The loin of lamb, touched with garlic, roasted, and served pink in a reduced port and lamb stock sauce
The title will tell you where this recipe came from. Notice the formality and the nonsense added to give it a style of its own. It’s a menu item from the old restaurant, and menu writers, especially me in my heyday, do get carried away with detail. I sometimes think quality restaurants would be better [...]
Lamb steaks in a simple sauce
Lamb chops are so familiar to all of us that they are rarely considered first-rate cooking. Nothing, to my mind, could be further from the truth. The bones pared to the loin and the chops cooked on a barbecue or grill make for a classic dish, beautiful to look at, delicious to the taste. The [...]
Best burgers
A hamburger might very well be the most popular . feed on the globe; at least the western part of it, anyway. Not surprising really. You get a filling feed, simply, quickly and cheaply, with a minimum of effort.
The irony is you can achieve a hugely superior product at home, simply, quickly, cheaply, with a [...]
Beef vindaloo from Chishti’s
I fell in love with a tiny Indian restaurant in Melbourne’s inner suburb of Fitzroy, and was particularly enchanted with the chef’s version of beef vindaloo. I adhered to my principle of asking for special recipes. Harjinder Singh Bhogal, who was in the midst of writing his own cook book, was happy to oblige.
2 tablespoons [...]
Chong’s Beef Rendang
I’ve always believed you have to have been born in the Orient to be a dab hand at making curry, or slow-cooked meats, or spicy sauces. How else can you get close to understanding the flavours that come from a teaspoon of this, a cup of that, an infusion of something else? These are the [...]
Beef Wellington for reformed romantics
The first time I cooked for show I went for broke: Beef Wellington with all the trimmings. The occasion provides vivid memories. I had just moved into an unfamiliar house, I had no idea how the oven worked, and would not have picked the difference between a beef fillet and a shoulder of lamb.
Such a [...]
The perfect steak, very rare; a parable for meat lovers
It took me a long time to decide how best to serve a steak. The ‘How rare is rare?’ syndrome. But it all came together one dreary winter’s night when the front door of the restaurant was swept open and into our presence came a gentleman who was wearing the clothes he had received at [...]
Lamb and Beef, Pork and Veal
The best way to cook meats well at home is to cultivate a good butcher. And the best way to cultivate a good butcher is to open an account.
Accounts are strange social instruments. They guarantee a happy repartee until one party lets down the other. So, you will get to know your butcher, and he [...]
Antipasto
I was getting a little tired of all the salt-laden antipasto around town: all sorts of olives, prosciutto, pickled vegetables, the ubiquitous bottled artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes, sardines and such. Too much salt; too much deadening of the palate, but worse, not enough hard work from the kitchen. Then I went to Sydney and tried the [...]
Pine mushrooms, colourful pals
There’s an old rule which pops up whenever mushrooms pop up in the fields and paddocks and forests. Don’t eat any which display blazing colours. But, like all rules, there is a wild exception. Pine mushrooms are bright orange, and their gills turn green when you rub them. If ever nature was trying to warn [...]