Love the photography of Melbourne-based food and travel photographer Bonnie Savage. You’ll know her work from Australian Gourmet Traveller and the SMH’s Good Weekend. I just adore it, all peaceful and moody at once, with lovely non-garish pops of colour. Look at the drinks pic below for heaven’s sake. Bonnie did a string of photos of a milkbar, where she followed the dear apron-clad owner around and took snaps of her feet up a ladder and peeking between jars of things. Check out Bonnie’s site to see them. Nothing is too polished in this photographic world of Bonnie Savage’s, but it’s all magically gilded and sparkles with real life.
A controversial and swear-ridden viral video featuring Aria chef Matt Moran has been making the rounds. In the iPhone video, on the set of an advertisement, Moran yells at a crew member who throws out some food Moran has plated up. Here it is.
It has been revealed though, that the video was in fact a hoax that aimed to shed light on the incredible wastage of food. Moran is asking us to think twice about throwing away food. He emphasises that billions of dollars of food is thrown away every year. Here’s the full video.
OzHarvest, the food-rescue charity lead by Ronni Kahn, provides a toolkit for regional communities to carry out the OzHarvest mission themselves, to collect excess food and give it to people who need it. Australians throw away $5.2 billion a year of good food, and 3 million tonnes of food is driven to landfill in Australia each year. Two million Australians rely on food relief at some point every year. 60,000 low-income working families in Australia go without meals at least once a day. It makes sense for a charity like OzHarvest to put two and two, or food and mouths, together. This viral campaign sees Moran launch REAP. For more info, click here.
How sweet it is to visit Kangaroo Island’s colony of Ligurian bees, writes Kate Gibbs
Perhaps its their renegade status that keeps us enthralled with the bee: hard workers, mass producers, a sense of social order, the mystical ability to turn an egg into a queen, and a violent sting to boot.
“Next to humans, bees are the most studied living things on Earth,” the manager of Island Beehive and a quietly spoken authority on all things honey, Peter Davis, says.
[FULL STORY here: 8 February 2011, The Sydney Morning Herald]
Simon Marnie compared broccoli with snot, and there was general discussion about how to get children to eat, and cook, their vegetables. Much fun this morning on ABC 702.
Two of Sydney’s passionate food writers who love helping kids develop their skills in the kitchen - Sheridan Rogers, author of “mini-chef” and Kate Gibbs (granddaughter of Margaret Fulton and daughter of Suzanne Gibbs), who also writes The Sydney Morning Herald’s Kitchen Cadets column, joined Simon in the studio this morning in an effort to encourage kids into the kitchen and discuss the complex question of how we get our children to like their veggies.
Next year I’m going to Spain. Sometimes you need to write these things down. Spain is not just paella, as the very talented foodie Gwyneth Paltrow, whose blog Goop I adore, has pointed out.
“There are tons of A-MAZING foods there. And when it’s done properly it’s the best food in the entire world. There is one episode where we were in Barcelona and we went to this tapas bar called Inopia. The meal still stays with me. It’s one of the best meals I’ve ever had.”
Here’s the menu from this incredible bar, only half of which I can decipher. Or check out the little short film from the insides of this uber cool bar as well.
My darling friend Kristin Hove has just returned home to Norway from Sydney, but when she was here she’d collect all these wonderful people to her flat and cook for us – or get us all to bring a plate with a certain theme guiding our culinary hands. As I converse, one way, with Gwyneth on the merits of Spanish cooking, I might plan a Spanish feast for friends, with these olive oil drizzled anchovies and super fresh seafood doused in oil and laden with garlic and spices and chargrilled.
Peas are a do-able vegetable in the kingdom of kids. They’re small, round and sweet and can be chased around the plate with a fork or thrown at your sister. What’s not to love? Stirred into this other old favourite, macaroni and cheese, it’s a win-win recipe for mini chefs.
My Kitchen Cadets column in The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Living covered the ever-reliable Mac and Cheese last week. Check out today’s Kitchen Cadets column, where Ava (7) makes raspberry pikelets. Pretty cute.
But meanwhile, from last week, Archie (5) makes herby Mac and Cheese… “Oh, so I have to basically just make a roux. That’s easy,” says “five-and-three-quarter”-year-old Archie as he reads through the recipe before embarking on cooking. “And then we just put everything together and then put it in the oven basically. Easy.” And when he wasn’t making the roux and slowly adding the milk, he’d check his iPod to make sure the embattled soldiers in some game were where they should be. And then back to adding the peas and ham to the sauce, then back to the iPod. There’s a lot to balance in life when you’ve got to cook dinner and beat your top score.
When the sneaky “little trees” metaphor no longer flies and broccoli is just not finding its way into dinner, mushing it up beyond recognition with other green vegetables may just be the answer.
Three year old Lulu’s immediate reaction to the concept of “mean, green bruschetta” was “yuk”. But we steadfastly continued with our cooking plan. She was less interested during the cutting and blanching, somewhat distracted by the fridge magnets instead. Her interest heightened during the whirring and blending, keen to hold the noisy machine, and she was positively engaged by the idea of grating garlic on toast. And the final verdict? “Not yuk at all, actually.”
Kitchen Cadets, published in Good Living (The Sydney Morning Herald) looks at Lulu’s “mean, green bruscetta”. Every Tuesday in Good Living..
A Sicilian will tell you cannoli has to be filled with sheep’s-milk ricotta and they must be eaten the day they are made. There may be chocolate-cream filled, custard loaded, coffee creme varieties sold in Australia but a real cannolo, Sicily’s most famous pastry, is something quite different.
In Sicily, crisp-fried pastry shells are filled with a not-too-sweet mixture of dense and creamy sheep’s-milk ricotta – either plain or laden with candied citrus, usually blood orange – a pinch of cinnamon, crushed pistachios, a few drops of orange blossom water and bittersweet chocolate chips.
“I like cooking because it’s fun, and you can make the hugest mess you want…” Australia’s most adorable chefs hit televisions last night in the first Junior MasterChef. An international challenge was the first undertaking for the little chefs, who turned out poached chicken Vietnamese salads, Italian ricotta gnocchi, and french-inspired truffled poached eggs on smashed potatoes.
Last week Good Living launched its new Kitchen Cadets column, in which I tap up a recipe every week for kids to cook. Last week we did Bacon and Corn Muffins and coming up tomorrow is a simple Asian soy chicken wings served on steamed rice. Can’t wait to get more inspiration from Junior MasterChef, where these talented little people cook some really complex and beautifully presented things. Size, it seems, doesn’t matter one bit.
So exciting to see the final product that is The Foodies’ Guide to Sydney, which I co-wrote with other fabulous food writers.
Discover the city’s best kept food secrets with The Foodies’ Guide to Sydney. Food lovers know that when you want to enjoy a delicious meal at home, you need the best ingredients and the freshest produce. This is the one book that shows you where to find these essentials and much more, with reviews of Sydney’s best bakeries, cheese specialists, boutique wine merchants, butchers, fishmongers, chocolate stores and coffee roasters. Source seasonal vegetables for a healthy family meal. Get to know your local butcher. Find the most authentic Lebanese pastries to take home for dinner. Or discover which delicatessens stock the best range of French cheeses. The Foodies’ Guide to Sydney is for everyone who enjoys shopping for good food. More than just a guide to your local shops, it is a celebration of the wonderful food stores that keep the city well fed and happy. This year’s guide features a brand new team of writers, headed by respected Sydney food writer Simon Thomsen. It will also be printed in full colour for the first time and has a fresh new design.
Sydney is getting all unearthed about where its food comes from. It wants to know what’s organic and how many bugs had to die by force of chemical to get that beetroot on the plate. It makes perfect sense to know your pinot gris came from the right area, and that the little box of [...]
Tiny pencil-width fingers press into the floury pizza dough and brothers Tom, 7, and Henry, 9, jokingly jostle as to who gets to tear up the salami. Their older sister, Charlie, 11, watches patiently, letting the boys complete this simple task – the other night she cooked Greek-style roast chicken by herself. Children in the [...]
.. Love this concept from the blogger Mom Food Project. Collect your mother’s recipes while you can, stack them away and keep them for future generations. This hand-typed version is stained and proper. Remember when those little lined cards were actually useful and recipes could actually get blobs of sauce on them? ShareTweet
I have a little slip dress. It’s black with a pearly trim detail at the top, and the straps are barely there. Nor is the dress really, and I have to either be wearing too much underwear, that won’t show any lines, or virtually none at all, that won’t show any lines. But I have [...]
The Kitchen Inc. blog is written and edited by Kate Gibbs - a journalist, author and cook.
Food, travel, design >> How, when entwined together, these things inspire our daily culinary experience >> The Kitchen Inc. covers food, kitchen-based inspiration, and workable design as it impacts our dining, eating, cooking lives.
Kate Gibbs writes a weekly column for Sunday Life in The Sun Herald called The Perfect... She is a regular contributor to the SMH on food and travel. She writes food features for The Wall Street Journal.
Kate writes for The Foodies Guide to Sydney, The SMH Good Cafe Guide and SMH Everyday Eats. Kate has 11 years' journalism experience and has written for Russh, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Frankie and others. The interest in journalism began at London's The Evening Standard newspaper. Her first cookbook, The Thrifty Kitchen, was published by Penguin in 2009. Kate's grandmother Margaret Fulton is also in the food business.
In The Kitchen Inc, Kate writes restaurant, bar and cafe reviews, and shows the most interesting and inspiring places to eat and gastro-explore. Kate reviews new food-relevant design and books, she writes about new trends in cooking, how different ingredients are being used by our top chefs and cooks, and how to use these ideas at home.
