The Vegan Challenge

...to be continued, pending dietitian assessment....

Two highly experienced chef failed to come up with a vegan meal during the boot camp in "My Restaurant Rules". The Greedy Goose had its turn of restaurant drama when a vegan showed up with strict dietary requirements.

The vegan generally requires that the meal be free from animal products, including eggs and milk. Quite often, the request for a vegan meal is to avoid allergens such as gluten in flours used in sauces, batters and prepared products. At My Little Restaurant, the preference for sauce thickening is tapioca starch.

Two vegan dishes are especially created for the menu.

Seasonal vegetable noodles, black fungus, and crisp toasted bean curd served cold, with zesty red wine vinegar and szechwan dressing, or warm, with an equivalent braising sauce. Although intended for a side dish, adding bean thread noodles creates a more substantial meal. The dish is easily adapted for a Mediterranean meal by substituting the vegetables for tomatoes, capsicum, and mushroom, and using balsamic vinegar.



Potato galette, eaten on its own as a light meal or as a base for vegan pizza topping.



In addition there is oriental mushroom risotto made with red rice. To be considered gluten free, the vegemite is substituted for fermented salted black olives pesto.

For a more European style vegan dish there is
savoury sweet potato perogies with chunky apple sauce and caramelized onions drizzled with balsamic vinegar which contains wheat gluten in the pastry.

Read more...

Sneak Preview of the Restaurant

Unlike "My Restaurant Rules" reality TV programme, Noodle Cook gets a chance to select location, at least using electronic reality. The dream location would be next to the river or the ocean with views and where the locals dine out frequently, like in the more influential suburbs. Such locations are very expensive to lease and are often heritage listed. So using a building design software like "Chief Architect" or equivalent, an ideal location, with no council restrictions and heritage issues, is created.



It is envisage the building and interior take on a modern theme, with sitting for 50 people, and extra room for alfresco dining in summer. Instead of renovating all hours and work till you drop like the reality contestants, the interior is rendered using software left to run by itself overnight. Although the floor plan is not finalised yet, the picture below is the "look and feel" of the dining room. The ultra modern red Barelona chairs are in fact invented in the 1930's.



Some elements of the building and interior designs resemble that of an ocean liner, with a holiday feel. The reason is that a large number of the target customers are expected to be baby boomers who may have travelled by ships before air travel became common place.

Read more...

Catering the Baby Boomers

The senior judges for this electronic restaurant belong to the baby boomers' genre and include a professional dietician. The baby boomers, that is, the population born in the boom years period 1946 to 1964 after World War II, are according to statistics coming to retiring years, with an increased demand on goods and services suiting their needs. The youngest baby boomer turned 40 years old in 2004.

Catering their meal requirements in a restaurant become increasingly challenging for a few reasons:

- expectation of a high of level service to match the financial status
- surfacing health challenges like diabetes, heart and kidney diseases, and possibly decreased mobility to name a few
- likely to be overseas-born

The approach taken by My Little Restaurant is to keep meals simple with side dishes and sauces adjusted to suit. For example, this baked salmon dinner, equivalent of "fish and chips", is cooked with next to no oil or salt. Although all photographs in this website are real and taken in natural lighting with minimal staging, the pictures below are digitally compiled from several dishes.



There is a choice of potatoes or rice, togther with the classic touch of 2 or 3 vegetables.



The flavouring comes from coriander, ginger and garlic acting as a garnishes. The cabbage salad is presented with a side dressing of ginger, coriander and soy sauce. The meal can easily be changed to Mediterranean, Mexican, Indian or whatever by changing the sauces/dressing and the garnishes.

Changing the eating habits acquired over a lifetime is never going to be easy, especially that palate for the flavours derived from oil and cooking in it. Where possible, oil is reduced and/or substituted with a non-saturated fat, and cooking methods altered to suit the reduced oil. Of course nothing is ever the same, so sometimes eating a little of the real thing is OK.

Read more...

Cabbage Galette

Cabbage galette is introduced to the sides menu in two forms, "summer" or "winter", interchangeably as entree, main meal, snack or side dish. The intention is to get away from the boring coleslaw. Savoy cabbage is blanched in a big pot of boiling water and cooled quickly to retain crispness and colour.

In the summer cabbage galette, the cabbage is served, warm or cold, with seasonal salsa, and dressed with complementing sauces.



Depending on the meals eaten, sauces include vinegars, oil infusions, pestos, and tomato based sauces in addition to salad dressings like mayonnaise.



The winter cabbage galette comprises blanched savoy cabbage layered over a bacon and onion pancake, and topped with more pancake batter before baking in the oven. Bacon can be omitted for a vegetarian version.



Unlike the common cabbage, the savoy cabbage retains its attractive green colour during cooking.



The baked cabbage galette is garnished with herb and served with complementing sauces.

Read more...

The Morning After Woes

Despite all the coaxing of "eat your vegies or else no pizza for this month", the dinner didn't go down well, and there are leftovers. Think pizza, Italy, and then it's buon appetito to the Italian omelette, potato frittata!



To every cup of chopped leftover cooked vegetables or meat, add 1-2 cups cooked potatoes (mashed or cubed), and one large (67 g) raw egg.



Pour the mixture into a heated, oiled (or baking paper lined) oven-proof frying pan.



When the mixture sets, transfer to the grill to brown the top.


To serve, garnish with a sprig of herb.

Read more...

Going Bananas with Dessert

One of the favourite is the dessert menu where a little bit of imagination goes a long way. The following is a simple banana and berries fruit salad dressed with buttermilk banana custard (pureed banana).

In summer, a frozen whip of the banana custard makes a great alternative to ice-cream. Pureed berries, fruit juice and cocoa give the banana custard flavour and colour.



The use of a tuile, a sprinkle of cinnamon and a spiral banana custard trail with liquer add a more formal touch.

Read more...

Macadamia Tuile

Perfecting the very short texture of tuiles without resorting to large amounts of unhealthy saturated fats such as butter or lard becomes a challenge which leads to these macadamia tuiles.



The secret is a high starch flour, such as tapioca starch, used in conjuction with a non-saturated fat.



The combination of tapioca starch, egg white and macadamia oil results in a very crisp, nutty tuile suitable for both sweet and savoury dishes. No sugar is used to enable the dual usage. Without the sugar, shaping cannot be done at the end of cooking when the tuiles are still hot like for most traditional recipes. Instead shaping is incorporated by draping in or over moulds before cooking.

The mixture for the tuiles comprises 1 egg white, 2-2.5 tablespoon macadamia oil and about 4 tablespoon of tapioca starch mixed to a paste which forms soft peaks, just like "Royal Icing" for filigree pipe work.



An electrical waffle maker with removable plates makes the shaping task easy, as can be seen in the photographs below. Cooking in a hot oven or in a waffle maker takes 3-5 minutes.



For lace-like tuile, use a No. 0 or 1 "Icemaster" writing tube and doodle, keeping spaces under 0.5 cm. For a more masculine tuile, keep the trails straighter. If using a piping bag and writing tube look difficult, than don't despair, as you can easily use a plastic bag with a hole, a medicine syringe, greaseproof paper folded into a cone or even a spatula to dispense the tuile paste into the tessellations of a waffle iron. Which ever way, try keeping the trails as thin, and as even a thickness as possible to enable even browning during cooking. Left over paste makes perfect "nuts" when dotted.

Uses: Decorations for sweet or savoury dishes. Add a crunchy texture to soft foods. Sprinkle tuiles with cocoa or icing sugar for use in sweets.

Read more...

Surviving the Boot Camp

Setting up an electronic restaurant would be boring without the drama like that of reality show. Just like the contestants in "My Restaurant Rules",  Noodle went on a "Boot Camp" to get some experience on what it is like to work in the "back of house".

Instead of trying to cook 2-course meals for 60 people in an imaginery restaurant function, Noodle Cook went through the rigors on how to work equipment like the waffle maker,  how to separate egg white from yolk, and applying basic knowledge of effects of fats and flour type to pastries making.

Supplied with just egg, tapioca starch, and buttermilk, Noodle has nothing more than imagination to produce something edible. Over 2 intense days, Noodle experienced first hand the sheer physical work and what it is like to think on the feet, and to come out with innovative solutions with very little skills.

Amongst the disasters were undercooked crackling, burnt waffles, and tough mille feuilles, which fortunately can all be fixed by digital remastering, as unlike real life contestants, Noodle has the benefit of a computer.

Taking into account the requirements of the judging panel, at the end of the "boot camp" Noodle produced fat free crackling to perfection, and made healthier versions of dessert pastries, like low fat crispy buttermilk tuile, mille feuilles, and macadamia tuile without saturated fat. The result of this "boot camp" are now incorporated into menu items.

Read more...

Buttermilk Spatzle

Spatzle or German egg noodles are made from a stiff batter forced through holes of a colander or a specially made spatzle maker over boiling water. A piping bag comes handy for small batches. Some people prefer to make a dough, which is rolled out out for cutting.

Recipes for buttermilk spatzle abound on the internet and can be easily found using a search engine like Google. The amount of eggs varies depending on the preferred texture, and of course the budget. A good ratio is equal volume of egg to that of flour. Add enough buttermilk to make a stiff batter which retains indentations. For a better colour, add egg yolks. The key to successful spatzle is to rest the batter (or dough) for at least half an hour to soften and thus make shaping easier.

To serve buttermilk spatzle,  try serving with Noodle Cook's Slow Cooked Rolled Rib Beef.

Read more...

Crispy Tapioca Buttermilk Tuile

If a picture says a thousand words, then the following pictures are self explanatory. As with grandma's type recipes, technique is more important than proportions. Here are a few tips.

A crispy tuile usually relies on a high saturated fat content such as butter or lard. To produce a crispy low fat tuile, a high starch, glutten-free flour, namely tapioca starch, is used. Egg white is added to bind the starch in place of gluten found in wheat flour.



The batter for the tuile is a simple slurry of buttermilk, egg white and tapioca starch, mixed together with a fork.



Buttermilk commonly comes in a thickened cultured form, in which case, add water or milk to create a pouring consistency. There is no need to whisk the egg white, as clever control of steam bubbles can make a puffy or less puffy, crispy tuile.



Pour about 3 teaspoon of the slurry into an unheated waffle iron. As the waffle iron heats up, wait for the slurry to go translucent jelly-like and then opaque white before closing the lid. By doing so, the tuile retains its shape better without the steam bubbles puffing it out of shape. If required, remove the tuile half way through cooking for shaping, in which case complete cooking in an oven. For mille feuille, make the sheets with a crepe maker or a press.



For a serving suggestion, try Noodle Cook's honey glazed baked apple and poached date Paper Chef #7 creation.

Read more...

Eating Take Away Food with Style

It's Friday night again and My Little Restaurant is closed for the evening, and so are the shops. There is nothing in the fridge to eat. Looks like it's take away again.

The local Chinese take away offers to cook your family's dinner in 15 minutes for AUD$16.50. From a popular, high turnover place, this is possibly the freshest cooked meal available. Unfortunately, the plastic trays and paper bag make the food look like dog feed.



To prove the point, the contents of the plastic trays and paper bag are removed and arranged on hotel grade crockery made and/or distributed by Australian Fine China. Without adding anything else the transformation is quite startling.

Salt and pepper squid with fresh cut green chillies:



Beancurd wrapped pork rolls with Italian cucumber served with sweet chilli dipping sauce:



Pork, egg and seafood on noodles served in prawn sauce with fresh cut chillies and lemon:



What started out like a soggy mess can now pass as restaurant meals easily costing a lot more than AUD$16.50.

Read more...

A Dose of Medicine

Pork hocks and ribs receive a dose of medicine in this herbal pork rillette creation which dervies its aroma from "Bak-Kut-Teh" herbs and spices.



Herbal pork rillette is offered to the modern diner as the healthier equivalent of the very rich, savoury bouquet garni flavoured French pork and rabbit rillette. Cooked just like traditional rillette which is stewed at low temperature in fat with minimal water, this herbal pork rillette relies on the resulting aspic jelly for setting more than the fat itself.

The suggestion for main course is to serve the herbal pork rillette with rice, shiitake mushroom, wolfberries and wilted greens.



For an entrée use the rillette as a spread with tapioca crackling and poached red dates.



According to "Experience Asia Through the Eyes of a Traveler", accessed 15/06/05, "Bak-Kut-Teh" originated in China:

"While first commercialized in Klang which is in Malaysia, Bak Kut Teh was apparently invented by a gentleman from Quanzhou of the Fujian province in China. The recipe was passed to a friend who later emigrated to Malaysia and became the first person to commercialise the dish. That's why Klang is generally known as the home of Bak Kut Teh."

"Bak-Kut-Teh" herbs and spices are used in pork bone soup or stew, often eaten with rice, deep fried dough crullers or bean curd with a chilli and soy sauce dip. Typical accompaniments include preserved vegetables, pickles and Chinese tea to aid digestion of the fat.

For convenience "Bak-Kut-Teh" herbs and spices come in a variety of combinations in disposable paper or muslim infusion bags.



The main flavours come from star anise, cinnamon, peppercorn, garlic, and angelica sinesis, better known as dong quai. Dong quai holds claims to many health benefits including improving vitality. Dong quai is very pungent and for most it imparts a medicinal taste not acceptable in the home meal. Dong quai can be omitted in favour of a more general recipe of cinnamon, star anise, peppercorn, garlic, and soya bean, typical of Chinese cookery.

One of the other commonly used ingredients is the wolfberry or Fructus Lycii, a non-aromatic red berry which gives a slight sweetness, just like carrots. Wolfberries contains high vitamin A and C. These berries adds a colourful finish to the herbal pork rillete.

The feedback received so far suggests that herbal pork rillette tastes too medicinal to succeed as a menu item for an Australian style cuisine. Only time will tell.

Read more...

2-minute Tip No. 2

For some making pork crackling is an impossible task. For others, health concerns preclude the consumption of such a delicacy. Of course the vegan who gets invited to a roast pork dinner is going feel left out.

Here is a tip which can save the day. Crackling is made easy through the use of tapioca starch. This very fail-proof crackling is just a simple slurry of tapioca starch and water poured into an electric snack maker. Depending on the dish, add seasoning, herbs and spices to suit. Within minutes, the crackling develops blister bubbles and becomes nicely golden brown and crispy just like the real thing, although without the flavouring of oil.

In the example below, Chinese five spice, and garlic, and perhaps some pork stock, are added to imitate the roast belly pork seen in Chinese barbeque shops.



These guilt-free crackling makes a perfect accompanient to Noodle Cook's herbal pork rillette.



For the die-hards who enjoy the taste of oil, then tapioca crackling is not always an alternative. However there is Neil Perry's suggestion on how to make the perfect crackling:

"If you have any trouble getting the crackling to work you can get a saucepan of hot, almost smoking oil on the stove and pour the hot oil gently over the pork skin to complete the crackling when you remove it from the oven; you will see the skin bubble up."

The above suggestion is offered after the following advice:

"Make sure you buy good-quality young pork and remove the pork from the refrigerator about 3 hours before cooking. Using a very sharp knife make cuts in the skin of the pork from the top to the bottom, running in the same direction as the bones, about 3 mm apart. Cut just through the skin but don't go too deep into the flesh. Using your fingers, rub some good quality red wine vinegar into the pork skin. Next, using a massaging action, rub some sea salt into the skin. Set the pork roast aside to dry. It is also possible to just cook crackling without it being attached to the flesh. A good relationship with your local butcher means you can ask for some extra pork skin for your roast."

Read more...

Tale of An Ukrainian Perogy King

During the 2003 Perogy Fest at the Ukrainian Loft restaurant in Canmore in the Canadian Rockies, Edmonton lawyer, Zac was crowned "Perogy King" after eating 43 perogies in one sitting.

What is a perogy and is it the same as a pierogy?

The Ukraine Today website (accessed 14/06/05) quoted Dr. Myron Hlynka:

Varenyky (or pyrohy or perogies) are dough pockets filled with potato, or potato and cheddar cheese,or kapusta (sauerkraut), or cottage cheese, or blueberries, or cherries, or ... Ukrainian varenyky are boiled and resemble to various degrees Polish pierogi, Russian pilmeni, Italian ravioli,Jewish kreplach, or Chinese wonton. Varenyky are very are often served with onions and sour cream. Mmmmm. The word "varenyky" is used throughout Ukraine.The singular form of "varenyky" is "varenyk." Betcha' can't have just one! The word "pyrohy" is used by Ukrainian American and Ukrainian Canadian descendents of pre World War I settlers from Western Ukraine. The singular form of "pyrohy" is "pyrih." The word "perogies" is a Canadianization/Americanization of "pyrohy."

The Ukraine Today website contains links to perogy recipes. The typical perogy contains a lot of cream in the dough and filling, as can be expected of grandma's food from Northern Europe because of the cold weather.

Lower fat versions can easily be made in the home. Here is a suggestion, of savoury sweet potato perogies with chunky apple sauce and caramelized onions drizzled with balsamic vinegar.



It is an amazing feat to eat 43 perogies in one sitting. Although, one suspects the last couple were eaten standing up. Zac, considered royalty in the perogy world, still proudly holds the record today.

Read more...

Becoming an Electronic Masterchef

A question was once asked of one of Australia’s leading and most influential chefs, Neil Perry:

Q: I am doing a project on you and was wondering what your qualifications are and where you got your training?

A: Don't have any professional qualifications. I worked with some of the best chefs around in Sydney for a year, then became the head chef at Barrenjoey House. Check out my profile and read the introductions to my cookbooks to find some more in depth information.

Neil Perry went on to answer questions how one qualifies in Australia:

"Contact your local TAFE institute. They offer plenty of courses in hospitality, in both the "back of house" (i.e. kitchen), "front of house" (floor staff) and management. Other than that I would recommend learning as much as you can about hospitality in you local area as well as around Australia and overseas. I cannot stress enough the importance of reading cookbook, magazines and other material about hospitality. Publications such as Australian Gourmet Traveller and delicious magazine are great for finding out about the industry as well as food trends, what's in season etc. It is also important to educate you palate, eating out is a great way to learn what is out their and determine what kind of food you might want in your own restaurant."

For the mature age would-be restaurant owner, Neil Perry has this to say:

"Raymond Thuilier, one of the greatest chefs from France was born before the turn of the century and at the ripe age of fifty one decided to become a restaurateur and chef. He had no formal training other than watching his mother cook when he was growing up. After twenty years as an insurance company salesman (and eventually director) he was inspired to start a restaurant in the ruins of Les Baux in France. Let me quote some of his story from a book of mine "Great Chef's of France" by Anthony Blake and Quentin Crewe:

"As a young boy Raymond watched his mother working in the kitchen. She was an excellent cook and, he maintains, really his only teacher. In his youth he promised her that he would one day revert to the admired profession of her family (that of hospitality) his life was a preparation for the fulfilment of his pledge to his mother. Wherever he was working, whether in Lyon or Paris, he cultivated the company of chefs and spent as much time as possible in the best restaurants. He cooked all the time for his friends. Within two years he had earned his first Michelin star. In eight years he had achieved the summit of three stars."

Closer to home there are plenty of people who started a bit later. Janni Kyritis had his first restaurant, MG Garage, at 50. Formally trained as an electrician, he read and practised cooking at home from recipe books which turned into an obsession. Following a suggestion he should take it seriously and become a cook he applied to work at Stephanie's (Stephanie Alexander's restaurant). He was about 30 at the time and started by working one day a week and keeping his real job, later becoming fully committed.

So as you can see it is not too late to start studying to be a chef. Get in touch with your local TAFE and enquire about doing a Certificate in Commercial Cookery Non-Trade. This gives you the essential skills in cooking but without having to do an apprenticeship. Get cooking at home; be inspired by other great restaurants in Sydney; read books on various cuisine and astronomy. With passion and commitment there is no reason why you cannot follow the path of becoming a chef."

From Neil Perry Chef Website, accessed 12/06/2005.

People from the UK may be interested in this link for equivalent training information: BBC Training Website.

Where does that leave Noodle Cook who wants to run an electronic restaurant? The answer was found at the BBC's Masterchef website. In two long gruelling hours, compared to electronic reality where things happen in milliseconds, Noodle Cook completes the Masterchef e-certificate at the BBC Masterchef Website.

For the certificate, Noodle Cook endures difficult quizzes on:

• Food hygiene


• Food deliveries and stock rotation


• Knife handling and safety


• Food purchasing and budgeting


• Patisserie and presentation techniques

So what makes one a masterchef? The answer according to the BBC website is: "If you're over 18, have no formal chef training, and think you've got the culinary potential and determination to be the next Gordon Ramsay or Jamie Oliver".

Noodle Cook is finally a completely qualified electronic Masterchef, armed with confidence, passion for food, determination to succeed, and hopefully matching cooking skills to run an electronic restaurant. For the latter, Noodle Cook lacks no imagination to fill the holes, and has gotten out of deeper holes, creatively, using 2-minute tips.

Read more...

The Judging Panel Introduced

Introducing the Judging panel,the world's harshest critics, comprising the team inherited from tripleN (the romanized nuclear trefoil, often abbreviated as 3N), where the judging panel created a world war zone in the home kitchen. The judges are asked to response to this simple question:

What makes a successful electronic restaurant?

The junior judges:

Princess - NO peanuts, NO capsicum, NO tomato, NO green bits. Simple - it's gotta be cheese pizza!
Ninja Nath - NO peanuts and only if served with tomato sauce. It's the basics! You don't need maths and computer to work out that pizza oughta get on the menu!
Chubby Chup - only if there's plenty of it like pizza!
Tiny Tom - only if it makes you smart like pizza!
Cathy RoadRunner - only if it's fast like Cathy Freeman! I love olives and parmesan like in pizza!

The senior judges:

Nutri Jan - only if healthy, low fat, low salt, taste and look like salad. Although boiling and steaming are OK
Jetset Nan - only if it's traditional Chinese and eaten with chop sticks
Super K - only when grace goes with the meal
Big Tom - only if the meals cost more than $100 per head, and served to fine dining standards, using brand name produce
Oz Grunt - only if it's Australian and eaten with a fork!
Action Man - action speaks louder than words, but I say profit, profit, profit
Chairman - concur with all above, so long as there is strategic management in place, and re-engineering to evolving specifications, employing innovative marketing to direct targets, using quality management principles to evoke a total solution, and in collobration with the workforce, and need I add more.

The responses are to be expected. Most judges believe that the key to success lies in good food that appeals to a large cross-section of diners, together with a high standard of service. The judges also noted good management, marketing, and a focus on profit as important factors.

Noodle Cook takes advice seriously and sets about improving "My Little Restaurant".

Read more...

Noodle Cook attempts Paper Chef #7

There was not really any time to enter the Paper Chef #7 competition due to short time My Little Restaurant was established on-line. The competition was already closed when the details were worked out.

The first attempt started at breakfast, when it was discovered a breakfast of honey poached date and apple oat-bran porridge with skim milk, an egg and a cup of tea with skim milk pretty much covered the four ingredients (buttermilk, date, egg and honey) for the competition. On checking the other entries, this breakfast would be the most boring and unimaginative entry since the inception of the competition!

The next attempt was at dinner with a main course and dessert:

• Slow cooked rolled rib beef with wilted greens, house-made parsley garlic buttermilk spatzle (German egg noodle), semi-dried tomato, honey glazed baked apples, poached red dates, apple salsa, soya sauce, balsamic and red wine vinegar reduction.
  
  
  
• Honey glazed baked apples and dates on crispy tapioca buttermilk tuile, to be served with ice-cream.
  
  
  
  The approximate steps were:

1. Lightly brush honey over thinly sliced pink apple and bake in a moderate oven. Glaze with more honey when cooked.
   
   
   
2. Make spatzle using egg, plain flour and buttermilk. Season with parsley, garlic, and pepper. Cook in boiling water.
   
   
   
3. Make the tuile by pouring a slurry of tapioca starch, egg white and buttermilk into an electric waffle iron.
   
   
   
4. Poach the dried red dates. Reserve the water for the sauce reduction.
   
   
   
5. For the apple salsa and reduction, firstly sear the beef and remove. Then add fruit juice to deglaze the frying pan. Add finely diced apple, soya sauce, balsamic, red wine vinegar. Removed the cooked apple. Add fennel seeds, more fruit juice, vinegars, soya sauce and date poaching water for the sauce.
   
   
6. Assemble the dishes as shown above. Drizzle the reduction over the beef and spatzle. Add slivers of green apple peel for garnish.

Sadly, this entry did not make it to the competition....

Read more...

Food for thought...

"You create much more than a wonderful meal when you cook food slowly - you create a mood, an expectation, a longing for good company and good times. Every delicious roast you've ever eaten has fond memories that go with it, every simmered shank is savored like a special occasion. We're lucky to have inherited our love of this classic kind of food. Our eyes still light up when we recall grandma's meatloaf or our own mother's special stuffing. And now it's our turn to do our versions of their lamb roast and garlic prawns, and to create our own classics, the dishes we'll be remembered for - the Thai green chicken curry or trout baked in vine leaves. But, most importantly, everyone needs to know how to roast, what to simmer and how to make a gravy, sauce and stuffing. These are essential facts of cooking life - because good roasts, simmers, gravies, sauces and stuffings are what makes life such a wonder thing."

Donna Hay, Modern Classics 1, 2002.

Read more...