The inimitable Audrey Gordon guest posts!

I'm all sorts of excited that celebrity chef Audrey Gordon has taken the time to share with us her thoughts on vegetarian food today. Considered one of the world’s ultimate food authorities, Audrey began her career as lifestyles editor of Implausible Homes magazine. Voted ‘Britain’s Sternest Chef’ for three consecutive years, she has devoted a lifetime to telling would-be cooks what they’re doing wrong.  In her lavishly over-sized new book, Audrey Gordon’s Tuscan Summer, she takes us on gastronomic tour of Tuscany, sharing her experiences, recipes and thoughts on the inadequacies of Italy’s motorway system. I am sure she'll make me feel suitably guilty for interrupting her very important work for someone that doesn't even confit anything.

I’ll be perfectly honest, as a restaurateur I always tended to be somewhat wary of vegetarians. And it wasn’t just their dress sense or inability to tip. Vegetarians were always the sort of diners who would insist on coming into the kitchen and examining your stock. Or who would refuse to order dessert because the bavarois might contain animal-derived gelatine. And then demand extra bread.


But over the years I’ve come to appreciate the pleasure of vegetarian food and I am now having regular meat free days. My first one was on August 5th last year, and I’m planning another some time in July. Next year.

My recent cookbook Audrey Gordon’s Tuscan Summer contains several vegetarian recipes, including Fava Bean Soup, a wonderfully exotic Rucola Salad and my very popular Vegetarian Surprise (the ‘surprise’ being that it actually contains veal. Sssh!)
My thoughts on salads…

I like my salads to be conversational. I want the lettuce to really bond with the tomato, not just merely sit alongside it. They should be snuggling flirtatiously, saying, ‘Let’s make a go of this.’ Meanwhile, the Spanish onion must be curled seductively around the olives, exchanging flavours like smouldering glances across a smoke-filled room. You simply can’t expect to just toss everything into a bowl and hope the ingredients somehow get along. Lower the lights, put on some Enya and be prepared to use plenty of good quality oil…

Unfortunately I neglected to play Enya when I tried a recipe from this book, the roast vegetable salad. How remiss of me. Perhaps that's why the potato refused to converse with the pine nuts. Sigh.

Audrey Gordon’s Tuscan Summer by Audrey Gordon (with a little help from Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner and Rob Sitch) is available now ($34.95, Hardie Grant Books)

Noosa Food and Wine Festival

The Audi 2011 Noosa Food and Wine Festival was calling my name. After quite the restricted pregnancy diet (What? No gorgonzola? For nine months?) and a severe wine drought, I was more than ready to immerse myself in foodie heaven. Although I couldn't really wine it up much, just getting back into the scene was exciting. Veggie Dad and I packed up Veggie Baby and headed to Noosa in the most glorious sunshine I'd seen in a long time. We walked through the festival gate, grabbed a wine glass each, and walked smack into chef Matt Moran.

Whatever you do, don't tell him I'm vegetarian...

 I have been in the presence of movie stars, famous musicians, eminent heads of state and members of Australia's political famous. And not once have I ever asked anyone to be in a photo with me. I've never been that guy. But before I knew it, the words were out of my mouth and I my big ugly mug was grinning for the camera. Seems people that have a passion for food will get me to find my inner groupie. Who knew?

First up on my agenda was to hear Matt Preston, Gary Mehigan and Matt Moran along with MasterChef Magazine editor-in-chief Trudi Jenkins speak on the MasterChef phenomenon.  They're excited about how popular the show is, and how it is driving Australians into the kitchen -  anyone from the stop-go man at roadworks baking rhubarb crumble souffle to kids that can temper their own chocolate. They are passionate about the show and what it represents.

One head was missing though... the head that had spent the better part of the night before getting its groove on at several Noosa nightclubs...

oh hai.

 Mr Preston gave the excuse he had to cook for 1000 people in the food critic's cooking challenge at noon, and was prepping... but I've had to turn up for something with a hangover before, and I recognise a good hungover increased water intake when I see it. But he jumped right in with the conversation and was equally as passionate about what MasterChef has brought to cooking in Australia.

Passionate, I tells ya.

I was one of the lucky few that got to ask the panel a question, and I asked if it was becoming more and more difficult to create harder challenges for the contestants, given that they spend a lot of the lead-up to the show honing their kitchen skills. Gary joked that's why they brought in Matt Moran this season, and said he's still yet to have a cooking challenge where he has to hang out of a helicopter. I'm sure it's only a matter of time...

Besides the Queensland Cheese Exhibition, of which I partook liberally, there wasn't a lot for me to eat. Chefs love their meat, and it was the integral part of every dish on offer. So I turned to the wines. With particular attention paid to organic and preservative-free, just to see if they stacked up with more traditional winemaking methods.

They did.

Down the hatch!

 I took a good look around the gourmet kitchen and homewares expo, and poked my nose into Maggie's Farm Shop, where Maggie Beer and her daughter Saskia (whom I spied spending a quiet moment with a friend near Hastings Street on my way out) had plenty of gourmet food products to try. It was one of the more packed stalls.

There was celebrity chef cooking demonstrations all day, which were quite well-attended, and plenty of wine masterclasses. Unfortunately I didn't have a great deal of time to spend there, and with the world's biggest pram I didn't get to indulge in everything I would have liked to have seen and done.

But the blue cheese thing? Oh I indulged. And I'll be back next year.

What would YOU have asked the MasterChef judges?

Audrey Gordon and the Roast Vegetable Salad

I love comedy. I love books. It is my personal belief that there's nothing better than when the two are combined.

I was made aware recently that the hilarious team from Working Dog Productions had taken a potshot at the foodie culture by creating their own celebrity chef, and in turn had her create a cookbook. Now I like my wit drier than a desert, and when a satirical publication is passed off as legitimate, (hello The Onion), I am especially impressed. Particularly if it leaves people a little unsure if they're being had or not.

Working Dog have amused me over the years with The Castle, The Panel, and Thank God You're Here, and are made up of members of the D-Generation and The Late Show (seriously funny Australian comedy that I still watch today), and their creation of Audrey Gordon does not disappoint. As she moves to Tuscany to immerse herself in the culture, customs and cuisine, Audrey's impertinent attitude (she was voted Britain's Sternest Chef for three consecutive years) makes for compelling reading. There was a joke on just about every page that I found genuinely funny ("The Piazza Pallazzio has genuine period charm. Each of its 66 rooms boasts antiques such as Etruscan rugs, four-poster beds, vases and dial-up internet"), and I am an exacting comedy consumer. I'm a tough nut to crack.

Complete with recipes I want to try marked...

All the recipes included in the book are real, and actually quite delicious. I'm told the book is "a practical guide that will help you carry off everything from a lazy Sunday brunch with friends to a formal sit-down banquet for 300 lactose-intolerant, diabetic vegans with severe peanut allergies". You can't get more helpful than that.

I decided to put the roast vegetable salad to the test - something easy I could throw together, but still be delicious. Given that it is getting into cooler weather too, a salad sort of needs to be a bit hotter and heartier to go with your meals This will do the trick!

Ingredients:
10 new potatoes, halved
2 white onions, sliced
2 large carrots, cut large chunks
4 cloves garlic, peeled
1 zucchini, thickly sliced
1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme
olive oil
salt
1 punnet cherry tomatoes, halved
50g pine nuts
150g flat-leaf parsley, washed
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar.

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200C.

2. Place the potatoes in a saucepan of water and bring to the boil for 5 minutes until they're just turning soft, but not cooked.

3. Put the potatoes in a large bowl along with the sliced onion, carrot, garlic cloves and zucchini. Sprinkle with rosemary, thyme and a good slug of olive oil. Toss to coat the vegetables with the olive oil then season with salt to taste.

3. Spread the vegetables on an oiled baking tray and bake about 35 minutes until they begin to brown around the edges.

4. Stir in the cherry tomatoes, and continue cooking for a further 15 minutes.

6. Toss the roast vegetables in a large bowl with the pine nuts, parsley and balsamic vinegar.


Audrey's Tip:
Heat is the very essence of cooking. It's what causes individual ingredients to lower their barriers and intermingle with each other, eventually yielding to the moment, rather like vodka at a dinner party. That said, it's imperative that you use no more and no less heat than is needed. The last thing one wants is to startle the garlic or flummox your onion.