Food Wine Sleep

This juice blends a traditional juicing fruit with a very unlikely ingredient into a smooth and refreshing concoction. Ensure to use very young bulbs of fennel only, as they have much less "bite"in taste and have a very fruity flavor. Chill the fruits well before juicing them.

Recipes for Chermoula come in all kind of different variations and flavours. This particular recipe, is well suited for seafood, fish or poultry and the use of fresh and dried coriander gives it such a great fragrant 'kick'. It is also great for basting onto your BBQ meat, as an dip for grilled poultry and fish and for 'en papilotte' type of prepeartions.

This is great example of a recipe that is healthy, easy, quick and yet still a very comforting winter dish. When I make this I rarely have it with anything more than a bottle of Pinot Noir and some ciabatta bread. Actually I lie, a few weeks ago I made it for a lunch and simply added arugula leaves, a little more vinegar, a splash of olive oil and served it with white wine.

Kilawin or kinilaw is a traditional Filipino dish of marinated/cured fish or seafood in vinegar and a souring agent such as the juice of calamansi or Kamias. Calamansi is a small citrus fruits, which grows throughout South East Asia and the juice of it suits this dish much better than lime, as it is still fairly acid but has a distinctively fruity flavor. I personally like Kilawin of tuna the best, simply because the quality of the tuna available in the Philippines is second to none.

The Philippines pride themselves to have the best Mangoes. In parts I must agree, a Philippine "Carabao" mango, just at the peak of it's ripeness is both sweet with the right amount of acidity and very juicy. At that time the Philippine mango certainly is one of the best in the world. This salsa recipe is great with barbecued fish, seafood or chicken. I often use it as an accompaniment with Cajun spiced seared tuna or chili dusted prawns, and it also makes a great condiment with deep-fried oysters.

As it goes sometimes in the kitchen, a cocktail party had a bit of an over flow on guests and we needed to prepare some extra items. In the hurry, and with the guests waiting, I used anything I could get my hands on. Mostly items that were ingredients for the one or the other a la carte dish currently on our menu. The guests were so happy with these little dishes, that they actually are now featured on our cocktail menu offering.

This is a shining example of the less complicated a dish is, the better it is. Each ingredient in this recipe is served very near to its natural state and this lack of having been �messed' with results in a simple yet sophisticated combination. The flavours in this dish do all the hard work for you, fresh ocean trout complemented by an effortless sesame crust and seared beautifully rare, the fresh cucumber and the just picked tender baby herbs simply glazed with the distinctive flavours of fresh lime, mirin and fiery chilli. The best thing about this lack of complication is exactly that; uncomplicated cooking for you. Serve this next time you want to impress your...

This dish builds on a recipe my friend Damian gave to me a couple of years back. I was working with him on a function for the annual Melbourne Cup horse race. We had had some problems with suppliers not delivering on time and as such were behind the eight ball with our prep all morning. It was now 12 noon and I recall nervously saying to Damo, "Here come the customers and we haven't even got half the prep done, I've still got to cook the cous cous, I haven't even got the chicken kievs let alone stuff them." Damian calmly replied "Pass me that orange juice. I'll make the cous cous and you run across the road to the Thai restaurant and tell them you'll buy so...