This dish and the next were consistent winners during my restaurant days. We served one or the other or variations day and night, week in week out, and never once thought of how much butter was in them. I offer them to you now, to allow you to note how times change and how we [...]

Not so long ago, the only place you could get hold of salmon was from the freezers of the big department stores — and it would have arrived there via long and expensive trips from Scandinavia, Canada, and occasionally Scotland. No more. A superbly efficient salmon and ocean-run trout farming industry is flourishing in Tasmania [...]

King George Whiting is always expensive, always delicate in flavour, and should always be cooked gently and watchfully. It has a delicious texture and a lovely flavour. It can be cooked any way really — it is great in batter and deep-fried, as many expensive restaurants have discovered; wonderful with its skin left on and [...]

Every garden should have a bustling rosemary bush. There are few other flavourings which are always available at your back door and add so much life to so many dishes. Toss rosemary with tomatoes, soy and chilli and you’ve got hold of a true winner; cook down some cream and rosemary and you’ve got one of [...]

Remember the ‘good old days’. Remember when Gough Whitlam was the leader of the Opposition, Bob Hawke had black hair and silly glasses, you still had Sunday roasts, and fish shops — the first of the fast food outlets — did a roaring trade on Fridays?
Remember? Remember those shops which had piles of already-fried fish [...]

Bet you have never heard of escolar, or, by its more common name, butter fish, or, by its less common name, oilfish. You’re in good company. Ask fishmongers, fishermen, fishing experts: escolar? Never heard of it.
Escolar etc. is one of the greatest gifts given to the palate by the sea. It is firm and deliciously, [...]

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have enough pans for a sole party, man. Fillets of flat fish like sole, or dory, or flounder stand up beautifully to most forms of cooking: frying, steaming, poaching. Just keep a good eye on the show. Remember, it’s unusual to find a fat, flat fish. They will cook [...]

Skate are gentle fish, put on earth to scare the daylights out of scuba divers. They are almost all wing and seem to fly through the water, casting dark shadows on all beneath them. Imagine you are drifting serenely a few metres beneath the surface and suddenly all goes black. You would have to think [...]

You can get a similar result all in one go by cooking the fish on top of a mix of aromatic vegetables and olive oil, and covering the lot with foil. The fish cooks in the steam coming from the vegetables. At the end of it, you are left with a moist fish and a [...]