Month: November 2005

Cooking

Shepherds pie for a cold night

This is a favourite, perhaps because I’m crazy on both Worcester Sauce (Lea & Perrins, of course) and creamy mashed potato made with loads of butter. You can make this with lamb mince or beef. The latter is really a cottage pie and reminds me of some pretty nasty examples at school ( as well as having crumpets toasted between my buttocks). The point of this dish is leftovers from a roast. They should be ground up. I usually have […]

Drinks

Entertain MeMe: My entertaining must have

Image pinched from Williams-Sonoma I’m not sure about the kind of people Jennifer has coming round to her Entertain MeMe meme. Whenever I get wind of a band of firneds/strangers coming round I lie awake at night dreaming of the sound of smashing glass. There again I tend to mix with journalists and Australians, so anything can happen. Long stemmed crystal, or just plain, wine glasses tip, crash and smash. White carpets are spreckled red and I’m forced to waste […]

journalism, Wine

Snobbery comes with the terroir

Stephen Shelmerdine: prices influenced by the tangible and the intangible I’d link to this story I wrote for The Australian but can’t find one. So here is the unedited version: Take two wines from the same region, a few kilometres apart. Both are top-notch drops. One costs $30; the other nearer $50. Stephen Shelmerdine, managing director, Shelmerdine wines, with vineyards in Heathcote and the Yarra Valley, says it’s a marketing decision. “But it’s informed by a range of factors some […]

Wine

The naked winemaker: Pierre Naigeon

If you go down to the Yarra Valley today… Well a couple of months ago you may have seen this Frenchman stark bollock naked jumping out of a vat full of Shiraz. He was cherry red. As he described this to a lunch of wine journalists, plus flamboyant society hairdresser Lillian Frank, nobody flinched. That surprised me. Australian winemakers have become the masters of vast steel vats, mechanical agitation, or at least having the modesty to don a wetsuit before […]

journalism

In The Black: Share and share alike

When workers own shares in their companies they are motivated and loyal. So why are Australian companies failing to catch on? From In The Black November 2005 Power to the people. Get them to buy shares. Even better, give them shares in the company for which they work. The staff are no longer revolting. They’re quite nice now, work harder and everybody is richer. That’s how it works in the UK and the US, where employees are raking it in. […]

Books

My first blog book: Julie & Julia

Until she died, I’d never taken too much notice of Julia Childs. And I’d cerainly never heard of Julie Powell even though I had more than a healthy interest in food and blogging. That was until I tripped over Julie & Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, I tiny apartment kitchen. What surprised me was how much I enjoyed this book. Julie, 30, embarks on the challenging of cooking every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. […]