Dinner

This is the most beautiful fish soup recipe – it hails from Provence, France – which uses the bones and, sometimes, the head of the fish. It’s easy to forget when you buy an expensive fillet of fish that there’s a whole head and skeleton going to waste, and there is so much good meat left on those bones. This recipe also reminds us that, as years go by, we need to remember the lessons from the past and use food in a way that respects both the beast and the earth.

I was lucky enough to recently find myself on an immense cattle station in the Gulf of Carpentaria with a group of friends. We camped, fished, hunted and gathered among the broad biodiversity that existed on the property. As it was the end of the wet season, there were huge and complex river and freshwater systems teeming with barramundi, mussels, crazy birdlife and mud crabs.

There are times when I really feel my 20th-century Australianness, and not always in a good way. Often it is when I am thinking about, or cooking, offal. With my suburban Anglo-Saxon upbringing, I was not brought up with even a notion of nose-to-tail eating. But I have developed a great fondness for the place the “offaly bits” hold in everybody else’s culture, and have tried to embrace them as part of my own. As with so many traditional offal dishes, it always seems to come down to finding ways to use absolutely everything from an animal after it has given its life.

I think the basic technique of choux pastry is a prime example of why cooking never loses its shine for me. It reminds me of the continuous mirror images that fascinated me as a child, a constantly repeating effect. But with choux it is always tumbling and turning and becoming something slightly different but equally delicious.

There is something magical about the relationship between flesh, salt and fat. Long before refrigeration and factory farming, there was a time and a place for the life of an animal to end and its flesh to be preserved for the coming months. I have a great fondness for two such types of preserved meat from the Gascony region of France: duck leg confit and ventrèche.

This potato terrine appeared on our menu over the weekend of our local celebration of the potato and such was the response to this unlikely hero that it reappeared the following week, a fate that has befallen no other entree in five years of operation. There is something strangely light about this potato terrine and it pairs beautifully with the fruit, the leaves, the crunch of the walnuts and the acid of the vinaigrette, with just the right amount of richness from the cream, eggs and cheese. It is the sum of its parts.

I came across this recipe some years ago and it has become my favourite to move on to once I’m over the ‘sweet’ quince thing. It features Persian overtones, Moroccan influences and rich flavours that are perfect as the nights get colder.

The pipi is defined by a triangular shell and is found in the shallows of estuaries and beach sand flats. Pipis are very accessible to gather and for the next level of funk, we bring in the periwinkle. This dish is a bit of a celebration of all things shallow-water-gathering. Plus, the addition of potatoes and butter has never hurt a thing.

The tiny spud-pickers’ cottages dotted around the farms are testimony to a world where creature comforts were non-existent. And now at the beginning of May each year, when the harvest of potatoes is settling into full swing and the temperature is starting to drop, Trentham celebrates its heritage with a yearly Spudfest. So, to feel part of the local pride on May 5, here is a potato gnocchi dish, resplendent with brussels sprouts and hazelnuts – all things that thrive here in the hills of central Victoria.

This dish came out of trying to think of new things to do with squid. My kitchens have always been intentionally limited by equipment. This technique came out of trying to use the protein as a carb. Slicing the squid like a noodle also opened up how it could take on different flavours, either from the land or the sea. The squid should always taste like squid, but you can easily sit other flavours with it.