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).
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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.
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Porterhouse is one of the best steaks in town. It sits next to the rib on the carcass and has a line of fat cap on one side. Our cattle produce porterhouse with a good amount of marbling, so they are always juicy and tender. These chips, by the way, are extra tasty, so easy to make, and can be made the day before if necessary.
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This is a deeply satisfying osso buco that is made without tomatoes. It has a delicate citrus tang from a little orange rind and an earthy note from the sage. This is such a light version of osso buco, it can easily be served on its own with just a glass of refreshing white wine or a glass of pinot noir.
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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.
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Sausages are not just for the BBQ. They are a raw material for making other great dishes. Our sausages have none of the pre-added nasties and the pork and fennel sausages make excellent polpette or Italian meatballs. Here they’re served with a filling risotto with pumpkin and sage, a great way to feed and fill a growing family.
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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.
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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.
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This is a great way to serve a good number of people without breaking the bank. The simple but punchy flavours of garlic and paprika make chicken taste six times better than it normally does and if you can cook this over a charcoal grill – even better. Make sure you soak the bamboo skewers for an hour or so before so cooking so they don’t burn.
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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.
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A dish popular in the Chinese populations of South East Asia it is originally from the Hainan province of Southern China. What we love about it is that it is so delicious and quite easy to make. Yes, there are a lot of ingredients, but they are all available in the stores in town. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be bringing this recipe out to feed the family or dinner party guests.
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Annie Smithers put us onto this dish from Flanders in Belgium. It is enjoyed in France, Belgium and The Netherlands and is a thick, beef stew that tastes like the most delicious French onion soup but served on toasted baguette with French mustard. It is unusual for European cooking as it is made without stock, instead it uses beer. Try the Daylesford Brewery ale or Coopers Ale.
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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.
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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.
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Cook the perfect rib eye on the bone inside on a cast iron grill or frying pan.
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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.
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A delicious meatloaf made using a little chef’s secret. First you make sofrito, the basis of hundreds of different dishes using cooked down veg and tomatoes. Fold this through the mix and it adds flavour and lighter texture. Save the cooking juices, skim off the fat and use them to make a gravy. Great hot but equally delicious in sandwiches the next day.
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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.
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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.
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This is a rich and luscious osso buco that can be made without tomatoes. It has a delicate citrus tang from a little orange rind and an earthy note from the sage. It can be enjoyed with a textural Italian wine or a glass of pinot noir.
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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.
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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.
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This is a sure winner Bolognese sauce that comes from one of America’s best food writer’s Marcella Hazan. This is all about the beef and tomatoes coming together as one. We believe this allows our beef, from our Green Hills Farm at Malmsbury, is perfect for this dish.
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This is a simple adaptation of the classic cacciatore. You put breadcrumbs on top. They soak up some of the cooking juices and go amazingly crisp and golden when you cook them in the oven. Cacciatore is Italian for hunter, and this is meant to be a dish cooked out over fire, putting some game birds into a pot with some herbs, wine, cured meat and vegetables. It is more a guide. Please feel free to use rabbit or quail, mix up the herbs, use red wine. But, if you get a chance this season to cook this in a pot over an open fire, you’ll get the real taste of cacciatore!
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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.
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These delicious bite-sized morsels of lightly spiced pork and ricotta are soft, tender, and coated with a rich tomato sauce. The secret to perfect polpette is in the mixing. You need to think of the mixture like bread dough and mix it thoroughly until the protein starts to bond and the mix becomes sticky. It takes a few minutes, and you do need clean hands. It’s a good idea to remove jewellery - I know a woman who lost her wedding ring in the mix and didn’t find out until she had baked the polpette!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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These glorious rich, succulent, and delicious pieces of beef were once considered trim. Thanks to the hard work of some serious chefs, beef cheeks are now a prized dish, perfect for those cooler spring nights and perfect with a big glass of shiraz.
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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.
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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.
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Rich and fragrant, delicious and warming, Southeast Asia’s beef rendang is a dish with a long history that is as layered and diverse as this curry-like, dry stew. "Rendang" means 'slowly' and so cooking one requires patience and persistence. We developed this version of rendang based on ingredients readily available in food stores in Daylesford so you can make it here anytime. We used beef short rib but you can also ask for a kilo of chuck steak or oyster blade. It is a dish delicious served with fresh, steamed rice and perhaps an ice-cold Tiger beer.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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This is an easy way to make a great tender piece of beef brisket with a lovely smoky tang. In Daylesford and surrounds we grow the most flavoursome winter vegetables and this little slaw cuts through the richness of the brisket. Serve with fries or grill a bun and make a brisket and slaw roll. Wrap smoky brisket and it will keep in the fridge for a week.
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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.
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Minced beef and pork are seasoned with sweet spices such as cinnamon and cloves, garlic and red wine and stuffed into skins. This dish uses the aromatic and beautifully spiced sausage meat inside the sausages to make a rich, delicious ragu that is topped with golden, buttery discs of semolina gnocchi. Perfect with a cold climate pinot noir from Passing Clouds.
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