UR TV CAST

What to make for supper when there is nothing new in the shops? Some will turn to the latest celebrity cook book. Others will scan the glossy mags hoping for seasonal tips on what to do with everyday foods such as potatoes or lemons. What is needed is a good, practical, ingredient-led cookbook that covers everything. “It’s the modern, Australian equivalent of The Constance Spry Cookery Book and if I had to take just two cook books to a desert island, it would be these two,” says Lorna Wing, food writer and consultant. Certainly, Alexander’s sections on tropical fruit, squid, calamari, cuttlefish and octopus would come in handy, although I’m not so sure about kangaroo and wallaby.Alexander is Australia’s grande dame of food.

At 64 she remains a no-nonsense, tell-it-like- it-is Aussie chef who has been cooking and writing for nearly 30 years. According to Claudia Roden, “She is one of the really great chefs” who, through her innovative cooking in her suburban Melbourne restaurant, Stephanie’s Kitchen (1976 to 1997), paved the way for Australia’s current well-known chefs, such as Neil Perry, Chris Manfield and Bill Granger.”I still remember the first time I ate at her restaurant, 17 years ago” recalls Roden: “I was judging the Gourmet Traveller Australian Restaurant of the Year Award My first course was called a Rockpool. It was amazing; it looked like a beautiful rockpool, filled with perfectly cooked seafood, nestling in green, set in a soft, clear, delicate-tasting fish jelly. I then ordered a couscous to see how it was made in Australia It was perfect… Stephanie had captured the flavour of Morocco while retaining her own unique style.”At that time, such cooking was described as eclectic, despite the fact that in Alexander’s case it was rooted in classic French cooking. She was self-trained, albeit having spent a year cooking in a restaurant in France.

At Stephanie’s Restaurant, her food gradually evolved from classic Elizabeth David-influenced French dishes such as rillettes, or radishes with sweet butter, to what was to become modern Australian cooking. “I became fascinated by finding new ingredients and exploring their flavours” she recalls. “If I discovered someone rearing Muscovy ducks, for example, I would try to persuade them to let me try one or two, and then I would start talking and writing about them, in the hope that other people would want to rear them and eat them.”Her delicious food acted as a catalyst in Australia, while her regular writings began to influence domestic cooks. She has written 10 books, but it was the Cook’s Companion, first published in 1996, that captured the Australian public’s imagination. It was a massive Mrs Beeton-like tome filled with practical information and recipes.

Instead of glossy photographs of finished dishes, it contained yet more copy in the form of notes in the margins It felt almost old-fashioned. As Lorna Wing explains, “there is a sort of solidity about the book; you feel that she is utterly reliable, whether you are searching for ideas or cooking a recipe.”Contrary to the popular British image of Australian food, Alexander’s recipes are not particularly influenced by Asian ingredients. “I love South-east Asian food, but I just don’t feel as though I understand it deeply enough to create dishes, whereas if you give me a turnip I can imagine an infinite number of ways to cook it,” she says. Perhaps this is due to the fact that she grew up in a world that was dominated by an old-fashioned style of British cooking.

“There were no other influences at that time, apart from a few pretty dreadful Chinese restaurants in the suburbs of Melbourne.” However, her * mother soon opened her eyes to exotic foreign ingredients like poppy seeds and sauerkraut when she began to cook European dishes from recipes given to her by Austrian, German and Polish friends, all immigrants to Australia.”By the time I was teenager, Mediterranean faces were appearing all over Melbourne. Greek and Italian delicatessens were opening up and selling olive oil, olives and pasta. People were actually growing vegetables in their front gardens,” recalls Stephanie. “I’ve been lucky enough to see the complete change in Australian food, yet now many children are losing the culinary skills that their grandparents brought with them to this country.”She has been amazed by the numbers of young chefs who no longer read cook books.