vanilla panna cotta with baked rhubarb

While I love hosting a weekend dinner when there’s plenty of time to procure the ingredients and cook to your heart’s content, I also love having people over mid week. Sometimes I take the luxury of leaving work early to prepare but usually I only have an hour max between getting home from work and the guests arriving. So I tend to rely on menus that can be prepared in advance and preferably benefit from a day or two in the fridge. Read the rest of this entry »

Hope the worlds best mum is having a lovely birthday.

Looking forward to sharing this bottle with you when you make it to the big smoke.

Big Love
JUL xx

celeriac: aka celery root

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and when it comes to celeriac and I think they hit the nail right on the head. As Jared Ingersoll describes it in his great little cookbook: Danks Street Depot, ‘it’s a lumpy, warty looking beast with a sweet, aromatic delicious flesh - beauty in the beast’. Read the rest of this entry »

fig & whisky bread & butter pudding

Sunday Roast? That was the title of an email that went out a few weeks ago to my dear friends Ades, Jo, Robbie, and the lovely Missy Helgs. And after some electronic ping pong a particular Sunday was chosen. Unfortunately poor Robbie was forced instead to spend his Sunday travelling though the beautiful summery country of Croatia with his girl Blue….poor dears Read the rest of this entry »

home grown lamb shanks with white wine & chickpeas

Having family friends over for dinner can be such a laugh…sharing gossip about the neighbours….exchanging quince marmalade recipes….seeing who can get away with the most risque stories….and the worst ‘dad jokes’….an easy camaraderie…black & tans for the boys and kir royals for the ladies…..there’s nothing like it…especially when it’s the Sunday night of a long weekend and the fire is roaring…all good things….. Read the rest of this entry »

pappardelle with pork & fennel sausage

After a big run along the almost deserted country roads in the misty rain on Saturday morning, I was glad that I’d stocked up with some good bread from The Bourke Street Bakery on my way out of Sydney.  Continuing my current mushroom obsession, some button mushrooms were pan fried in butter and olive oil with a little garlic and thyme. These were then served atop chunky toasted slices of soybean and linseed sourdough that had been crowned with meltingly oozy taleggio cheese: a perfect winter lunch inspired by the recent Gourmet Traveller Antipasto supplement. Read the rest of this entry »

little almond puddings with marsala poached prunes

While you could say I’m a bit of a travel junkie, I am still yet to master the gentle art of packing light. For some reason wherever I go I just tend to accumulate things and end up looking something like a bag lady. Recently, however, I decided that I was going to change my ways.  So this weekend rather than my usual trick of lugging around a heap of cookbooks, I decided to limit it to the two latest issues of my favourite food mag: Australian Gourmet Traveller. A weekend’s worth of meals from just two magazines…how hard could it be? Read the rest of this entry »

roast caulilfower soup
soup bowl: an original by colette

Only a week into the official Sydney winter and I’m finding it almost impossible to remember how it feels to be lying on the beach under the oppressive summer sun in nothing but a bikini.  As I have scurried home from work in the dark and dreary rain there have been two thoughts giving me hope. Firstly, it’s only a few more weeks until the days start getting longer again…but more importantly…what’s on the agenda for dinner. Read the rest of this entry »

oven dried button mushrooms

Mushrooms seem to hold a seductive power over me. And I don’t mean those ‘magic’ ones that they sell in shops in Amsterdam. Whenever I come across something on a restaurant menu with the magic word: ‘mushroom’ or better yet ‘porcini’ or ‘ceps’ I find myself struggling to look further down the list of delights. It tends to be pretty much a done deal…I’ll have the mushrooms…. Read the rest of this entry »