Finally some news – or perhaps information – has emerged from Food Standards ANZ on the submissions last year on the review of raw milk processing standards. FANZ has distributed this pdf which I can’t seem to find on their website where it discusses raw milk products (but their again I have a short attention span if I can’t find something easily). If you are new to this debate the standards in Australia are inconsistent and the current review is […]
Recent posts
Listen to Heston Blumenthal and Thomas Keller talk the new cooking with Neil Perry
Packed into the new recital centre in Melbourne were a star-studded audience to hear Neil Perry, Heston Blumenthal and Thomas Keller discuss “A new approach to cooking”. Sydney chef Tony Bilson was taking notes sitting next to the legendary Cheong Liew. I think I spotted Karen Martini and Martin Boetz. The audience was also packed full of a who’s who of local food media as well as few bloggers and quite possible a few more food twitters. We were all […]
Andrew McConnell’s Cutler and Co takes Gertrude St to another level
The dessert that made me a plate licker. I’m not the only one worrying about the recession. But I’m probably the only one in Cutler & Co thinking about it. The reincarnation of chef Andrew McConnell’s Three, One, Two at the top end of Gertrude St is packed. So packed, McConnell later tells me that it took them by surprise which explains a couple of timing issues that a few of you will have seen on Twitter. But the whole […]
Q&A: Tips for world travellers
Q I am writing to you from agricultural heartland (Gippsland, that is) and hoping you might be able to give a coupla tips for surviving a visit to Washington DC. Naturally, the idea of eating in America inspires a degree of terror in me and I thought just maybe you might have a few clues? We are also visiting the Big Apple for the first time and would love to eat well there too.. I have heard this is easily […]
My secret chocolate kiwi fruit shame
À la recherche du temps perdu: Anthon Berg marzipans Back in the 90s in London I was doing a lot of Valrhona. Specifically, Manjari. I would hop on a moving Routemaster – the 137 – and sneak up to the Kings Rd to score big chunks of the stuff and Valrhona truffles made with Normandy cream and calvados. A friend was complicit in it encouraging me to bring Mangari to his Clapham South dinner parties. We were into some really […]
11 reasons to avoid Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc
Not sauvignon blanc grapes Some say that the grapes are trodden by the feet of hobbits. Others that it is simply made with their pee. What can’t be explained what magic has been invoked to make a New Zealand wine has become the most popular quaff of the Aussie – Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc from the Marlborough region. Marlborough sauvignon blanc is becoming more popular by the day. In 2008 sales increased by 52.3% in 2008 and 143% in the […]
Love poems. For cannibals or vegetarians
I love you he said with his tongue in her cheek Adrian Henri Perhaps you don’t love me at all, but at least you sew the buttons on my coat which is more than my wife does. Adrian Henri There are fascists there are fascists pretending to be humanitarians like cannibals on a health kick eating only vegetarians Roger McGough Vegetarians Vegetarians are cruel, unthinking people. Everybody knows that a carrot screams when grated. That a peach bleeds when torn […]
Indian wine whine
Wine with Indian food? Even seasoned food writers seem to think you can’t eat anything spicy – let’s call it curry – without an ice cold glass of lager. Certainly normal punters think it’s laughable. Last year in my mum’s Indian local, out of 150 curry munchers only myself and a blond hairdresser were spotted with a glass of wine, white dare I say. The problem in India is that wine is expensive. Actually that’s not the only problem – […]
Sites for sore eyes
From The Weekend Australian: Travel and Indulgence Ed Charles sorts the wheat from the chaff in the wide world of food websites. Harold McGee: Not everybody wants to know how to cook an octopus. But many of us want to know the difference between cheap frying pans and expensive ones, how and what to cook in a microwave and why cool-climate Victorian shiraz smells of pepper. McGee, author of the brilliant On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of […]