food

Poor crepes. In some circles they still have a bad name. Maybe it’s Pancake Parlour’s fault or maybe it was the ’70s when every home cook tried to make crepes and vol-au-vents filled with a thickened chicken stodge that was, frankly, not quite right...

My first head chef when I was an apprentice – Bill Marchetti – used to tell me stories about how, when he first came to Australia, he would buy the squid off fishermen at the jetty for a dollar a kilo. They used to laugh at him. Yesterday I went to...

Traditions create memories, memories create traditions. It’s the ultimate closed-loop system. What has become a favourite tradition of mine brings back a particularly horrid childhood memory. My mother has always been a very keen and very good cook...

Tiramisu has a somewhat naff mass appeal – it’s a homely dessert that should be for everyone but the addition of raw egg, coffee and alcohol excludes children and some people from the pleasures. Bringing together two things that complete every meal...

It’s that time of year. Tomatoes are everywhere and even though I have plenty of plants in my garden, I cannot seem to overcome the urge to buy a 10- or 20-kilo box of glossy sauce tomatoes stacked high outside the greengrocer’s. It’s a purchase...

This recipe comes from the experience of standing in pintxos bars in the Basque country and eating cold seafood marinated in vinegar. There is something very hospitable about a bar top loaded with morsels of seasonal food. It’s up there with my...

It’s a long, long reach back into history to zero in on the beginnings of that French–English rivalry thing. It seems most historians agree that it was about the time of the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) that it really began. Odd, too, that it...

There is one great secret about steak. This is it: start with a great piece of meat. I will always go for something that has some dry age, which lends a more developed flavour and a slightly more tender finish. Dry ageing basically allows moisture...

“For this was on seynt Volantynys day Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.” I blame Geoffrey Chaucer. It was he that first plucked a perfectly normal saint’s day out of the darkness and sent it into the glare of the popularist light...