Writer, Eater
So here I am with a new (but old) kitchen which includes a mid-2000s dishwasher. Except for a short period ten years ago, I've never lived with a dishwasher and harbour some suspicion of them. How does one best enjoy a dishwasher?
Keeping your knives sharp
One of my greatest fears when someone asks me to cook with them is the prospect of blunt knives in their kitchen. I hate being asked to finely slice an onion or trim a piece of meat with a large dull-edged kitchen knife. Ugh. I believe I've once successfully nagged a friend into getting some decently sharp knives.
OMG I can still make macarons!
Ten months after I last donned my patissier gear and squeezed out a few hundred macarons, I returned to the piping bags for a brief baking blitz. My back hurt for two weeks. So then I made a cake instead.
Pierre Hermé's book on macarons is now in English
The most impressive book on macarons is now in English! Pierre Hermé's 2008 French book "Macaron" is out this month in English.
Vanilla slices – glorious, perhaps mundane, quite mysterious
The vanilla slice is one of those standard, humble Australian bakery items that qualifies as "good old" for its longevity and as "humble" because of its modest level of finesse. But there are mysteries in all this (and questions for readers at the end)… What was your childhood vanilla slice like? Did it have a different name? And how long has it been around?
TASTY PRESERVES
Announcing The Gastronomer's Bookshelf — collaborative book review site
Sweet readers, it's time for me to announce the launch of a new website. Book reviews. For you and me. By you and me (and you and you and you). All about food, wine and tummies. I got tired of superficial, uninformative reviews in...
Read more Fri 19 Dec, 2008Father's Day: tarte tatin and éclairs redux
With frozen éclair shells still quite fresh in the freezer, what better to do than give them a little warmth and crisping for Father's Day? And to break the monotony, I tried my hand at a tarte tatin for the first time, with delicious results (and some...
Read more Sun 07 Sep, 2008London 2007
It's three years since I was last in Britain and I was curious to see what might have changed in the food scene. It wasn't hard to miss the popularity of gastropubs, the growth of decent...
Read more Fri 24 Aug, 2007Review: The Press Club, Melbourne
Strange. I'm dining fine in Australia, yet the menu isn't French, Italian or Mod-Oz. Some of the staff and chefs speak a cuisine-appropriate language, but are most likely home-grown. The cuisine is usually regarded as meat-heavy and conservative. George Calombaris's very modern food successfully marries cutting edge with Hellenic tradition at The Press Club. It's hard to...
Read more Tue 19 Feb, 2008Travel 2008 — Sevilla (Spain)
A real city at last. Seville throbs with life. As the days have passed, I've felt the city-dweller in me yearning for a little more buzz than even Granada had managed to provide. The city is lush with enormous, blooming jacarandas. Beautiful violet blossom seems to light up the streetscape....
Read more Sun 01 Jun, 2008
