The man who revived the salad and made cauliflower the star of 2018 is touring his new book, Simple, dispensing wisdom hard won during a long career that has taken him from military service to his own test kitchen. Here are ten things we learned from his conversation with Adam Liaw at the Opera House last night.
1. Cauliflower is more versatile than meat. It should come as no surprise that the vegetable-loving chef sees more scope in a brassica than an eye fillet. “You can eat it raw, deep fry it until crunchy, you can roast it so the centre is soft. Everything yields different results. I'm fascinated with how far you can take [vegetables], and it's very far.”
2. His kids are just like all other kids. “People think they must eat raw preserved lemon for breakfast. They don’t. They hate raw tomato but don't mind broccoli. They learned the word “anymore” very early and now say things like “I don't like prawns anymore”, even though we’ve made them for them thousands of times before. They like pastas and rice, and my comfort food is their comfort food: rice with lentils, fried onions and yoghurt.”
3. His grandmother was a secret agent. She distributed guns to Israeli agents in the ’60s in Europe and was also part of the Mossad team that captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina.
4. The instant gratification of cooking was what drew him away from academia. “I printed five copies of my dissertation and aside from the person who marked it, nobody read it, and it was soul destroying, because I spent two years on it. When you cook something and serve it to people, the reaction is instantaneous.”
5. He styles his own food for every book. It’s just him and the photographer.
6. Cooking on location is not as good as it looks on TV. “The best place to cook is your kitchen where you have all your equipment around you. That Tunisian beach was amazing, but it was windy and the coals were blowing everywhere.”
7. On a desert island, assuming he had coconuts, he'd take lemon, flour and olive oil. Add animals from hunting and he’s confident he can do a lot with it.
8. The size of the pan matters. “The amount of liquid that accumulates when roasting is the difference between something being dry, or a soup.”
9. Recipe creation is laborious. ”We test a recipe up to 15 times. Sometimes you get it right after three or four, but usually six to seven is needed on average. Then they are sent to a woman in Wales who tests every recipe I write on her family in a home kitchen.”
10. Kohlrabi was a worthy foe. “It’s hard to work with. It's great raw, but every time I tried to cook it it was bland. Eventually we roasted it, cut deep slices into it and filled the gaps with anchovies and herbs. I wanted to crack the kohlrabi.”
Want to eat more amazing vegetables? Try these awesome Sydney restaurants for vegetarians.