Food Stories – Page 7 – Dani Valent
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I’ve been writing about food for almost 20 years now and I haven’t been sick of it for five minutes. Food is such a rich topic: it’s history, culture, family, sustenance, health, business, community, environment and even philosophy.

Food stories can be epic tales of migration, cool insights into technology, inspiring stories of persistence and discovery or simple insights into daily life. Food is a way of knitting together family and friends and can be shared via narrative, recipes, photos, video, audio, on the street or around a table. I love communicating about food in all these different ways: it’s rich, deep and endlessly fascinating and I learn something new with every story I write.

Jacques Reymond

It’s Friday night in Jacques Reymond’s kitchen and I’ve just saved a junior chef from a bollocking. The Birkenstocked underling has just burned some wafers, and it hasn’t escaped the notice of the eagle-eyed maestro. But nor has my presence – even as I’m backed against the door with notepad and pen – and that’s enough, apparently, to make Reymond dish out a glare rather than the expected yell. “He sees everything,” says my wafer-burning friend. “I would have copped a spray if you weren’t here.”

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Dylan Roberts. I cook

There are a few reasons that Claremont Tonic chef Dylan Roberts is glad to be feeding his friends by the Yarra today. He grew up in Wales and, even after 10 years in Australia, the shine hasn’t palled on eating outdoors. He’s serving food he loves to eat. “I like salads, raw vegetables and skewered stuff to grill,” he says. Roberts is also happy to cross-fertilise cuisines, which explains the lively tomato salad that swoops to Italy via Thailand. Above all, there’s the gratification of serving food to people who tell you how delicious it all is. “It’s a good feeling,” he says. “My friends are my number one fan club.”

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Pierre Khodja

It’s not unusual for chefs to wax lyrical about meals shared with their children. Most nights they tiptoe to bed hours after the kids are tucked in, so family dinners “ when they happen “ are special. But Pierre Khodja, chef at Hawthorn’s Canvas restaurant, becomes particularly emotional when he talks about enjoying meals with his wife, Debbie, and their daughters Jamila, Anisa and Haniya. He has good reason: five years ago, it looked like the Khodjas may have eaten together for the last time.

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Andrew Blake

Andrew Blake has a few hundred thousand regrets, one for every dollar he owed when his Southgate restaurant was shut down seven years ago. But he more keenly rues all the meals he missed with his two ex-wives and four children over the years. While he worked as a restaurant chef “between 1977 and 2002” Blake, 50, never cooked for his family. “I was always working, he says. “And, if I did get home, I couldn’t be fagged cooking, it was always takeaway. Perhaps that’s why he’s such a solicitous host this bright autumn morning, serving oyster shooters and buttermilk pancakes to his girlfriend, Jodie, his daughter Neredah and old friends.

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Make a meal of it

No matter how committed you are to eating and drinking, you’d have to attend 14 events every day for 17 days to cover the whole Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. To save you from this arduous, artery-hardening and altogether impossible undertaking, I’ve trawled through the program to come up with flavourful picks from this massively tasty festival, which runs from next Friday, March 1, to March 17.

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The Graham Hotel. I cook

The Graham Hotel owners Tony and Peter Giannakis and chef Perry Schagen work together to create a festive feast. Ruler of the rotisserie Peter Giannakis beckons his chef. “Come on, Perry, your knife skills are better than mine,” he says. Perry Schagen steps up to the lamb with an impressive blade, pierces the crisp, citrus-scented skin, and eases the meat from the bone onto a platter. He swoons.

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Heston Blumenthal

All you really need to know about Heston Blumenthal is made abundantly clear in his toasted cheese sandwich. It’s not the edible ingredients – bread, cheese, ham – that perplex; it’s the presence of “new washing-up sponge (without scourer)” on the list of necessities. The questing Blumenthal mind decided the humble, well-loved toastie would be improved if the bread was cooked longer than the filling to create a crisp, golden shell and perfectly melted – not over-melted – insides.

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© Dani Valent 2024