Spongy balls of deep-fried tofu drenched in laksa soup, fried squares of silken tofu in Thai curry, melt-in-your mouth tofu in spicy kimchi soup… I was introduced to tofu at Asian restaurants in Sydney. Here in Berlin, the types of tofu are different. Being vegan is very trendy here, and there’s a world of tofu…
Insects may have only recently made their way into convenience foods, but they’ve been part of traditional meals in Central Australia for tens of thousands of years. And some insects taste good, even sweet. River red gum tree scale was my insect food of choice on a recent trip to Central Australia. It’s sweet, and…
Picking your own fruit is one of life’s great pleasures, but up until now I didn’t know you could do it in winter. I thought the season ended in April when the frost starts and the last apples at Bilpin are picked. Happily you can pick fruit later in the year because winter is citrus…
Gluten free tortillas don’t have to be brittle and dry like so many of the ones you buy at the supermarket. Homemade ones aren’t difficult to make, and they taste better, which is very rewarding. With the aid of a tortilla press, these white corn tortillas with beany filling are a fun meal to make…
Do you sometimes feel stuck in a cooking rut, making the same meals over and over again? My last dinner rut featured far too many curries with rice. Last winter it was bean soup. A friend told me she was so bored with her stir fry routine that she made a pact with her husband…
Remember those orange vinyl chairs that your grandparents relegated to the back verandah because they were too loud for a modern kitchen? Or the warty green glass vase in the china cabinet? You know the one, nestling near the sugar pot decorated with geometric orange and brown fruit. These are the items you’ll need when…
Crisp, sweet baby apples are one of autumn’s greatest pleasures. And they’re even fresher if you pick them yourself. We’ve picked apples in Bilpin before, at Bilpin Springs Orchard. This time we tried Pine Crest Orchard across the road. Both orchards are frequented by families and the occasional tourist bus. The competition between them doesn’t…
The countryside around Adelaide is dotted with little towns that were transport hubs in South Australia’s early days. There are ports on the gulf and on the Murray. Not to mention the innumerable railway towns, many of which carried agricultural produce or mining products to the Murray or the Gulf of St Vincent for shipping…
English-speaking women tend to report chocolate cravings at ‘that time of the month’, but for Spanish women it’s at times of stress that they crave chocolate. That means that chocolate cravings seem to have more to do with culture and emotions than physiology, explains Robyn Moffitt. Robyn Moffitt is a CSIRO researcher who specialises in…
Boab nuts grow in the top end, and you can eat them. I’m just not sure that you’d want to. They taste, as my travelling companion put it, “like lemony talcom powder”. In the dry season, when the bottle-shaped boab trees have lost their leaves, the nuts remain hanging. If you break them open they…
Lebkuchen is a German Christmas specialty, a little like gingerbread. My friends in Leipzig tasted mine last year and said, “it’s very nice, but it isn’t Lebkuchen.” I was puzzled, because the recipe was given to me by a German friend. Surely Lebkuchen is Lebkuchen? Or could there be regional variations? As it turns out,…
Hoglet K 