Over January, at On the Ridge, in Queensland, I enjoy working and planning menus for the year’s classes. I love to cook a variety of dishes, playing around with ingredients, just for fun. Soufflés are not new on the menu at Cooking on the Bay; there is usually a goat’s cheese soufflé in our French [...]
Tartiflette is my current favourite winter potato dish. It is made with potato, onion, bacon and cheese gratin, perfect for wintry Sunday lunches. According to Julia Child there are hundreds of French potato recipes and Larousse Gastronomique lists 9 pages of potato dishes! This one is very special. I found this recipe, below, on the [...]
The peppers we used in our recent Mediterranean - Touch of Spice cooking class were fantastic and very well received. They make a great tapas dish and are fun to cook around the barbecue and with your friends in the kitchen. next time we will have the Piementos de Padrone. Our recent ones were these: [...]
They’re not croutons they’re sippets. Olden days sippets are your winter soup's best friend. Winter is great soup time and, as always, I am into pea and ham soups of varying styles. The old fashioned pea and ham has been a long time family favourite; my mother made it for years and I still use [...]
We enjoyed wonderful French classes last week - a perfect time for French cooking with the exciting Tour de France travelling around the beautiful French countryside and Bastille Day, the French national day on the 14th August. Here are a few photos showing how we enjoyed the days cooking together .
To prepare the lemons If the lemons are waxed, scrub them well in hot water. To make them as juicy as possible, warm them in the microwave for one minute on medium. Cut lemons into quarters, but not right through stopping 1 cm from the bottom. Place two tablespoons of rock salt into the bottom [...]
Whilst visiting France in 2007, I attended the La Varenne Cooking School in Burgundy. The local 2 star Michelin chef, Patrick Gautier, spent a day cooking with us. Figs were in season and so he presented a regional favourite, this simple fig tart; it is light and delicious. I added the frangipane to the pastry [...]
A clafoutis is a dessert hailing from the Limousin region of France, in the north western part of the Massif central. The capital is Limoges. It is traditionally made with cherries, but may also be made with plums, pears, figs, apples or blackberries. It is simply a pancake batter poured over fruit in a fireproof [...]
Strawberries are sweet and a very good buy in the markets at the moment. I always think of strawberries as a spring fruit but, when living in Queensland, I realised that their northern season goes from May until November which is when the Melbourne season starts. Last month in Queensland I bought some new season [...]
In a recent French Odyssey – Journey through France cooking class we made vanilla ice cream, with a crème anglaise base, in my new ice cream churn! Some of you will remember that we also make an easy vanilla ice cream* without a crème anglaise base and without an ice cream churn....it too is delicious [...]
