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 about, but I decided to widen my search - Beverley Sutherland Smith and Donna Hay had seasonal books/magazines - and so did an op shop purchase More Please - one of the many cookbooks produced by delicious. Australia and written by Valli Little, which at last brought success - and choices.

Valli Little was delicious. magazine's first food editor - maybe director - the title changed over the course of her years there. The magazine was launched in 2001 and it was really her food that made it so successful and so influential here in Australia. But alas in 2017 she died. I was saddened as was the Australian food community - who were entirely behind the words of the channel nine reporter at the top of this page.

I am left with many, many delicious. magazines which are basically inaccessible on a very high shelf in my kitchen and some of her recipes in a database I assembled on my favourites before putting those magazines up so high. I rarely access it.

A year or so ago I bought this book on one one of my rare visits to our local Savers. I had not bought any of the previous ones - somehow it seemed a bit unnecessary, but after my reacquaintance with her delicious food today, I shall be looking out for more.

Valli Little was not one of those recipe writers who eloquently invited you in to her recipe at the head of each one. In many ways we relied on the outstanding quality of the photography - as I confess I have been today - as you will see. In this case the photographer is Brett Stevens, but she has worked with most of the best Australian food photographers. Well delicious. along with Gourmet Traveller (more upmarket) and the Women's Weekly (more downmarket?) rely on the presentation of their magazines to sell them. In the case of delicious. they were also fortunate in having Valli Little providing the food.

She grew up in England - the child of restauraters, trained in London's Cordon Bleu school and for a while ran a catering company with her husband, until the ABC who first published delicious. invited her to join them in launching a food magazine. The rest is history.

And yet she is not well known to the general public like Maggie Beer, Stephanie Alexander, Bill Granger, Curtis Stone et al. It's delicious. that is known. Not Valli Little. She is even less well-known than Beverley Sutherland Smith.

And yet she is one of those recipe writers whose recipes rarely fail you. They are simple, don't use hard to find ingredients, and are not banging on about eating healthily - although on of her last books - Feel Good Food - was inspired by her battle with cancer. But health was never her focus:

"I want people to look at my recipes in this book and think “wow that looks delicious, I’d like to cook that for dinner” not “oh that looks healthy”.

And I certainly did today. Here are the recipes I am considering - I haven't made a decision yet. Well there are two dessert recipes that I am thinking about although I suspect that I shall plump for the Sticky mocha pudding with chocolate and toffee sauce which you can find on the Confessions of a Glutton website - elsewhere as well I think, although never with credit given to her. It's also the only one of my choices to have the recipe online. But if you really want any of them I can send them to you. The other gorgeous looking dish is Cremets with caramel oranges Cremets are a mixture of cream cheese, sugar, cream and vanilla chilled in the fridge and served with sliced oranges, and a caramel sauce. I can't quite discard the idea of doing that instead of the sticky pudding as yet.

The rest? Well the first course is sorted. It will be Autumn rösti with hot-smoked salmon. In a way I guess this is not all that original - but it was the rösti recipe which pulled me in as it's a mix of sweet potato (1), potato (1), carrot (1/2) and parsnip (1), partly boiled then grated and mixed with egg, nutmeg and thyme - which seems to be one of her favourite herbs, before frying in butter and olive oil. Crème fraïche mixed wth lemon zest is placed on top, topped with the flaked hot smoked salmon and sprinkled with chives. Now do I have any chives or have they all gone to sleep for the winter?

Light but delicious. It's a combination of ingredients that is fairly common - for a reason.

For the mains I am tossing up between chicken and pork - and both with a Spanish vibe. Spanish roast chicken with quince sauce is the first - for which you place some sliced chorizo under the breast skin of the chicken and stuff it with a mixture of bread, onion, celery, sage, manchego cheese and prosciutto - all bound together with an egg, before roasting. The sauce is made with some chicken consommé and quince paste. She suggests serving with patatas bravas. Or - Pork and olive stew - more chorizo, onion, garlic, smoked paprika, flour sherry vinegar and sherry, chicken stock, thyme, bay and finished for the last half hour with green olive and sliced roast red peppers. Serve with charred sourdough. Now this is a rather more difficult choice.

And I didn't even look at the spring and summer recipes - there may well have been something to entice there as well.

So next time you are in an op shop keep your eyes out for one - or more - of Valli Little's many books. She died far too young at the age of 59. And I actually don't think that delicious. has been the same since her death. I certainly stopped subscribing to it after a while.

YEARS GONE BY

June 3

2025 - Carême - we can never know

2024 - That was the week that was

2023 - Nothing

2022 - Cream - a guilty necessity

2021 - Missing

2020 - Missing

2019 - Do I think about food too much?

2018 - Nothing

2017 - Nothing