An hors d’œuvre course to the French, like antipasto to the Italians, is the start of the midday meal. Individual, small, simple dishes designed around an aperitif to stimulate the appetite, make for a novel, but civilized and leisurely approach to. In a world where we constantly try to eat less and where the time and money afforded to meals and manners is so diminished, it seems sensible to identify dishes once attributed to the hors d’œuvre course. After all, hors d’œuvre dishes are a very simple affair and work perfectly as an easy light meal or snack with a robust glass of chilled wine. These versatile ideas are particularly pertinent in the warm summer months where we may be less inclined to cook, yet wish to take to full advantage of the bounty of summer ingredients.

Hors d’œuvre are never overworked, nor do they appear contrived and certainly they are never reconstituted from leftovers or something intended for something. Essentially hors d’œuvre should be exactly the right food for the moment. It may consist of a selection of small dishes served with piles of the best and freshest bread. Alternatively it may be a single large salad such as a Salad Niçoise, or dish of prawns and beans. Either way, everyone serves themselves from the table. So long as you render the care and respect the food and your guests deserve everyday ingredients will provide visual appeal that induces excitement, as though they are seen and experienced for the very first time.

Not many Italians would go to the trouble of making pizza at home. The really spoilt ones, of course, may be tempted on occasion to fire up the outdoor, purpose built, wood burning oven at their country house for a summer evening with friends and family, or a lunch for the workers during the olive or grape harvest. The rest of them belie any fantasies we may harbour about three generations of women working harmoniously in the kitchen all morning, arduously fixing tempting delights for their hardworking husbands, brothers and sons.

Some years ago, friends and I drove from Manhattan to Provincetown on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. We sampled the local lobster along the way — stopping off at the likes of ‘Clem and Ursies’ Diner for the infamous lobster roll of the region. We continued stuffing ourselves with these treats at ‘Ed’s Lobster Bar’ on Lafayette when we returned to Manhattan. My friends retained the lobster roll as the standard holiday snack for their holiday house on Shelter Island.

While most memorable — these classic lobster rolls were not my first introduction to such an easily procured luxury. Ever since growing up in the Wimmera in Victoria I have recognized the merits of cramming crustaceans between slabs of bread and butter with lots of salt and pepper. Those crustaceans were locally caught yabbies, fresh water crays or a rock lobster hailing from nearby Robe. On summer holidays and weekends we would conduct the ritual of catching, cooking, peeling and eating them with the relaxed enjoyment holidays bring. We would be seated around a newspaper clad table in the garden, the racket of the last galas and cockatoos retreating for the evening, a flame colored sky, the sting of sunburn and the battle with the mosquitos that avoided the zapper, are all memories associated with this event. Trips with friends down the Great Ocean Road were never complete without gorging ourselves with beer and rock lobster tails on the roadside. The flies and the wind and the sun and the blue of the ocean are all part of this memory too.

Australian blue mussels are at their best between July and February. Readily available from fishmongers, it is not worth the risk collecting mussels yourself. Cultivated mussels are farmed in clean environments and benefit from the same nutrients as wild mussels, as well as the useful commercially operated purging processes, which remove most of the sand and grit from the shells before market. The flesh of mussels should be plump and very tasty. Like all shellfish, mussels are best consumed as soon as possible after harvesting, so local is best. Store fresh mussels loose in a large bowl under a damp cloth in the refrigerator for no more than a day or two.

Spouse so enjoys the currency of a dessert crafted by his own apt hands, trumping the meals we enjoy with family and friends. Some may call it overly competitive, I call it his perfectionist streak and a penchant to thrill. Most recently his infamously rich and luxurious renditions of Zabaglione have given way to perfecting the Tarte Tatin.

Tarte Tatin is essentially an upside - down apple pie. It was immortalized by Curnonsky (Prince of Gastronomes) who named it Tarte des Demoiselles Tatin, and according to Larousse Gastronomique, was first served in Paris at Maxim’s. It was created, according to legend, in error by Caroline Tatin at the hotel restaurant she ran with her sister Stephanie, in Lamotte-Beuvron, France, around 1898. The taste of caramel and the flavour of apples cooked in butter is absorbed by the pastry that covers the fruit during cooking and subsequently becomes the base of the tart when the cooked dish is inverted. Glistening, caramelized apples, the colour of rich butterscotch nestle in their syrupy sauce on top of the pastry.

The food we choose to prepare for ourselves and for our friends and family can be encased in all manner of messages and meaning. The world of subtlety, as Elizabeth David once observed, can be infused into the serving of a dish of eggs. No one alludes to this more eloquently than Gertrude Stein.

I recently discovered my copy of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Stein and found the much cited account of her cook Hélène and her views on the meanings attached to the food one serves.

Cooking with spices is one of the most enjoyable and satisfying of culinary pursuits. It’s that giddy euphoria and excitement that one feels whilst cooking with spices that makes me do it over and over again. Spices are wonderfully aromatic, aesthetically beautiful and add a great complex of flavours to any dish.

The dishes that I have listed below are taken from Charmaine Solomon’s epic work The Complete Asian Cookbook. If you follow the recipe as it is written, you will create a fantastic meal. However, cooking dishes like curry from scratch and spice cooking in general allows for experimentation and creativity for the culinarian. I encourage you not to follow any spice recipe with great precision. Play around a bit by adding different quantities of spice and adding completely new spices into the dish.

Poulet en Cocotte is essentially a pot roasted chicken. A traditional French dish, it was produced by the subjects of the good King Henry on a Sunday in the management of the chickens supplied to every household at the time. While it is an exceptionally easy way to cook chicken, the cooking temperatures and timings I discovered in a copy of the wonderful American Cooks Illustrated magazine demand not only a leap of faith but one of intrepid courage on the part of the modern cook. Be assured though, recipes in Cook’s Illustrated are tested and created in America’s Test Kitchen - the site of the popular American cooking show. Articles in the magazine detail how the author came to the final recipe and the trial and error followed to arrive at it. It was with great confidence therefore that I carefully followed Charles Kelsey’s directions recently to produce a wonderfully comforting family meal on a cool Autumnal evening.

In her 1845 book Modern Cookery for Private Families Eliza Acton describes fruit cômpotes as ‘delicate and agreeable preparations’. She recommends the cômpote to readers ‘already acquainted with them and to those whom may have a distaste to the common stewed fruit of English cookery.‘ Today, a carefully prepared compôte remains something we marvel at but are at a loss as to how to prepare. Many of the simple recipes for fruit cômpotes were superseded sometime in the middle of the twentieth century by those who like to complicate everything with such innovations as cooking fruit with lemonade or pear juice or artificial sweeteners. Stewed within an inch of their lives, these offerings doled out without ceremony with a scoop of the ubiquitous commercially made ice cream became the standard finale to many a midweek dinner in middle Australia.

Salade Niçoise (pronounced n-ee-s-w-ah-z) is a traditional rustic French salad originating in Nice. Frequently enjoyed as a luncheon dish, it has been interpreted in countless ways and many permutations of it exist. It may be presented as colourful individual platters or in a large bowl with attractively arranged ingredients from which diners help themselves.

The beauty of a dish like this is that, although the olives, eggs, raw onion and tuna are fundamental to it, many combinations of ingredients work well.

Eggplant abounds at this time of year. More attractively known by the French as Aubergine and the Italians as Melanzane it is possibly the most popular vegetable in the Mediterranean. There are countless ways to cook this wonderfully versatile ingredient and many classic dishes rely upon it: The Greeks and Turks for their famous Moussaka, the French for their Ratatouille, and the Italians for their Melanzane Parmigiana and Capanota. There is of course also Babaganoush and countless Asian and Indian interpretations of how to utilise aubergine with a selection of spices.

We are eating a lot of fish these days I must say, and it is making the butcher quite grumpy, there is no doubt. I used to be such a diligent and fine customer. We just don’t seem to enjoy meat though the way we used to. Fish is so much more digestible, so easy to cook and so delicious to eat, oh and so much better for us too.

This year we are doing Christmas for the extended family. It could be very big. It is agreed that I will not be cooking a thing on the day and our adult children have undertaken to attend to the coordination of food and booze, so long as I relax. I recognize that there are a number of things that I can well do in advance of the occasion though.

I was holidaying recently in Rome, happily ensconced close by the Campo di Fiori Market. The summer season leaves one spoilt for choice from the riotous colour of the stall displays of superbly fresh fruit and vegetables. Zucchini flowers abound, tomatoes of every shape and size, fragrant peaches and woodland strawberries, the tiniest of green beans and of course countless herbs and variations for salad items.

This is such a monstrously long recipe I know, but truly something delicious to prepare on the weekend either for Saturday night dinner or a Sunday lunch with friends and family. Failing that, it is a super special stew to fix on the weekend and dole out after work on weeknights for a delicious and easy meal in the bitter Melbourne winter.

I was fascinated to read in The Age, Epicure section recently, a list detailing Australia’s top twenty recipes searched on Google. Not so dissimilar to those clicked by American cooks, the repertoire included such stodge and tradition as Banana Bread, Meat Loaf, Cheese Cake, Pumpkin Soup, Anzac Biscuits and surprisingly, on both lists, Quiche.

The variations of the composition of this wonderful tart when I have googled ‘Quiche’ have been significant.

I don’t usually butt into our regular writers particular area of expertise, but we had a some spare space and I was reminded of this recipe the other day when my children set up a clamour for it on the first cold night of the year.

These old English pudding recipes come from a time before anyone had heard about size 0 or cholesterol problems, so you can pretty much hear your arteries hardening as you eat it, but we’ve all got to die of something, and this pudding is just about worth it.

This recipe is an interpretation of Elizabeth David’s Rillettes de Porc, found in her classic cookbook French Provincial Cooking. David describes this dish as ‘a soft, melting kind of potted pork’, one of the mainstays of a Norman hors-d-oeuvre, classically served with a duck pate.  This is such an easy dish to make, it is worth making in the large quanities given below as it keeps very well, covered and refrigerated for up to three weeks.

Since time immemorial, man has been barbecuing his meat over the flames and coals of a fire, with varying degrees of culinary and aesthetic success. Today’s avid outdoor cook gets to choose from wood, charcoal and gas fuel, all of which essentially provide a heat source under a grill.

I will never forget a day joining other family members for lunch at the home of my wonderful Aunt Clare and Uncle John. Clare was a rather reluctant cook in many ways, yet she routinely sought to create a convivial and generous table. ‘Who said food had anything to do with lunch anyway?’ John would often demand, partly to quell her culinary aspirations and partly, possibly, for the sake of a quiet life. ‘Give me cheese and bread and wine any day.’ I loved this philosophy and enjoyed many such meals with them.

Gravlax with Crème Fraiche and Horseradish on Rye bread

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Insalata Caprese

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Turkey Breast

If you haven’t already done so I strongly urge you to get yourself to a cinema screening the fabulous new hit movie ‘Julie and Julia’, starring the ever fabulous Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. The Streep part of the film provides an hilarious and enjoyable account of Julia Child’s life in 1950s Paris, her determination with Le Cordon Bleu and finally the success of Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

I was fascinated to read recently a Westinghouse survey reporting that, despite Australia’s penchant for watching other people cook all those tricky things on the television, meat-and-three-veg is what most families continue to eat every night of the week. The ho-hum grilled, roasted and barbequed meats, the reliable filler, potato, and a predictable selection of mundane vegetables seem to be what most of us rely upon for sustenance.

Ragu is a traditional Italian pasta sauce with origins in Bologna and Naples. In Bologna, they combine ground meat with a battuto of finely chopped celery, onions, carrots and celery, cooked in lard or butter and add wine and tomatoes, seasonings and ten thousand other variations.

Countless households have their own version of this perennial family favorite. A rather pedestrian suggestion I know, since the recent revelations made in the grand finale of Master Chef showing what home cooks are really capable of.

Still, for those of us trying to maintain a bar – level of some description, pass this onto your ten year old and ask them to fix it for dinner for you. Sit back and enjoy the results.

Knowing how to make a chicken stock is one of the most fundamental elements of cooking. Chicken stock is one of those things that you need in order to make many things, from risotto to soup. Don’t waste a drop. Store small containers of left over stock (100 – 300ml) in the freezer for the makings to resurrect a casserole, a gravy or a jus or the ability to extend a soup at the tip of your fingers.

Chicken soup of course is the perfect restorative for the ill, the malingering and those just after some simple home comfort on a cold winter’s day.

Inspired by Marcella Hazen’s Ossobuco in Bianco

Osso bucco is such a delicious thing to eat, such an impressive and relatively simple dish to serve for a luncheon or dinner party, that everyone should become confident in adding this meal to their repertoire of ridiculously simple and uncomplicated dishes. A slow braise of veal shanks in butter and white wine, served with a gremolata of parsley, lemon zest and garlic, it is one of the few Italian dishes not eaten on its own but traditionally accompanied by a Risotto Milanese, a delicate, plain risotto, colored and flavored with saffron.

The Good King Henry, one of the most popular rulers of France is attributed as saying "Si Dieu me prête vie, je ferai qu’il n’y aura point de laboureur en mon royaume qui n’ait les moyens d’avoir le dimanche une poule dans son pot!" "God willing, every working man in my kingdom will have a chicken in the pot every Sunday, at the least!"

I guess in those days, anyone given a chicken to put in a pot would have known what to do with it. Today however, an aversion to handling raw ingredients and an over reliance on convenience foods could cause much consternation amongst the chattering classes should our benevolent government start spending money on the distribution of uncooked chooks.

Easter is pending, the days are getting shorter and cooler and the time is now positively perfect for enjoying a roast leg of lamb with friends and family on an idle afternoon or evening.

Despite popular belief to the contrary, tomatoes are not indigenous to Italy. They arrived in Italy from Spain, via Mexico, probably sometime in the sixteenth century, as small berries on bushes, a botanical curiosity. Their relationship to the night shade vegetables, capsicum, potatoes and eggplants may have contributed to the delay in their culinary development.

If you  have a crate of over ripe tomatoes taking up space, I suggest the following Fresh Tomato Sauce. It is dead easy to make and you can freeze it and bring it out for a delicious pasta sauce, a pizza topping or something to add to a curry or casserole in a few months time: positively indispensable.

Yum! Perfect for taking to work for lunch.

Just cook the chicken the night before and then mix in the salady stuff the next day.

Or have it for dinner – no carbs, no gassey stuff, no stinky stuff, just good clean yummy food.

Sangria must be the easiest cocktail in the world.

I have been working hard all holidays refining the details for you, tirelessly mixing, tasting, sampling and experimenting on your behalf; consulting with eager participants most evenings. Curiously, no hard and fast rules apply after all for this refreshing Spanish wine punch, perfect for hot summer days and nights.

Offer to prepare a gravlax for this Christmas. It will knock their socks off!

Gravlax is a delicious Scandinavian specialty that has evolved into the simplest of impressive dishes for the home cook. Everyone enjoys the fresh, unfamiliar flavor which makes it perfect for light summer meals and easy festive entertaining. Traditionally gravlax is eaten with a cold mustard and dill sauce either as an appetizer served on thinly sliced rye or as a meal served with boiled potatoes.

The optimism associated with the recently arrived milder weather of spring, complete with a glorious selection of herbs and young vegetables begs for the production of restoratives such as a Soupe au Pistou.

A picnic is one of those occasions that is so weather dependent that if the day dawns brilliant and the mood takes the party, there is an imperative to be able to head off without delay.

The management of picnic assembly though can deflate the most ardent of spirits as one hunts down all those bits that are never readily handy but believed essential for a meal on a rug. There is a lot to be said though for the tempers and pleasures of the occasion in simply grabbing a perfect light, fresh summer wine and an equally perfect light, fresh cheese.

As part of my personal programme of integration and assimilation to become a proper Aussie Sheila, I like to go to the markets in Melbourne and look at all these vegetables and fruit I’ve never seen before.

Last week I was particularly adventurous and ate a Mangosteen – this is a fruit that looks deceptively like a small pomegranate from the outside, but on the inside, it looks like 5 conglomerated eyeballs. Taste-wise, it was like an old, fermented lychee. It was an unpleasant experience.

A very easy, and VERY yummy sort-of-Malaysian-style curry

Best Curry Ever!

Carla Meurs and Ann Marie Monda produce organic Chevre at Sutton Grange Organic Farm where they tend an organically certified goatherd and produce cheese that’s certified Level A with the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture Australia (NASAA).

Oat Cuisine

The most delicious of breakfasts happens to be one of the simplest of kitchen preparations, despite many myths to the contrary. Porridge is not only nutritionally sound but satisfying and inexpensive. High in complex carbohydrates, it lowers cholesterol and boosts energy and alertness.