Trends and fads

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Welcome to you all. Amazingly I still don't seem to be running out of ideas on what to write - well occasionally - but I have my writer's block strategies to turn to - see the text on the right. Check this page for the latest posts and if something interests you just click on it. It's easy to leave a comment and I love to read them. And now you can subscribe to the blog and get emailed notifications of new posts. And sorry I just don't understand Facebook.

"We are not here for long. So let's at least make ourselves something good to eat."

Nigel Slater

"I was born hungry, not a cook."

Julia Child

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well"

Virginia Woolf

Writer's block

Every now and then I can't think of a suitable topic and so I have devised a few strategies to get around this.

Lucky dip

The first strategy I devised is to go to one of my three cook book bookshelves, close my eyes and pick a book. Close my eyes again and pick a page. It's really quite an enlightening method of getting over writer's block.

'A word from'

My second strategy is to devote a post to the thoughts of one of my favourite cooks. Hopefully it will introduce them to you

Or

I shall choose a picture I have come across and extemporise on that.

A second kind of lucky dip

I have been thinking about first recipes in cook books - so I shall choose a book not quite randomly and then look at the first recipe for inspiration.

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enjoy

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Roasting a cauliflower whole - why?

"for maximum impact" This was going to be whole roast large vegetables - mostly brassicas it seemed - but I quickly found that cauliflower was where this particular thing began, so I am sticking to cauliflower for now. Maybe I'll do celeriac, cabbage, squash ... another time. I confess that even though I have seen an increasing proliferation of the whole roast cauliflower thing I have often wondered why? Surely those leaves, with their thick stalks, and the very thick core

Jul 31

Confused by trends

“Like dogs, foodies wag their tails at the slightest sniff of new and exciting. Then bark at each other on social media. Food is fashion. If you’re into that stuff, it matters.” Perry Haydon-Taylor/The Guardian I was going to call this post two trends in one - illustrated by this Coles recipe for Fluffy Cheesecake with matcha icing sugar from their Food Director, Sarah Hobbs - the two trends being Japanese cheesecake and matcha desserts. The trends were based on the list pu

Jul 29

What's in a name? - 'marry me'/Tuscan chicken

"I know the internet has turned this dish into marry me chicken but it’s still Tuscan chicken to me!" The Taylor Table/Instagram And what's Tuscan chicken anyway? Not Tuscan whatever else it might be. But back to the beginning, although in a way it's really the end. Pondering on this and that for today's post I decided to see what was trending in the food world and found on the Taste website - a list of Trends 2026, some of which were truly awful, but top of their list of

Jul 26

Leftover lettuce salad omelette - so many ways

"Done and dusted. Out of this world." Foodie China 888/YouTube This picture comes from the end of one of the most captivating cooking videos I have seen on YouTube. In roughly 25 seconds you are shown - complete with instructions to use either your right hand or your left hand -how to make this Rolled lettuce omelette. The pictures are very clear, the voiceover is male - he calls himself Foodie China 888 and has a slight Chinese accent I think. Halfway through, a kitsch

Jul 24

Ranch dressing - a moment in the sun

"It’s the friend of all manner of dude foods." delicious. Ranch dressing is one of those absolutely American things - well I think of it that way anyway - if I think about it all that is. But Deb Perelman in her Smitten Kitchen newsletter, directed to me to an article in The Atlantic by Ellen Cushing which told me that: "Ranch dressing has become, deservedly or not, a face of the nation during the World Cup." And I have checked - it is indeed a thing - at least in the media

Jul 9

Korean? noodle pancakes

"misused words generate misleading thoughts." Herbert Spencer The April Woolworths Fresh Ideas Magazine popped up yesterday, and so I took one and flicked through it. I confess I've gone off the Woolworths magazine in recent times - it's recipes seem less interesting and less well presented than the Coles equivalent. Not that Coles is a goldmine of recipes I should add. But it is indeed always interesting to browse both magazines for all sorts of reasons other than lookin

Apr 25

Drops

Drop: "single globule of liquid; small amount of anything" They can be fruit drops too - it doesn't have to be just a liquid. It's funny how almost any of the words I have chosen for these oddments posts have some kind of foodie connection. In this case many - a drop of any kind of liquid you might add to what you are cooking, which might be as vague as a little bit, or as in the case of something really strong like tabasco, or food colouring - literally just a drop - or tw

Apr 21

Whipped feta

"The Best Whipped Feta Contains Feta and Nothing Else" Claire Lower/ Lifehacker Australia I'm not a member/subscriber to TikTok, Facebook, Instagram et al. and so I am not immediately aware of foodie trends. Only when they filter into recipe books and newsletters. So I'm always behind. This one seems to have begun around 2019 - but a recent 2025 study by Datassential maintains that it's only at the Adoption stage - the other stages being Inception - then Adoption - Proli

Apr 18

Cabbage and the vagaries of memory

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were." Marcel Proust This was going to be a relatively straightforward post inspired by the idea that 2026 is the year of the cabbage - which I I have been mulling over for a while - which would then be an occasion to talk about my favourite recipe for cabbage and finally being nudged into action about these things by Ottolenghi's latest newsletter which talked about all things cabbage. However,

Apr 12

Boy kibble - so sad

"a ruthlessly efficient male-coded rejoinder to the extemporaneous charms of 'girl dinner'." Max Berlinger/AFR I found the illustration above heading an article in the AFR at the weekend, about the latest TikTok sensation Boy kibble - sometimes called - in a nod to not being sexist - human kibble. What is kibble? I actually thought it sounded like some kind of Middle-Eastern grainy something, but no. Kibble is: "a popular, cost-effective, and convenient dry pet food made

Feb 25

Corn ribs

"The possibilities are endless" This post actually comes from my poor memory forgetting a postscript that I meant to add to yesterday's post. It was a postscript, because it was about vadouvan - that I wrote about a few days ago. The January Coles Magazine had a recipe for the above dish from Curtis Stone - Corn ribs with Vadouvan-spice butter and coriander chutney - in fact it had been my original inspiration for writing about vadouvan, but I failed to mention it I think

Feb 12

Chicken Kiev - or Kyiv, or something else altogether?

"the only thing that really matters with a kiev is that when you cut into that crisp shell, you're rewarded with an eruption of vivid green, garlicky butter. And that's a pleasure that will never go out of fashion." Felicity Cloake Only beware, because if you cut into it too rapidly that hot butter could spurt out and all over anything that is nearby - the tablecloth, your clothes, your fingers. And it will be hot. The trick is to get it to ooze - as shown here in Nagi Mae

Jan 29

Ombre - from Monet to cakes

"To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment." Jane Austen Once again I am trying out a new technique to combat lack of inspiration. The idea is to randomly pick a photograph, a picture, an object ... and extemporise upon it, hoping that in some way there will be a connection to food. I find this kind of thing makes you think a little, explore a little and look at things in a different way perhaps with an eye to detail, perhaps t

Jan 4

Indian cookbooks - then and now

"Books, even cookbooks, are written for a diversity of reasons and it is often more profitable to enquire why they have been written than analyse their contents in an uncritical manner. " Shylashri Shankar/The Peepul Tree I guess this particular post stems from one of those books on my desk - The Food of India - a large beautiful book which I picked up from the op shop for a song. Like it's companions in this series from the Murdoch stable on various world cuisines, it feat

Nov 4, 2025

Aubergines on top of yoghurt

"the composition is inspired by Yotam Ottolenghi’s unbeatable formula of flavoured yoghurt base + roasted aubergines + vibrant toppings." Ixta Belfrage This is Ixta's Aubergines with lime yoghurt and tomato, cinnamon and chilli oil - a recipe from I'm not sure where. Anyway I thought her words might be an opening into a post - most likely I thought - about how everyone was copying the technique. You know the one - I talked about it recently - a base of something creamy. yo

Nov 1, 2025

Old-fashioned canapés - first recipe

"If you don't have the time to prepare something good then just serve some olives or nuts." Beverley Sutherland Smith Well you would perhaps wouldn't you? - or just open a bag of crisps because canapés - the retro kind - often take a lot of work. This is a photograph of some of Beverley Sutherland Smith's canapés, styled in a very old-fashioned way on a silver platter with the bottle of champagne in a silver bucket. The kind of thing you would get served at a fancy cocktai

Oct 30, 2025

Disappointing

"Disappointments are inevitable; discouragement is a choice . " Charles Stanley I like to have on my desk, a desk calendar - one of those things that stands on your desk waiting for you to tear off each day as it passes. I also have a diary - yes I use a paper diary. My excuse is age. Normally I have an art based one. I like to see paintings I don't know, discover beautiful pictures and new artists, even occasional blog inspiration. However, last year as the possibilitie

Oct 26, 2025