World food photography awards
"Food is the great leveller, the great unifier and photography captures this so powerfully,” Awards Founder, Caroline Kenyon I don't have much time today, as I'm preparing for tomorrow's lunch, so here is a sort of taster of some of the amazing photographs that won prizes or were highly commended in this year's World Food Photography Awards. This is not the overall winner, although it is the winner of the sponsor's prize. The major sponsor this year is Tenderstem® Bimi® B
11 hours ago
Rediscovering Valli Little
"our sincere thanks to a woman who changed the landscape of Australian food." Jane de Graaf/Nine On Saturday I'm doing lunch for our lunching friends. We take it in turns to cook lunch every month or so. So I am in early planning mode, and have started looking for inspiration. I decided my starting point would be winter and so I began with Delia and Diana Henry - as I mentioned yesterday. Diana was a bit of a disappointment and Delia did have a couple of things I thought
2 days ago
Raw fish from the sea
"It turns out that sushi made with hot mustard tastes mostly of raw fish and hot mustard. Who could have predicted that?" Chris Worfolk's Blog Raw fish - very expensive if you do as they say and only buy sashimi grade - and also probably not what most of us would nominate as a favourite food. Japanese sushi lovers apart I guess. But one thing that bothered me slightly as I was researching this post was what is the difference between sashimi and sushi? Well this picture show
May 25
Travel
"Travel is the story you tell yourself about yourself." David Prior Once a year the Australian Financial Review puts out a seriously glossy Fin! Travel magazine - inserted into their AFR Weekend edition. This weekend is that weekend. Normally I flick through it in about five minutes - even less sometimes - and discard because it's full of ads for expensive watches, cruises and hotels with articles about holiday experiences which are - well - just decadent and out of my reac
May 17
What am I to do with David Chang?
Today is the day I finish with this book which has been sitting on my desktop for a long time now, with lots of yellow stickers pointing out of it. Only two remain, and so it's decision time after a last post. Do I keep it, pass it on to my daughter-in-law who may find a use for it or put it in the street library? I think I'll eliminate that last option. It's too good for that. Because really my indecision comes down to just two things. First - I confess I am not hugely i
May 16
A classic in so many ways
"Along the way I was reminded of a kind of cooking which, in the pursuit of the new, I had all but forgotten. And I fell in love with it all over again." Jay Rayner/The Guardian This is a lucky dip post. David picked out the large format revised copy of Robert Carrier's Great Dishes of the World and the page I randomly chose included a recipe for Coq au vin - accompanied by a short essay and this old-style arty photograph of the dish - well the ingredients. Although now th
May 15
Who is/was the Saucy Gander?
"Hey guys I made stuff, Hey guys I saw stuff - Stuff - the stuff of legends and food blogs." Saucy Gander This began as a post about a food blog that had caught my eye - Saucy Gander - and, of course, it has morphed into a ramble around the net and its tiny corners, as well as a 'review' of a food blog. In my little Ideas notebook sitting on my desk I have one section devoted to blogs that have caught my eye for one reason or another. Some of them are huge with millions of
May 5
Neil Perry's examples of what we eat
"Whatever is modern Australian food." Neil Perry I suspect that Neil Perry doesn't do that much restaurant cooking these days. He's more of a businessman I would think. I may be wrong of course, and he certainly keeps on putting out new cookbooks. This one is actually not that new - 2016 - which is doubtless why it turned up on Readings bargain table. I bought it because although I, of course, know of Neil Perry and how much he is admired by the foodie community, I do no
Apr 30
Why does this lady blog?
The lady in question is called Jennifer Raffle, who comes from Manchester in the UK, although now I think she lives in Altrincham in Cheshire. She has a husband and two sons and in her About section tells us: "I decided to start my blog in July 2009 after leaving my investment management job to set up my own consulting business helping small technology companies run their finances more smoothly. This was meant to leave me with more time to pursue other interests but I’m sti
Apr 8
The sea, the sea
"Childhood memories of building sandcastles, rummaging in rock pools and splashing in the surf stay with us like little else." Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall The above photograph is from my collection of long ago negatives digitised on my scanner, complete with scratches, like the crescent moon-like one above my son's head at the front of the boat. We are in the Maldives with my young nephew in tow - he was on a trip to Australia with us, after our own trip - business associat
Mar 25
Does disappointment trump joy?
"I see no point in putting pen to paper to preserve anything negative, sad or painful." Nigel Slater Well so says Nigel. To be fair he did go on to say that there was more than enough misery around, and probably in his life too. I doubt there is anyone happy all the time. He was simply saying he did not want to write about the bad things. The things that go wrong. However, I want to consider this in writing after my Sunday birthday party which was overall a joyous experi
Mar 24
Why am I doing this?
"These diminutive pleasures are there if we care to look for them, little joys illuminating an increasingly darkening world. They feed the soul and nourish the spirit. Or at least they do mine." Nigel Slater Every now and then, I go through a phase of wondering why I keep writing this blog, particularly at the times when I am somewhat uninspired - like now, and so I was interested to read an article highlighted by Smitten Kitchen's Deb Perelman, in The New Yorker. The wr
Mar 20
Nigella on Instagram - a sort of postscript to yesterday Nigel
"Instagram is a visual medium, no less than television, so it’s always going to favour photogenic food, but still, it can make a cook despair." Nigella Lawson Nigella is a friend of Nigel's so it's sort of appropriate to turn to her thoughts on Instagram - a visual medium, as she says - if ever there was one. And obviously she eventually succumbed, because this is her Instagram logo - 3.1 million followers - huge. Moreover - I have just thought - Nigella - the brand anyway
Mar 14
Stunningly and simply beautiful or pretentious?
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." By now you will have realised that I am a sucker for beautiful things. Appearance is sometimes all. But of course, what I think is beautiful is not necessarily what you think is beautiful. So that's one thing to bear in mind as I launch into today's musings. The second thing you will have realised by now is that I am an ardent admirer of the work of Nigel Slater - both as a recipe creator and foodie inspirer and also as a writer. A
Mar 13
River Cottage fruit
"If one food was designed, unambiguously, to be eaten, then surely it has to be fruit. We consume it, we spread the seed, more fruit grows, everyone's happy." Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Bearing in mind the words above, it's perhaps appropriate that the frontispiece photograph in my next River Cottage Handbook - Fruit - is a perfect photograph of blossom. Potential. From little things big things grow and all that. It's also appropriate because the book is mostly about h
Mar 12
Rick Stein and British food
"It shouldn’t work, but, like most of his work, a bumbling anti-charm somehow wins through." John Merrick/Vittles I've never really been a follower of Rick Stein. I once watched a very short extract of the series in which he was floating down the Canal du Midi in France and I was somewhat underwhelmed. But I did buy this book recently - from Readings bargain table because I thought it was about time I discovered what all the fuss was about. Is he just good at promoting hi
Mar 11
Sandbagging the David Chang way
sandbagging - "To force or coerce someone to do something." The Free Dictionary "Hiding the strength, skill or difficulty of something or someone in a sport or competition" Wikipedia I'm struggling a little today. Well I have all the past week really because of various minor troubles bubbling around, which have limited my powers of thinking coherently. So perhaps those two definitions above apply. I'm sort of forcing myself to write a post every day - except when I obvio
Mar 6
A Mediterranean Dish coincidence
“I think that is the key [-] the monotony of showing up every day and owning a niche and sticking with it." Suzy Karadsheh It's a website post today - but before I get to talking about this particular website - just look at this - the most recent recipe - 'updated March 3 2026' - i.e. yesterday - the same day that I was writing about fish finger sandwiches - The best crispy fried fish sandwich (Egyptian style) . There it was on the Home Page of the next website on my list
Mar 4
Handwritten
"a small labour in these copy-and-photograph times." Rachel Roddy She means copy and paste surely? Yesterday I was a bit uninspired and so I started looking through the Ideas pages in my little notebook of various nudges into blog posts and there at the top of the page on the right is an idea from Rachel Roddy, which I wasn't really up for yesterday, although I did check out the article, which was, as always with her, an interesting one. So today, having survived the threa
Mar 2
Preserving with 'Pam the Jam'
"they waste not, so we want not" Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall This is a first recipe book and I have come to a boxed set I bought at some bargain price ages ago - because I was interested in the River Cottage vibe. It was a bit of a mistake really because it is heavily British. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and his River Cottage come and go team are very much into foraging, and so most of what he forages is British - and not available here. I think I can say that really the
Feb 27