Share my favourite restaurants, chefs, dishes, ingredients, provedores, recipes and cooking hacks, in these Top 5 food lists.
Top 5 Northern Italian Cheeses Before refrigeration and modern transport, especially in remote mountain regions like The Alps, butter-making and cheesemaking were important ways of preserving milk. Join me on an Italian Food & Wine Tourof Northern Italy! Large, cooked, well-pressed wheels, with as much whey as possible extracted, had a long shelf life and […]
Top 5 English Cheeses With ample rolling green hills perfect for grazing livestock, England had a rich tradition of farmhouse cheesemaking from Roman times until WWII. Over 90% of traditional cheesemaking ceased with the centralized food production introduced during the war years, but thankfully England’s most famous cheeses survived and many more have been resurrected […]
Top 5 Persian Food & Culture Like this list? You’ll love my online Persian cooking class! Persian is one of the world’s oldest and most sophisticated cultures and cuisines. Aqueducts built around 3,000 years ago are still used to grow produce in the arid interior of modern-day Iran, and 2,000-year-old buildings, used to keep ice […]
Top 5Country Pubs Pubs are a great part of Australian culture, egalitarian spaces where tradies and CEOs drink side-by-side and everyone feels at home. In the old days there was a public bar for the blokes and a ladies’ lounge for the gals, with no cross-pollination. Today’s public bars welcome anyone who enjoys gaming and […]
Top 5 Thai Restaurants in Sydney Given how ubiquitous they are today, it’s hard to believe Sydney’s first Thai restaurants only opened in the late ‘70s. Like Thai food? You’ll love my online Thai cooking class inspired by David Thompson! Now suburbs are awash with cheap-and-cheerful spots churning out repetitive menus of fish cakes, red […]
Sometimes (OK, often) what I drink is as important as what I eat – and sometimes it’s more important. The eats still have to be good of course (and inclusion on this list is in no way an indictment of the food at these establishments), but sometimes I just feel like grazing my way through […]
The inner western suburb of Petersham is Sydney’s ‘Little Portugal’ – with everything you need for a vicarious Portuguese gourmet tour in a short strip of New Canterbury Road. There’s a butcher, a baker, a deli, liquor store and authentic Portuguese chicken shop. Here’s where to stock up on Sydney’s best Portuguese food and drink. […]
Sometimes half the fun of cooking can be exploring specialty stores full of exotic Ingredients – it’s like a mini holiday to a distant land. Apart from the dizzying array of spices, Indian food shops are a wonderful place to discover the vast array of rice (and rice products), legumes and condiments used in […]
Have you noticed how ‘plant-based menus’ have replaced ‘vegetarian menus’? It makes sense; while vegetarian smacks of mung beans and anaemic-looking hippies – plant-based speaks to concern for the planet’s limited resources and our own well-being. Vegetarian is a lifestyle but plant-based is just a menu option. Far from being fringe, many of Sydney’s […]
Top 5 Vegetarian Recipes I was vegetarian for many years … until I married the world’s biggest carnivore and started writing restaurant reviews and news. I guess it just became easier to eat meat (especially as Franz did a lot of the cooking) and I do enjoy some meat dishes now. But I also still […]
