Cheese adds flavour, texture and aroma to dishes, whether it’s salty feta crumbled into a salad, oozy melting Swiss gruyere in a sandwich, or ricotta baked into a simple dessert. From making simple fresh cheese to dishes using a vast range of European, Asian and Australian cheeses, here are some of my favourite cheese recipes.
Quesadillas with Mexican Salsa Verde I love recipes that are so simple they’re hardly a recipe at all – where great produce and flavours shine and I don’t have to do too much. That’s what these simple fried cheese sandwiches are all about, especially served with vibrant green salsa verde. Salsa verde simply means ‘green […]
Coppa di Mascarpone This simple dessert was a fixture on Italian restaurant menus in the ‘70s and ‘80s but seems to have fallen from favour now, replaced I suspect by the more complex tiramisu. While tiramisu is an excellent dessert (and you can see my recipe at the video below), Coppa di Mascarpone is simpler […]
Bruschetta Caprese It’s good to eat with the seasons, but occasionally I want a touch of summer year-round – that’s when I call on a few of my favourite things and create this delicious bruschetta Caprese. Windy Hills Farm pots of living basil are the perfect way to use this summer herb year-round, Vannella’s small buffalo […]
Ricotta Walnuts & Honey This is a great way to end a meal when you feel like something slightly sweet to nibble on but don’t want dessert. It’s inspired by a recipe in Lucio Galletto’s book Coastline, he makes his own ricotta – and you can too, see video below – but I usually cheat […]
Potato, Smoked Eel & Fontina Tart This deliciously versatile potato & fontina tart can be vegetarian, but potatoes and smoked fish are such natural partners that I sometimes add smoked eel. Hot-smoked rainbow trout also works; either way use about 300g flesh if using seafood. If Fontina’s not available, use any mild washed rind cheese, […]
Bucatini all’Amatriciana I love tomato, cheese and all things quick and easy, so I’m not sure why it took me so long to try my hand at bucatini all’Amatriciana, one of Italy’s classic pasta dishes. Perhaps it’s because guanciale (cured pork cheek) can be tricky to find – so when I discovered Salumi Australia’s guanciale […]
Kolokithokeftedes These fritters (keftedes in Greek) are typically served as part of a mezedes, the array of snacks eaten at the start of a meal or at any time when drinking ouzo. Add some dolmades, spanakopita, Janni Kyritsis’ stuffed red capsicum (see video below), olives and tzatziki to create your own mezedes, or serve them […]
Gorgonzola & Walnut Sauce with Lumache I first had this sauce many years ago in an Italian restaurant in Glebe. I remember writing a letter (no email back then) to the chef asking if he’d share the recipe, but he ignored my request. He served it with the little shell-shaped pasta called conchiglie, but I’ve […]
French Onion Soup Soup, bread, cheese: three of my favourite comfort foods. I love French onion soup because it combines all three! Beef stock is considered the traditional base, but I often use chicken stock or just water. Sometimes I use the stock leftover from poaching veal for vitello tonnato and find the vinegar cuts […]
Ricotta Stuffed Pasta Shells in Taleggio Sauce My cooking’s often inspired by what happens to be on hand, like some delicious Vannella ricotta leftover from recipe testing and a huge bunch of chives from a herb patch gone berserk. That’s how this dish came about. Giant pasta shells, called conchiglioni, are simple to fill and […]
