Pat Churchill

Here's a link to a rather pretty looking appetiser I made last year. Witloof/endive with a jewel-like stuffing of beetroot, red pepper and chives. Tastes good, too. There's an accompanying pic. http://cookingdownunder.com/articles/2005/215.htm Make the filling ahead and fill just before serving.

It's also a laxative...

I'm with Maggie on this. Nice writing style. Keep going...

I grew up eating offal because my mother's hometown in Waitara, Taranaki had a large freezing works so there was a ready supply at the works shop. In fact her father (who hailed from Melbourne and maternal grandfather were butchers. My idea of heaven was my great aunt cooking me lambs' sweetbreads for breakfast - simmered first till tender then drained and fried. At home Mum cooked lamb's fry, oxtail stews, steak and kidney pie (though she loathes kidneys they made it "taste better" she said), lambs' tongue in aspic and tripe and onions. My husband's mother didn't cook any of this stuff so he wouldn't touch it. I used to have to cook tripe when he and the kids were away somewhere. Another thing Mum made was brawn. Wonderful stuff. She never cooked hearts, however, though a friend's mother used to stuff and braise sheep's hearts. But in those days we rarely ate chicken. It wasn't freely available. I stopped eating offal and eggs mainly because of contemporary concerns in the 70-80s about cholesterol. (Fat lot of good cholesterol abstinence did me!) I'm back on eggs in moderation and after tasting the wonderful crispy crumbed and fried pieces of tripe at the Ferguson Henderson dinner at The Point, even my husband is prepared to give it a try again. So maybe "variety meats" are due for a revival - perhaps our diet is lacking in "variety"

Yes, that's the one. We've been there a lot and it's always consistent.

It's all frogs' legs and snails and pattay somethink, innit?

OK. I have been there twice - for a dinner for six, then I took a friend there for lunch last week. The acoustics are very bad. The party of six - three each side of the table - could hardly converse. An outside table wasn't an option as it was chilly. Food not memorable. Their lunch special was pretty ordinary. Scallops OK, vitello mediocre. A couple of waiters were rather precious considering the dishes they were delivering. Two hats? I am mystified. I get a much better meal/service from my "local" Ragazzi. Someone tell me they've had a good meal at di Stasio. [edited to correct spelling]

I've just dragged out my New Zealand Guild of Food Writers handbook to see what it says about restaurant reviews. Here are the guild's guidelines: Responsibilities of a judge: To be totally unbiased Do not judge personal friends To keep an open mind and remember to judge the restaurant food, service and ambience, to the standard of the establishment eg a top class restaurant should be judged more harshly than say a local basic restaurant To know what they are judging - must be knowledgeable about food To be anonymous and not discuss the reason for your visit To be consistent with judging at all times Must understand how a restaurant runs Should have comprehensive knowledge of food and wine Be prepared to stand by your judgement Try and be constructive, not destructive Judging criteria Taste - complementary tastes of all components Temperature - approriate to dish Degree of cooking - appropriate to meat/fish/vegetable/poultry etc Visual impact - does it excite the diner to eat Service - from booking to account payment; - food menu/wine menu/staff knowledge Menu composition - balance of both wine and food Value for money Compulsory information Full and correct name of restaurant and address Hours of business Contact details I've done a few restaurant reviews myself but it's not an area of food writing that appeals to me very much. I have also edited a lot of restaurant reviews. Individual style comes into it. I know one reviewer who would strive desperately for "cute" turns of phrases - the "blushing scallop" could be "nestling contentedly" in a bed of rocket, "cosily snuggling up" to the red onion. On and on like that - you get the drift. And sometimes it would be hard to determine what the reviewer actually thought of the restaurant. Another, who had travelled widely, would air his knowledge with something along the lines: "the thrice fried sparrow thigh was lacking the precise amount of mountain pepper that Chef Brown in Zigzag restaurant in Outer Fandango, the acknowledged definitive interpreter of the dish, maintains is the acceptable minimum. This left the claws a tad bland though with regulation crunch" or such twaddle. OK. Maybe it showed he knew his onions but it also made him sound a bit of a prat. I've known restaurants refuse to take bookings from some reviewers or turn them away at the door if they'd booked under another name. Oh, and some community newspapers regard assigning someone to do a restaurant review as a perk! The copy usually reads like an advertorial.

Not sure what sort of studies you are engaged in, Bryan, but you seem committed to them. Is there room in there to include a course that covers stuff like setting up a business plan? One of my sons is doing a degree in audio engineering and aside from all the technical and creative stuff, he is learning about the business side - copyright, business plans, marketing, identifying market niche etc etc. After the initial reality check he is discovering you can be a lot more optimistic about your aspirations when armed with the right knowledge. And don't let anyone shoot down your dreams. You keep motivated!

Mmmm. I'm reading all these recipes and starting to think about brawn. Anyone have a good recipe for that?

Pity we can't grab the tongs and pinch the lahem mishwi in the bottom picture while the photographer's occupied. That kibbi looks very finely ground. How was that done?

We New Zealanders are accustomed to kiwifruit gluts! You can make a nice sorbet. If you're pureeing kiwifruit, though, use the plastic blade in a food processor as the steel blade cracks the seeds. Or sieve or discard the seedy centres. Kiwifruit also make a good chutney. And salsa! And slices can be used for tenderising meat, though don't leave the meat exposed to the fruit for too long or you'll end up with liver consistency. Here's a link to Zespri which is the brand name of kiwifruit in New Zealand. This goes in to the recipe pages : http://www.zespri.com/moreinfo/zgreen4.asp...oreinfo2id=1001 And a kiwifruit a day keeps you regular!

We've been out and about doing a lot of foodie stuff this week (an Alain Ducasse then a Fergus Henderson dinner - see my website if you're interested) and when I eventually got round to taking a trip to the market yesterday, discovered my car had disappeared (son had called by and "borrowed" it to go to work.) So no car, no shopping, no fresh produce... Anyway, husband and I went to a Slow Food event today and I thought he wouldn't be hungry tonight. Bad call. He suggested soup. Well I had a huge bag of onions in the pantry so made a batch of French onion soup. A long time since I had done so and it was so yummy. I got to thinking it was overdue for a revival. Then I was watching TV later in the evening and they were discussing Coq au Vin and someone remarked you only ate it these days if your grandmother made it. These were both dishes we enjoyed back in the 60s-70s. It's almost time for them to become fashionable again. What other dishes would be worth a resurrection? Suggestions welcome!

Check out http://www.melbournerestaurants.com.au/ and also go to http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/epicure/ where you can check out restaurant reviews and also get a feel for the local food scene. Look at the "Show all restaurants" link in the "Find a restaurant" box on the Epicure page. Cheers

Thanks for that. It looks pretty tidy and not too large. Is there room for stuff other than the gas bottle underneath? I see the sides fold down which is also useful and I like the idea of the enamel plates. The resident tong waver is a bit slack on the cleaning. Cheers

Thanks for the pointers. PCL. Yes, I was having a brain-in-neutral over the hibachi. My first BBQ was a little Japanese hibachi. Only about 35x35cms but it was efficient. Had to get something bigger when the kids came along. I had a Weber but gave it to sister-in-law when we left NZ. It was excellent for doing the Christmas lamb. Never had better. But I was useless at lighting it and we ended up with the current gas bbq. I've seen photos of people using them in the snow in the US! You mention after-sales service - we bought an outdoor table from a BBQ place at Moorabbin. They delivered the wrong one TWICE - square instead of rectangular. And when we eventually got the right one the clips to hold the top onto the legs were on the wrong corners. Eventually a man came out with the right tools to fix it. So I wouldn't be holding my breath over service! And the sofa we ordered from Myer in September didn't arrive till February... Cheers

Let me know how the test drive goes!

OK. Silly stuff. I'm a Kiwi living for 3-4 years in Melbourne. We want to buy a new barbecue because our rented accommodation has a pathetically stupid little Smeg oven (the owners spent megabucks on a renovation and bought this minute wall oven which was totally inadequate last Christmas. Even the turkey was a struggle). I have decided to buy a decent hood-style BBQ to compensate this Xmas. I need help - what's a good one to buy? Any recommendations? Also, how do I go about dumping the one we have? In NZ I would call the Sallies (Salvos) who would relieve me of it. Or there I could dismantle it and take it to the tip or even give it away. I don't even know where the tips are in Melbourne. And the Oz rubbish disposal bureaucracy is a bit of a mystery. It's a 3-burner so it's not small. Any guidance more than welcome! I live in Albert Park. Cheers

Currently living in a rented place while uprooted from NZ and I am desperately missing my herb garden. No point in planting one in a place we will be leaving in February. Sniff!

The Age has released a cookbook called "Winter" which is a collection of the recipies that Brigitte Hafner, Stephanie Alexander, and Jill Dupleix have had published in Epicure. There's going to be another devoted to chocolate, and I assume they'll do one for summer (and probably autumn and spring). ← The Spring book is being released tomorrow, September 1. It's along the style of the Winter one and has a good collection of recipes. I've posted a review on my site : http://www.cookingdownunder.com/books/bookintro.htm And yes, there'll be a Summer one round November. [updated to include review url] Cheers

Alla Wolf-Tasker, proprietor of two-hat country winner Daylesford's Lake House urged those attending the awards: "Don't be afraid to put your prices up." But I guess there's that line in the sand where the customers say "enough!" How much is too much?

I went along to the show which would have been a whole lot better if the audio visual crew had got their kit up and working before the evening began. We all had to wait round while they tweaked and prayed. The bubbly flowed freely, however, but there was a rowdy element down the back who probably couldn't hear the speeches so talked loudly among themselves till the MC told them to "shut the f*** up" (cheers from the remainder). Of course there were the disappointed ones, specially those who lost hats. Each year the reviewers start from scratch and all 500+ restaurants are reviewed at least once. In the case of the hats, I know some were visited several times. Some interesting comments from the Good Food Guide editors John Lethlean and Necia Wilden: The degustation has "spread like Paterson's curse across the aspirational restaurants set" "Thank goodness for the increasing professionalism of sommeliers and the welcome trend towards savvy, informed and sometimes quite idiosyncratic shorters winelists (we've even recognised the genre with a new award this year)." On other trends: "Softshell crab cooked a million ways and not always successfully); chorizo sausage with everything; black pudding for breakfast, lunch and dinner; and eel slithering out of its Japanese stronghold and onto the modern bistro chef's agenda. Charcuterie is the 'new' antipasto; smoked tomato is the new dun-dried (but better); and tarte tatin is made from just about every fruit and vegetable." On desserts: "We think it's time the unholy trinity of pannacotta, semifreddo, and chocolate fondant moved over and made way for something just a whisker less predictabe." We moved on to Longrain afterwards and I have to say their softshell crab was pretty good, ubiquitous or not! Cheers

That cutlery wouldn't faze me. It makes the right statement for what I perceive to be your style of cuisine, Bryan. It looks functional but a little edgy. For years I used cutlery with indented decoration (long since disappeared to some student flat) and there was never a cleaning problem. It was replaced by plain sleek stainless steel. I have a good canteen of silver cutlery that comes out for special dinners. Now that IS hard to clean. Keep cooking!

At our home back in NZ I have a large Corian counter with a double sink. The joinery firm that made it kept the piece of Corian they cut out when fitting the sink and then made it into two boards that slotted in over the main sink and the insinkerator hole. It made for a big expanse of bench space. Each one has a small half-moon piece cut out for lifting the board. Most of the time I use a regular chopping board but Corian is pretty forgiving stuff too.

Only when we had one of those useless glass cooking tops. The rest of the time I've had gas though our griddle-top JennAire back in NZ sometimes sees a bit of service as a place for short-term storage.