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).

When Mexican families get together there is a lot of food served to feed a lot of people. Tacos de Carnitas is a dish where tortillas are filled with loads of fresh salsa and then lashing of rich pork, slow cooked, sometimes over a smoky fire, with zingy citrus, loads of fresh herbs, onion and garlic until the pork is super soft sitting in a rich sweet yet tangy sauce. So easy to make. So easy to eat. 

It takes a bit of time, but this little trick will make your next roast pork dinner a true celebration. Start the day before and make sure the skin on the pork is bone dry to help it crisp up in the oven. These dishes have some Asian flavours and the meal is great with Tsing Tao beer or even a full flavoured chardonnay or pinot noir.

This is an excellent way of bringing a little variety and spice into the kitchen and big family dinners. First, you make a stuffing that looks and tastes like paella and you stuff that into a big chicken to feed a crew. Then you cook potato and onions and chorizo in chicken stock and wine alongside the roast chook. The result is a juicy flavoursome bird, loads of paella stuffing and a load of delicious Spanish vegetables. Add a few greens, crusty bread, and a bottle of tempranillo and you have a dinner party for six or just a great family meal.

Sweet, smoky, sticky and so delicious these pork ribs are the perfect finger-licking accompaniment for a get together with friends or as a meal for the family. You will need plenty of napkins or even wet towels to get your fingers clean when eating this very moreish treat. Blood oranges have extra flavour and will be in stores until mid-spring. If you can’t find them, try navel oranges. Hint: Zest citrus before juicing them as it is much easier.

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.

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.

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.

Korea is the flavour of the month and rightly so. This Asian nation’s fermented pastes and vegetables add layers of flavour to any dish. You can pick up kimchi in the local grocers. Give yourself plenty of time to make the ribs – we have them in stock all the time but order ahead if you’re making a big batch.

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.

It’s the season for BBQs and get-togethers when friends and relatives drop by or we’re invited for casual drinks or meals. These sweet and sticky chicken drumsticks and wings are covered in a secret herb and spice blend that we reckon tastes as close to BBQ shapes as we can get. Quick to prepare and quicker to cook they make the most of the more affordable cuts of chook.

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.

When you need to feed a few people outdoors, or just feel like some finger food, try these full-flavoured chicken drumsticks.

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.

Pimp Your Chook! A simple way to transform our already excellent free-range chickens into a super luxurious dish to entertain or simply enjoy with family with a really good bottle of pinot noir or Nebbiolo. We have suggested you use truffle paste, (available at Tonna’s or Blake Family Grocers) but if you’ve got your hands on a locally grown Daylesford truffle, then nobody is going to stop you grating it into this dish. You can make a quick sauce by deglazing the roasting pan with a glass of white wine and cook until reduced by half.

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.

With its golden crisp skin and super succulent flesh porchetta is a celebratory pork belly dish that is perfect for putting on the table to feed family and friends during the festive season, the big day itself, or any time you need to feed a few. There will be some fat render as the porchetta cooks, and this is excellent for coating potatoes before you roast them. Speaking of potatoes – serve this porchetta with these wonderfully tasty salt and vinegar potatoes.

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.

These are the perfect chicken sandwiches to line up in the Tupperware and plonk down on the picnic blanket.

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!