Porchetta is a marvellous dish. Easy to cook but presents beautifully with a beautiful golden roll of crisp-skinned crackling - a piece for every slice, and tender juicy pork loin that has been seasoned to give extra flavour. This cut is super easy to cook, even easier to slice and almost as good as the roast itself, are the incredible sandwiches you can make from the leftovers!

Rostbiff is a cut from the centre rump, with the rump cap and fat layer removed. It’s a cut with remarkable flavour, especially when roasted. Rostbiff can be roasted whole in a hot oven, barbecued, or sliced into steaks for a tender, delicious stir-fry. Ironically, we use the French term "rostbiff" — meaning "roast beef" — to describe this very English cut.

Pork shoulder is affordable, tender, and delicious. You don’t need to buy a whole pork shoulder — a smaller 2kg portion is perfect for a smaller gathering and cooks in the same way, just more quickly. For a richer, crispier roast potato, use the rendered pork fat instead of olive oil.

Pork shoulder is perfect when serving a crowd. It has more flavour than most other cuts, cooks to a lip-smacking succulence, and boasts skin that crisps to golden crackling. Here, we pair it with rich and delicious roast hasselback potatoes.

This grass-fed rack of lamb is tender, rich, and succulent, cooked on a bed of vegetables seasoned with Middle Eastern spices to soak up all the delicious juices. It’s a super colourful dish and perfect for large celebrations and feasts.

Serving up a whole leg of ham, beautifully glazed to a golden brown, is one way a home chef can really bring a sense of seasonal occasion to the Christmas table. Not only does a glazed ham look great, but it is also super tasty, with a hint of sweetness in every slice. This version has a touch of honey and Chinese five-spice to add another layer of deliciousness to the big day.

Lamb loin chops are one of the best cuts in the butcher’s shop window. I love them grilled over charcoal, but I have discovered another way to keep their juicy and succulent texture. This is a one-pan roast packed with vegetables and finished with a vibrant and tangy green sauce made with spring dill tips and fresh mint.

Lamb shoulder is so delicious. It is full-flavoured and cooks beautifully juicy and tender. It cooks more evenly and faster when it is boned, rolled, and tied, something we do in-house here for you gladly. We will even give it a rub with our special Middle Eastern Spice mix. Order online or come in-store and ask for one. We love the recipe so much we are going to share it with you.

A great take on the traditional shepherd’s pie with a succulent lamb braise topped with sliced cooked kipfler potatoes, butter and pecorino cheese browned until crisp and golden.

It’s an early Easter this year so we have brought out a dish that is great for warmer days but still has everyone’s Easter favourite - lamb. The aromatics of rosemary with the punch of parmesan pairs beautifully with the sweet tender lamb. Making a little mustard glaze helps the panko crumbs stick to lamb and using panko crumbs are lighter and crunchier.

Jack Powlay is the head chef at Sault, one of Daylesford’s most beautiful restaurants. We love how he transforms classic dishes into meals that are both spectacular to look at and even more wonderful to eat.  We are honoured that Jack and the team at Sault have shared this wonderful recipe with us for you to try at home. 

Almost every cuisine around the world has versions of a green sauce – essentially an uncooked sauce featuring fresh green herbs, a good quality oil, and an acid component (vinegar or lemon juice).

My nana was a great cook. Growing up without a lot of money, she knew how to stretch out meals, make great dishes from cheaper cuts and fill up the bellies of hungry men and fussy kids. But it was on special occasions when she would really impress and nobody could come close to making a roast like hers. Nana would get up before the dairy farmers so that lunch would still be served by noon but I have tweaked her recipe so that the whole process takes about 2 hours with some prep the night before – and it might not be quite as good as Nan’s, but it's pretty close.

A beautiful rich slow cooked shoulder of lamb served on a salad of moghrabieh. You can buy these hand-rolled balls of semolina at Tonna’s in Daylesford or any other great deli where middle eastern products are sold. They are used in Middle Eastern cooking and soak up the flavours of everything they are cooked with.

These are simple and delicious ways of serving BBQ lamb. Make it a special dish by making your own rosemary skewers. Take long stems of rosemary about 15cm long and strip almost all the leaves except a tuft at the end. Take a sharp knife and whittle away the thick end to form a point to form a skewer that will also impart flavour into the lamb.

A rich sauce made from one of the best value pieces of lamb. Neck is packed with flavour and offers incredible value. Here is a Northern Italian ragu I first had when I dined with Stefano De Pieri at his famous restaurant in Mildura.

These beautiful ruby red burgers are packed full of goodness and have a full sweet flavour of lamb and the nutrition of beetroot. Beetroots are surprisingly full of sugar so you need to cook these beautiful burgers on a medium heat otherwise they can become too dark. And remember all meat, including burger, need resting. They freeze really well for up to three months.

This is a sneaky and slightly spicy way of pimping your chook so it is always golden brown. The trick is to coat the skin with a layer for golden turmeric, a healthy spice used in curry. Add to that some ground cumin for aroma and roast as per the recipe below. We’ve added a sure-fire stuffing too.

An easy cook-in-the-pot ragu packed with veg while being quite rich and deliciously sticky without too much tomato. It’s all about the lamb and veg. You can serve this with any pasta or even polenta. If you have leftovers, add some cooked vegetables and a little stock, and you have a hearty soup.

In the BBQ houses of Brazil, one of the most popular cuts is Picanha (pronounced peek–an–ya). The name comes from the pole used by the ranchers to tend their herds and in this delicious dish, it refers to the skewer on which the steaks are secured.

A traditional Northern Indian recipe. You can ramp up the spiciness of the dish by using more chillies or omit them completely if you don’t like it hot. You can stretch this dish out to feed more by simply adding more vegetables, and more water and cooking up a pot of rice.

This is a great way of celebrating full-flavoured autumn lamb by roasting it with a few middle eastern flavours and finishing it with the beautiful ruby like jewels of fresh pomegranate.

Porchetta is a dramatic dish presenting a beautiful golden roll of crisp-skinned, boneless pork that looks impressive on the plate. The breadcrumbs are optional but do absorb a lot of the cooking juices, giving a juicer piece of pork. You can make the porchetta using pork belly, or you can purchase a porchetta already seasoned and trussed for a really easy impressive dish. The fat rendered from the pork is used to roast crisp, crunchy and tasty potatoes. Great with fermented cabbage, coleslaw or other brassicas serve with a medium bodied red wine, such as tempranillo or sangiovese.

The flavours of the Middle East resonate with the Australian summer. Mint, figs, pomegranate, cumin, and thyme. This dish is packed with flavour and can be easily cooked in a BBQ with a lid. Just remember to cook it fast to get the golden-brown crust and then low and slow to make the meat inside lip-smackingly tender. This will feed a big family get-together, and you can stretch out the numbers by making more couscous salad.

This is a sure-fire method to stop complaints about a dry turkey. We take a whole turkey and brine it in a solution of salt, brown sugar, bourbon, and other spices and aromatics. We cook it until it is almost done, wrap it in a towel and finish it in an esky where it will cook a little more and become super juicy and super tender. You’ll need a big pot, a container that will fit a turkey AND fit into the fridge, a big Esky, aluminium foil, and some clean towels.

Serve it warm, serve it cold. Serve it with sparkling shiraz. Serve it on Christmas Day as an alternative to a hot roast or entertaining guests when you want to do the cooking before everyone arrives. This is a country classic that has been doing the rounds of farmhouse kitchens for over half a century and still tastes fresh and delicious. Serve with salads, especially potato salad and fresh tomatoes.

We are a land of pork and honey here in Daylesford, with some of the best pig growers and beekeepers in the nation right here on our doorstep. We love the honey from Des O’Toole in the heart of town and John Cable out near Glenlyon and use their honey to make this delicious glaze to go with our house-smoked free-range hams.

We are incredibly proud of our butchery at Daylesford Meat Co. We love how we can take a piece of meat that is a pretty decent cut already, but with a bit of knifework and decades of experience, we can make it into something truly special. The rolled shoulder is a great cut, with skin that crisps into crackling and meat that is tender and juicy with the added flavour of our special stuffing. Easy to carve and so delicious.

Winter is pork season. Roast shoulder, roast leg, roast belly. Call ahead and order a whole shoulder, and we can bone it out, roll it and even stuff it.

Autumn is a great time to hunker down and enjoy some juicy, tender slow-cooked lamb ribs. At the Daylesford Meat Company, our lambs are raised on pasture at Green Hills, the family farm near Malmsbury. We’re giving these ribs a touch of Spain with some smoky paprika and a luscious sauce made with red peppers in a jar that come all the way from Spain.

It has been a ripper season for mushrooms with thousands of the little fungus popping up in the forests and fields. For those who can’t get out for a forage, Daylesford has a ripper mushroom grower called So Mush Goodness at the Sunday farmer’s market. Mushrooms are the essential ingredient in this classic beef dish that is making a retro comeback. Serve Beef Wellington with some local greens and a good cool-climate pinot noir and you’ll have the perfect weekend lunch. Plus, it’s a surprisingly easy recipe to make.

This is more a method than a real recipe. It allows you to bathe your turkey, or turkey buffe, or large chicken, in an aromatic solution of salt, sugar, herbs and spices. This salty bath allows the flesh of the bird to soak up the flavours and a little bit of salt and sugar, making for a delicious but very juicy bird.

We are a land of pork and honey here in Daylesford, with some of the best pig growers and beekeepers in the nation right here on our doorstep. We love the honey from Des O’Toole in the heart of town and John Cable out near Glenlyon and use their honey to make this delicious honey glazed ham with one of our free-range hams.

Full of flavour and great value for money, forequarter chops were once the BBQ chop of choice. They come from the shoulder of lamb, which means they are on the bone. The Greeks know the secret of basting the chops in lemon juice and white wine overnight, slowly taken on the fragrance of herbs and garlic. Serve with a big fat Greek salad, some tzatziki, and loads of crusty bread to mop up those aromatic pan juices.

Take a whole shoulder of lamb, rub it with herbs and spices, plonk it top of a bed of potatoes and peppers and slowly cook it until the juices run down to flavour and enrich the dish. This dish, with a loaf of crusty bread, will easily feed four or with some other vegetable dishes, feed a family of six. Serve it with a big red wine. As they say in Spain Buen Provecho – Enjoy!

For generations, the lamb shank was the grandmother’s secret. Cheap, sweet and filling a lamb shank strew could feed a big country family when spooned over piping hot mashed spuds. The secret’s out, but we still reckon that shanks offer great value as they are rich, have great flavour and go a long way. Here’s a special winter dish, perfect for a Sunday lunch. We love making this dish with the local sweet carrots grown in the rich volcanic soil and serving it with a bowl of piping hot mashed potato.