VORACIOUS

BEST NEW AUSTRALIAN FOOD WRITING

Hardie Grant

NZRRP: $39.99

Paperback

  

This is the first volume of what is to become an annual series celebrating the best in newly commissioned food writing. The first of its kind in Australia, the publishers aim is for the series aims to be bold and unique – and to start the conversation about food in the wider community. With 20 contributors – from food professionals to journalists, the twitteratti and stars of the blogosphere – Voracious: New Australian Food Writing has great writing at its core.

It is a divine little book filled with delicious reading. A must-have for all foodies.

And what an impressive array of food writers have made contributions including two of my favourites Jill Dupleix and Lucy Malouf. The publishers have given me permission to publish an edited extract from both these writers and they appear below.

The first volume contains contributions from:

• Matthew Evans

• Marieke Hardy

• Benjamin Law

• Romy Ash

• Kate Gibbs

• Helen Greenwood

• Lucy Malouf

• Greg Duncan Powell

• Gay Bilson

• Alan Saunders

• Simon Thomsen

• Cherry Ripe

• Campbell Mattinson

• Anna Krien

• Michael Harden

• Veronica Ridge

• Jill Dupleix

• Matt Preston

voices from an australian kitchen

Jill Dupleix

  

Some visitors have a terrible habit of heading straight to your cookbook shelf for a stickybeak, in an effort to find out what you cook and, therefore, who you are. All right, so it might only be me. But invariably I learn much from what is there, and just as much from what isn’t there. So I inverted the idea: I explored my own six metres of floor-to-ceiling cookery books and discovered that not only do they tell the story of my generation, but they also trace the voices of Australian cookery for over one hundred years, from invalid cookery to molecular gastronomy.

Our cookery books tell us more about ourselves than we care to acknowledge. They don’t just answer the eternal question, ‘What’s for dinner?’, they inspire, educate, guide, intimidate, frustrate, impress, depress and occasionally
send us running from the kitchen in raging, impotent fury. They become the songlines of our lives, charting the
country’s history: its wars, droughts, immigration patterns, industrialisation and urbanisation. They reveal our politics, our personal growth, our health and the changing roles of men and women in the kitchen. They reflect our greatest influences, from community groups to food writers, television celebrities and professional chefs. And grandmothers.

  

a repertoire of acceptable dishes

Lucy Malouf

Here is our house in a leafy, inner-city Melbourne street. And here are family and friends, gathered to celebrate a birthday. As is usually the case on such occasions, most of the fun is taking place at the dinner table, which today is laden with my stepson’s favourite dishes. There are too many of us to fit comfortably, really, but this adds to the sense of excitement, and the atmosphere is convivial, noisy, charged. My husband, sitting at the head of the table, is flushed, proud. I am flushed and a little frazzled, ducking back and forth to the kitchen with a succession of spoons, bowls and plates. Even my stepson’s usually pale, narrow face glows with a pink pleasure that makes him look softer and younger than his nineteen years.

Piling up on the table are platters of the nearly effortless food I love; it’s a menu that’s been honed over time for ease of preparation and sharing. The lamb is the main event — butterflied, bathed in a garlicky herb marinade and grilled over coals on our back-deck barbecue by my husband. There are also spicy Italian sausages, crunchy roast potatoes and a salad of squeaky green beans, tossed in a hazelnut oil dressing. This is the eleventh such birthday menu — or variation of it — that I’ve prepared, and the years have imbued it with a soothing predictability.

Hardie Grant Books are distributed in New Zealand by Random House.