But when done with...
food June 16, 2018
Potato terrine with Gruyere and garlic
One of the great joys of having a restaurant where your guests place themselves gently in your hands, and allow you to decide what to feed them, is that often you will put a dish before them that they would not choose in a million years if they were...
food June 9, 2018
The big thing with mackerel is that you either love it or hate it. It’s an oily fish and there’s no getting away from that. Traditional treatment of mackerel tends to come from Scandinavian countries, where it is pickled and preserved. The Japanese...
