Libby Travers

It’s a lofty title. It’s also one we took very seriously. 

Danielle had just stepped away from an illustrious career in restaurants (from her own award-winning restaurant Fred’s in Sydney, via Chez Panisse and the French Laundry), and yet we were adamant we didn’t want to write about that. In some senses, this book is the antitheses of that chef worship, a counter to the clickbait. We wanted to empower home cooks with all the knowledge Danielle has gleaned over the years, while also providing the comfort that good cooking can (and, indeed, should) be simple and beautiful.

The inspiration had come from the community cooking during Covid; Danielle finding herself at home with limited supplies and a desire to do something to help with the challenges everyone was facing. As the recipes developed so did the ideas: this is about making food that tastes better at your table, it’s about food you can’t find in restaurants. This is food that is for nurturing rather than simply impressing, recipes that have gentle midweek lulls and slowly cooked greens. This is about taking her deep understanding of professional technique and applying it to home kitchens - in the words of Tamar Adlar, it is about cooking with economy and grace.

 To that end, we knew a “Lifetime of Beautiful Cooking” needed to extend beyond our words, we wanted to dip into the culinary writing cannon looking to our favourite writers for inspiration not just for their cooking and thinking, but for their writing. We wanted to help keep those culinary classics alive for the contemporary audience, to bring some romance to the kitchen, providing cultural and historical context while also providing the answers to any “why” questions the reader may have. We saw the opportunity to provide insight into the people we turn to from our bookshelves, women who were also cooking and creating books for homes, with recipes to nudge into the handful of tried and true favourites, the recipes on regular rotation.

Icebergs Dining Room and Bar is an icon, standing sentinel over the power of the Pacific Ocean. Despite the beauty, the path from concept to restaurant was not always easy. What Maurice Terzini was asking people to see wasn’t there - and he wanted to keep it that way. The power of the ocean was to be the hero; the rest, in essence, was to remain invisible. A place where conversations dominate the food, where art, music and beauty all share a place at that table. Of course, the food and drink had to be world-class, as did the design and service. To be on par with that ocean, you have to be irreproachable. It’s been hard, but it’s also been the greatest of honours.

 This book tells the story of the past twenty years of that custodianship. There are tales of people, personalities and the influences that shaped the idea, a collection of our best-known recipes from two decades of head chefs, cocktails from our award-winning bar and playlists from summers gone by. See the restaurant through the eyes of architect Carl Pickering; peer into the minds of six of Australia’s best chefs – from Karen Martini to Monty Koludrovic, read about why a great wine list is about so much more than the wine and then take a little glance into tomorrow, with Maurice’s treatise on the future of hospitality. There is so much that goes into making a restaurant disappear; much of it is enclosed within these pages.

'You hold the right book in your hands. Learning from it will be delicious.' Anthony Bourdain

At a time when we need to be more thoughtful about our meat consumption, this landmark publication offers the most important ingredient: knowledge. 

Meat: The Ultimate Companion is designed to walk you through the topic from the eyes of the farmer, the butcher and the best cooks to help you with the questions you might want to ask before you buy your meat. Carefully curated by Anthony Puharich, legendary butcher and supplier to Australia's leading restaurants, together with accomplished food writer Libby Travers, this comprehensive and ambitious project covers the history of every major animal we raise for meat, international breed maps, cut diagrams and descriptions, as well as illustrated butchery techniques and expert tips on selecting, storing and cooking all kinds of meat. 

Over 110 recipes showcase the major cuts and draw on cuisines and chefs from around the world.

To buy a copy of MEAT: The Ultimate Companion, please click here.

“ … one of the most important books to emerge in 2018 …” - Terry Durrack, SMH

Australian delicious. Magazine cookbook of the year 2018

Selector Magazine
Summer 2015/2016

The kitchen at Mugaritz is bustles. Thirty chefs, brought together from all corners of the world, jostle for space and compete for equipment. The activity in the kitchen is in stark contrast to the empty dining room. The 30 chefs are all cooking but there are no guests, nor will there be for five months.

Mugaritz, in the hills outside Spain’s San Sebastian, closes for the same period each year to allow its research team, or ‘dream mill’, time to create 50 new dishes for the guests when they eventually do arrive. Each chef works on their own dishes, bringing the nuances of their culinary background to the table. With two Michelin stars and ranked seventh in the world by Restaurant Magazine, this is how Mugaritz fosters creativity. 

Dani Lasa, head of research and development at Mugaritz, works daily, while owner Andoni Luis Aduriz comes regularly to taste and critique. 

“Creativity is nurtured in each individual, allowing them freedom to be inspired by the beauty they see,” explains Lasa. “Mugaritz is strong enough to filter any wandering idea. We like feeding unpredictability, lateral thinking, but mainly we enjoy what we do.”

Some of mankind’s earliest culinary creations were serendipitous discoveries of natural process: milk left to sour would turn to cheese; a leg of pork hung in an airy attic became the most delicious jamon; grapes left to ferment created something so delicious it is fairly considered to be the nectar of the Gods.

Perseverance and science also played their role in culinary creation. It could only have been a process of painstaking trial and error that led to the realisation that, trapped within the bones of calves and only extracted through long and slow cooking, was flavour that would become the basis of almost every sauce in the French culinary repertoire; that by boiling seaweed and combining it with flakes of dried, fermented and smoked tuna, you could create an umami bomb that became the building blocks of Japanese cuisine.

It was not until the 20th century that the study of creativity found its way into academia. When Graham Wallis published The Art Of Thought in 1926, he narrowed the creative process down to five steps: preparation (focusing on a particular problem), incubation (internalising the problem), intimation (the feeling that the idea is on its way), illumination (where the creative idea bursts forth) and verification (where the idea is elaborated on and applied). His treatise sat alone for decades. It wasn’t until the middle of the 20th century that creativity was really analysed as a process that could be harnessed.

The kitchen is a particularly interesting space to observe modern creativity, with interest in the culinary arts at an all-time high and shared throughout the world with an almost unmatched ferocity on social media. 

Chefs are constantly grappling with their desire to excite, surprise and please. Closing the restaurant for almost half a year is a massive investment in an elusive process, but not one that’s made on a whim. Aduriz, Lasa and the team at Mugaritz had an inkling that flavour was not necessarily the pinnacle of a restaurant experience. They verified their assumption by categorising every sentence in all the correspondence they had received over the years to confirm what was important to their customers. When they ran the metrics, taste came in at number 13.

“Our guests are very worldly, they come seeking stimulus, they enjoy being provoked,” notes Lasa. “We appeal to the senses, culture, nature, history, art or science in order to trigger their eagerness. It is not to be unfaithful in our relationship with the kitchen, but to take advantage of incorporating wealth into the discipline.”

Martin Benn, chef and co-owner of Sydney’s three-hatted Sepia restaurant, looks to a process of evolution to fuel his creativity. 

“I am learning each day for sure and that is a great thing in this industry, but I read a quote from Thomas Keller the other day that changed my whole outlook,” says Benn. Keller’s quote: “We don’t call it creativity, we call it evolution. We have to constantly evolve ourselves.”
...
Sepia has earned its place at the top of Australia’s dining scene by forging new ground, but this has not been all indulgence, it has been a matter of survival. When Benn created Chocolate Forest Floor, perhaps his most renowned dish, Sepia was on the cusp of its first anniversary. Business was slow, sometimes doing only 15 covers a night. In a last ditch effort to make the restaurant work, he decided to run a series of anniversary degustation dinners, to illustrate the evolution of the restaurant. There was pressure to create.

He was toying with mousses and, upon adding a chocolate crunch for texture, glimpsed a forest floor. “I think it’s just a matter of letting it be organic and not to force the ideas,” says Benn. “You start in one direction and often end up going in a completely different one.” As the idea evolved, jellies grew in the undergrowth, green tea moss sprouted, fennel fronds became ferns, sorbet portrayed fallen fruit. The dish was born.

Channelling his creativity towards dessert was not by chance. Somewhat akin to the crescendo in a musical score or the climax in a novel, Benn sees dessert as an opportunity to jolt the diner out of the comfortable stupor of a long degustation. It was a dish that changed a restaurant, filled seats and gave the chef the courage to push even further.

At the three-hatted Attica in Victoria’s Ripponlea, Kiwi chef Ben Shewry takes a slightly different view, creating with a childlike imagination. 

“In the early days in New Zealand, there was no money and you had to fend for yourself, having fun, making things, building things and having adventures inside your mind,” recalls Shewry. “I brought that with me into cooking.”

Sharing his creations is also a big motivator. Every Tuesday, Shewry runs an experimental menu at Attica, giving the kitchen staff a chance to run riot, creating five new dishes a week. 

“I never thought we would be able to do this, but the customers love it. It’s become the cult night, it’s probably still the hardest night to get into. It has a party-like effervescence. But it’s no less scary, we are prepared to take a chance and fail and you may be made to eat our failures!”

This collegiate attitude and open, shared spirit led to what Shewry believes is his greatest creation: staff speeches. Each week over the past year a different member of the Attica team presents a speech to the 32 staff. 

“It’s not a session for expressing your dissatisfaction, it’s about how we improve things in our world,” Shewry says. “I wish I had written them down, recorded the laughter and tears. That’s the thing about creativity, people would think it would be food, but my greatest creative thing has been staff speeches.”

Garnering inspiration from creative fields outside the kitchen is common among these chefs. In fact, Shewry attributes most of his recent inspiration to those outside the food industry: photographers, artists, musicians and communicators. 

Hosting his first WAW Gathering this year (pronounced “war”, a rough acronym for what a wonderful world), Shewry took it a step further, bringing together chefs, musicians, artists, craftsmen, farmers and food lovers from around Australia and the globe. “Financially it can be difficult as well,” he says. “But it’s the experiences, the exchanges you have that make you rich, not the possessions you own.”
...
The concept of creativity may be relatively new, but the drive for change and ideas is not. At Mugaritz they reference Proust “the real voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” 

With so many eyes on the kitchens of the world it is a fascinating place to watch creativity happen. “The biggest enemy for the human evolution is conformism, self indulgence or denial of the different,” says Lasa. “The more we know about the past, the more we improve the future. We can not remain motionless in this incredible era.”

For the full article click here.

(Photography: the delightful Luke Burgess)

Every day, just before the sun begins its descent over the edge of the Mediterranean and into North Africa, the jellyfish hunter appears at Scauri’s lighthouse. He comes armed with his long-handled net; he is accompanied by his beautiful wife. They smile and talk happily as they scale the vertical cliff wall to the sea, to his hunting ground. This easy athleticism belies their age, they must be at least 70.

In the lingering sunlight the Med is azure, alive with fish, jellyfish and urchins. She dives in. He remains at the water’s edge, net in hand, trident-like. The jellyfish hunter is waiting for the inevitable cry – medusa! – the word, like bindies at an Australian picnic, is accompanied by a calculated panic; everyone freezes, carefully looks around, and, if their coast is clear, swiftly departs the scene.

Beyond his wife, it’s the children he is protecting. Here, four and five-years-olds frolic in the deep water largely unattended, when they reach eight or nine they learn to dive and start jumping off the high rocks – the island disappears steeply into the Mediterranean and so the jumping is (relatively) safe. The jellyfish hunter watches it all.

There is a gentle rhythm of life on Pantelleria, a tiny Sicilian island – only 15 kilometres across – way out in the Mediterranean, closer to Tunisia than Sicily. A volcano in her former life, the dark rock cliffs and lava formations have given Pantelleria the name La Perla Negra (the black pearl). The black stones are used for terracing, the ancient dry-rock walls quilted across the landscape now testament to the island’s long agricultural history. This is an island that has looked inland for sustenance, more than to the sea.

To hide from the many winds of the Mediterranean, the olive trees huddle close to these low walls, they are trained to grow no higher than your waist. The olives are joined by Pantelleria’s famed zibibbo grape vines and caper bushes; wild oregano, rosemary and purslane run rampant across the island floor. Girt by sea, the island is ironically thirsty, and yet, while the sun always shines and the wind often blows, thanks to the fertile volcanic soils, the wine is delicious, the capers salty sweet and the oregano better than I have tasted.

Days are bookended by spectacular sunrises and sunsets over the water, the winds are all known by name, and there is a timelessness that works its way under your skin. The yardstick is no longer hands on a clock, but the sun’s rays, the hunger in your belly, and the arrival of the jellyfish hunter. This timelessness is so engrained in their culture there is no future tense in the Pantescan dialect.

The Black Pearl was not always this sleepy. In the 1970’s and ’80s, Pantelleria became the summer playground of Armani, Carole Bouquet, Depardieu and their entourage of glitzy friends. To accommodate the glitterati, a number of hotels sprung up, high above the dammuso. Many locals, with lira in their eyes, left their small homes and farming plots to cater for the masses. When the tide turned, and many of the glitterati left (Armani and Bouquet stayed) the hotels were deserted; they now stand empty, lonely sentries to ghosts of parties long over. 

The Tunisian-inspired houses, dammuso, are built with the black porous rocks of the island, the walls are thick, very thick. They are ingeniously designed to filter in the cool night air of summer and retain the day’s warmth during winter. Their gentle whitewashed domes are built to trap what precious rain does fall on the island. Fruit trees also cower behind these dark walls – whether inside the cool internal courtyards of the dammuso or the incredible circular gardens found dotted around the island, often designed to enclose just one precious citrus tree.

Her popularity stretches way beyond this century. The reserves of obsidian - the black volcanic glass and one of the strongest natural weapons and tools pre-bronze age - has ensured her popularity since Neolithic times. For those that are so-inclined, the archaeological sites are numerous and in excellent condition. Despite this rich history, and the more recent interest generated by Luca Guadagnino’s (excellent) 2015 movie A Bigger Splash, the island remains largely untouched. This is one of her greatest assets.

A few good four and five star hotels remain on the island, but it is better to live like a Pantesco and rent a dammuso, many of which have been renovated to modern tastes inside, while holding their traditional appeal outside. These run the gamut from humble to luxury (with price tags to match). The south-eastern edge of the island is her most rugged, conversely, the north-western tip is built up and worth avoiding.

Tragically, the old city, with its tiny pebbled laneways and labyrinth of houses, was bombed for a propaganda video near the end of WWII. It was completely annihilated and is now, beyond the striking Tunisian-inspired church, a hodgepodge of panicked architecture. Limit your visits to the weekly market, petrol (you will need a car), the ATM (cash is king, this is still Sicily after all) and the very good deli/wine shop (stocking local delicacies including salted capers, cheeses, most of the island’s best wines alongside Italian favourites such as Occhipinti).

A number of great restaurants can be found across the island. On the north side it’s Il Principe e il Pirata, an excellent restaurant serving beautiful seafood, pasta and couscous (the north African influence is felt on menus as well as in the architecture) with a considered and affordable wine list. Altamarea, on the south side, offers a more formal dining experience, while their port-side bar Kaya Kaya is a casual lunch spot, great for a swim, snack and beer. There are agritourismo and restaurants to be found in the hills that serve more relaxed fare – look out for Rifugio Firiakki. In the summer months booking is a sensible precaution.

Seafood forms a relatively small part of the local diet: fish have little protected habitat on those steep underwater cliffs and instead it is deep-sea fish, alongside the rock-dwellers, such as octopus and urchins, that you find on menus. When fish aren’t swimming in the sea they are found a la Pantesca: swimming in olive oil and the juices of tomatoes, olives and capers. There is also beautiful local wine, seek out Gabrio Bini’s famed Zibbibo wine and Ferrandes’ Passito, or Jacopo Bianchi’s Anforaje.

Beyond the daily quest for food, languid days are best spent chasing the sun while hiding from the wind. It will come from all directions – each wind with its own name, each with its own personality. Use these winds to explore the island: when the Sirocco blows the hot air up from Africa take shelter in the northern outcrops – try Cala Levante and the beautiful arched Arco dell’Elefante or, if it’s really blowing, the port of Gadir; when it is the Mistral, rattling down the Rhone Valley before it shoots across the Mediterranean, you will want to be in the southern swimming holes – Scauri’s port or lighthouse (faro).

As it is a small island (the ring road has a 50km circumference), watching the sun rise and set into the ocean is a feasible punctuation for each day. Follow the sunrise with a visit to Terremoto Bakery in the back streets of Tracino, and the best example of the local specialty bacio - a crisp, puffed, deep-fried wafer that sandwiches a filling of ricotta and cinnamon. Their bread is good and their arancini make a great beach/cliff-side lunch. On the other side of the island the sunset options are numerous, but sitting on the rooftop at Sesiventi with a negroni in hand is particularly brilliant. If the sky is clear and the wind blowing just so, you will see the tip of Tunisia as the sun melts into North Africa.

Turning inwards, the hillsides are also worth exploring. The volcano is not classed as active, and yet the island is alive with its energy – gas seeps out of rock walls, fuels natural saunas in the mountains and hot springs by the sea. The energy is enchanting and a guided walk into the mountains is recommended, as is a boat tour around the island (to be picked up at the port of Scauri).

While there is no future tense, the future looks bright for Pantelleria. Unlike many Mediterranean backwaters, Pantelleria is full of youth, as well as the ageing. This is an island that lives. Alongside the locals, both young and old, there is now a tangle of talent from all over the world living here: artists, ceramicists, architects, fishermen, musicians, distillers.

Raw, dark and a little evasive, Pantelleria isn’t for everyone, her magnetism seems to draw people in or repel them with equal fervour. The internet doesn’t always work, your car may break down, there’ll be no phone reception after it rains. However, people will talk to you, properly, and you will stumble upon your own gems, you will swim in an uncrowded sea, you will find an excellent meal, you will watch many beautiful sunsets. This is not the Truman Show, it’s not a holiday for those seeking a stereotype, but the ideal is there, and it’s real. For an island so bound up in contradictory messages and mystery, perhaps this is her greatest.

Addresses:

Food:

Il Principe e il Pirata
Strada Punta Karace, Pantelleria
+39 0923 691108

Panificio Terremoto
Via Khamma, Pantelleria
+39 0923 915039

Kaya Kaya
Via Porto di Scauri, Pantelleria
+39 320 156 2300

Altamarea
Via Scauri Porto 5, Pantelleria
+39 0923 918115

Accomodation:

Destino Pantelleria
For dammuso and car hire
www.destinopantelleria.com

Corte Pantesca
www.villaitaly.it

Tenuta Borgia (setting of A Bigger Splash)
www.tenutaborgia.it

The Weekend Australian Magazine
February 2011

Like many before me, I moved to France chasing a stereotype. France has largely lived up to my expectations: the women pout, the men flirt, the nation strikes and the food is phenomenal. Yet there is one thing that has caught me off guard … the French don’t get drunk. 

I had grown up with the belief the French were mad for a drink. After all, this is a nation that has re-arranged military campaigns around its vineyards.

Perplexed, I checked the statistics. It turns out the French do drink, in fact, they drink nearly 50% more alcohol per capita than we do in Australia.

So, where’s the drunken behaviour? Where are the heated arguments and punch-ups that we have come to associate with a big night out?

In Australia not only do we like to drink, we are a nation who like to get drunk. According to the Salvation Army 2 million Australians drank with that sole intention last year.

Of greater concern is the rise in violence that appears to be associated with this kind of drinking. “To know that a large number of people on some occasions drink purely to get drunk is not only very sad, but it is very dangerous,” says Salvation Army spokesman, Major Brad Halse, “Drunken behaviour is normally ugly, often boring, and too often violent.” 

Many believe the relation between alcohol and violence is linear – the more we drink the more violent we become. Consequently, health lobbies and Government bodies are falling over each other to reduce the volume of alcohol consumed in Australia.

It is a simple concept, and one that is totally contradicted by the example of France.

If we apply the current thinking in Australia to France, it would stand to reason that the French would have 50% more alcohol related violence. They do not. In fact France has one of the lowest rates of alcohol related violence in Europe.

“You traditionally haven't had the "yob" problem in France that you've had, say, in England, but there has been plenty of excessive alcohol consumption in France, too.” says Michael Steinberger, author of Au Revoir to All That, a frank look at the French culture in the 21st Century.

In spite of the large amounts of alcohol they consume, drinking remains an art de vivre in France. 60% of all alcohol consumed is wine (compared to 35% in Australia). They drink a lot, but they drink it regularly and generally in moderation. It is drunk to complement their cuisine. It is drunk for its taste and smell. It is drunk at the table.

Mireille Guiliano, author of Why French Women Don’t Get Fat believes the connection between alcohol and food is the key, “(In France) we have a few centuries of wine drinking and we consider a glass of wine an element of a meal, like a piece of bread or fruit.”

It appears the difference lies in the culture of consumption. “It's about conviviality,” notes Guiliano, “sharing a meal with wine is a great source of pleasure.” This connection is so engrained in the culture it is actually considered rude to offer someone a drink without something to eat. Consequently, you don’t meet someone for a drink in France, you meet for an aperitif  (or apero). The accompanying food can be taken as seriously as the main meal.

The apero is not a new concept. In 1950 Elizabeth David devoted an entire chapter to the art of the apero, or hors d’oeuvre, stating that it should consist of “something raw, something salt, something dry or meaty, something gentle and smooth and possibly something in the way of fresh fish.” Along with drinking my coffee from a bowl and serving cheese between the main course and dessert, the apero is one French habit I plan to adopt for life.

Furthermore, in France you don’t drink for drinkings sake, “There really are few bars as seen in other countries,” says Guillano  “cafes serve coffee and food as well as alcoholic drinks, so people out socially have more options than beer and booze.” ...

To read the full article click here ...

Published in The Weekend Australian Magazine in February 2011.

St Tropez
Selector Magazine
Autumn 2012

It took me months to find a postcard that portrayed the St Tropez I had fallen in love with. Not the St Tropez of nightclubs, paparazzi, or the super yachts that are parked in front of the beautiful old port. Like the town itself I had to search to find the real beauty, an image of St Tropez without the glitz and gaudiness.

Hanging in the town’s small art gallery I found what I was looking for. Two paintings by Charles Camoin, a post-impressionist painter who took up residence in St Tropez in the first quarter of last century, had captured the essence of the town. It appears I was in love with the same St Tropez he was.

The first depicts the Place aux Herbes where, in the sleepy hours of the morning before the women would hoist themselves into their high-heels and plaster on their make-up, I would buy my pain au chocolat. Camoin painted the soft morning light on the faded apricot and peach façades, and the green and blue of their baked wooden shutters, just as it appeared when I would devour my breakfast.

The second illustrates the muted tones of the Place des Lices, the town’s main square. A game of boules is underway, a few of the men have their hands clasped behind their backs, a stance I came to know well. Many of my afternoons, and glasses of the local rosé, would slip by in the distant company of men just like this.

PLACE AUX HERBES

The tiny Place aux Herbes is the culinary heart of St Tropez. The shop-front to Senequier is located in the tiny square, it opened in 1887 and would have been there when Camoin painted the scene in 1905. While it is famed for its crystallised fruit, it was the buttery slick their pain au chocolat left on my fingers that had me hooked.

There is a small oyster bar in the square that will have up to a dozen varieties of oysters on any given day, alongside mussels, sea- snails and vongole. The square is also home to the most fantastic cheese shop: bowls full of crème fraîche, a score of goats’ cheeses, and a collection of very expensive but incredibly divine charcuterie: white anchovies, small bell peppers marinating in the local Provencal olive oil, tapenades and saucisson.  

MARCHE AUX PECHEURS

The arched tunnel that connects the Place aux Herbes with the more raucous port is home to the Marché aux Pecheurs. Fish are displayed on beautiful marble benches, the tiled floor wet from the melting ice and dripping taps. The open-air fish market is alive every morning with the bustle of the town’s locals, the marble hidden beneath the vibrant colours of lobster, octopus and all the fish of the region’s famed bouillabaisse. St Tropez is a fishing village at heart and this market serves as a constant reminder of her humble beginnings.

PLACE DES LICES

What the Place aux Herbes is to the culinary scene, the Place des Lices is to the town’s social life. Under the natural umbrella of the plane trees the town’s fruit and vegetable market is held twice a week (Tuesdays and Saturdays). Nowhere are the seasons better depicted than in the colours and smells of the fresh produce of a French farmers’ market. The market’s small antique section is also worthy of a visit.

Le Café (also known as the Café aux Arts), in the centre of the Place des Lices, is one of the town’s institutions. In typical French style the chairs all face the theatre of the square. It is here I would sip on fishbowl-sized glasses of rosé crammed with ice cubes and lose myself in the games of boules. The café will lend you a set, if you are so inclined.

L’ANNONCIADE

The town’s art gallery, L’Annonciade, represents another important part of St Tropez’s heritage, as a home to the arts and artists. The converted chapel is situated on the port and, like most of the religious iconography scattered around St Tropez, La Chapelle Notre-Dame de L’Annonciade was built for the sailors, or at least as a place to pray for their safe return. Disaffected during the Revolution it eventually fell into the hands of Grammont, an art collector who donated 56 works from his own collection, and upon his death turned the gallery to the people of St Tropez.

With the colour and light typical of the fauvist and nabist movements, the paintings appear to reflect the spirit of the town. Many of the artists, including Matisse, Derain, Signac and Camoin, were regular visitors. The gallery is more than a place to avoid the crowds, it is a place of reflection, it’s just that now the religion is art.

BROCCANTE MARKETS AT GRIMAUD

Every Sunday throughout the year Le Jas des Roberts, near the neighbouring town of Grimaud, hosts an excellent broccante market. Kitchenware, furniture, fur coats and wooden rocking horses compete for the eyes attention. While some stalls are simply open suitcases, others are set up like lounge rooms, with the olive trees for walls and the sky for a ceiling.

Behind the market, perched on a small hill, is the Provencal mas that must have once been the homestead that commanded the groves and vineyards below. It is now a simple restaurant. When the sun is shining the courtyard becomes a convivial dining room, simple plastic tables and chairs jostling for a little sunlight. By far the best option on the menu is their aioli, the essence of Provence. The rich mayonnaise is spiked with intense flavour of raw garlic and the local olive oil. It is served with simply cooked white fish, sea snails, mussels, boiled potatoes, artichoke and boiled egg.

PLAGE DE GIGARO

There is no beach in St Tropez. The closest offering, the infamous Pampalonne Beach, is better known for its reckless party atmosphere: women in bikinis with fur coats or dresses with very little fabric and way too many sequins. If you are seeking raw beauty drive on to Gigaro just 10 minutes further west of St Tropez. One of the anomalies of the coast here, Gigaro is renowned for its calm and seclusion. 

For lunch, dine at Les Colours Jardin, a restaurant that complements its surrounds. With white-washed walls and a tree that grows up through the middle of it there is a view of the beach from every table. Start with anchoiade and crudités, the only way to eat raw vegetables in my mind, and follow this with a simple bowl of mussels, vongole and razor clams cooked with onions, herbs and white wine. 

AUBERGE DE LA MOLE

Of all the places you visit while in St Tropez, this is the one I implore you to seek out. The township of La Mole is home to the private airstrip that caters to St Tropez. It is a one horse town, or at least a one restaurant town. The Auberge has been run by the same family for over 50 years. The recipes haven’t changed, in fact I doubt the menu has even changed in all that time.

You order your main and the rest is set. The starter consists of terrine de campagne (the best I have eaten, without doubt, when I die and go to heaven that is what I plan to eat for eternity), mousse de canard, rillettes and a large jar of cornichons (with those great wooden cornichon tongs). They are placed on the table in their entirety, for you to partake in as much as you want. For mains you can choose from French specialties such as confit de canard, cassoulet or a simple omelet aux cepes. This is followed by salad and then a platter of 6-7 cheeses, largely in their entirety except where they have been attacked by previous guests.

Dessert is served in the same manner, and while it is not normally my favourite, it is worth saving room for. The crème caramel showcases the delicate flavour of cooked eggs tempered by the sweetness of the caramel, but not overwhelmed by it. The chocolate mousse is gently folded through whipped cream with chunks of dark, rich chocolate suspended inside ... This is the restaurant of all your French dreams.

In the 1800s the streets of Gragnano, situated 30km south of Naples, were widened to allow space for pasta to dry draped over river reeds, swaying like sheets in the wind. So serious were they about this burgeoning industry, they tore down perfectly good buildings and re-built them to ensure shadows weren’t cast on neighbours’ drying racks.

The natural landscape had much to offer the pasta makers. Gragnano is cradled by mountains on three sides and open to the sea on the fourth, creating a natural wind tunnel. This configeration funnels in fresh, salty air on the north westerly winds. This wind, the Marino (all the winds of the Mediterranean are referred to by name), is a cousin of the Mistral and is a regular vistor to town, particularly each afternoon, where it would gently dry the dangling pasta.

Situated close to the Valli dei Mulini, the valley of the mills, their supply of freshly ground wheat was also ensured. The durum wheat – known for its strength - is grown in neighbouring Puglia. Soft spring water not only powered the mills, but also added a specific flavour to the pasta (or more precisely, as this spring water has a relatively low mineral content, it allows the flavour of the wheat to burst forth).

So successful was the town’s switch from luxurious silk to humble pasta, Gragnano became one of the pit-stops of the Grand Tour. No trip was complete without a little Gragnano spaghetti to take home in your trunk, while today half a dozen paintings of the town still hang in the Louvre dating back to those heady days of early tourism.

At a time when many of the fairytales of Italy’s culinary culture are being called out for what they are (exactly that, fairytales!), this wonderful town leans into its history as one of the great marketing coups. It is a story they are still keen to tell. So much so, in 2013 the town was designated a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) for its dried pasta by the EU. This year, I was invited to tour the village with one of the best, Pastificio Di Martino.

While the town has modernised, and the pasta-making has been centralised in the hands of a relative few, most of the wheat still only travels a mere three hours before it is ground to semolina (the middling grind used for pasta, cous cous and puddings). Their best farmers are left to choose their own specific varieties – drawing on ancient, local variants of durum best suited to their environment – and Di Martino pay these farmers by the hectare rather than the yield, allowing sparsely planted, better quality wheat; they are even pay for fallow years to encourage crop rotation. Theirs is a story worth telling, a respect for the farmer worth celebrating.

The pasta is still made using that same carefully sourced spring water and the drying, albeit now in a factory, is monitored to stay below 70C and dry out over 16 hours to highlight the aroma of the wheat. In order to conform to the PGI, bronze dies are used to extrude the pasta, the bronze stressing the pasta and creating a rough surface, the slight grittiness helping the sauce stick.

Of course, the form is of the utmost importance, and romantic tales – drawn from places, people and their nonnas – are used to explain many of these partnerships. How did orecchiette find its dancing partner in broccoli, anchovy and lemon, maccaroni its cheese, spaghetti served alla Nerano or puttanesca, and pacheri or rigatoni to dance with Norma? And what of the origins of a good lasagne, the culinary rules governing a spaghetti Bolognese, or the simple and glorious comfort of pasta with butter and parmesan (with or without it’s fancy caccio e burro/pepe title)?

I love a good fairytale, almost as much as I love a good bowl pasta. I feel this wonderful staple has had a bit of a rough trot this past decade, with gluten finding itself in the cross-hairs of many-a dietary movement.

Surely the world needs more happily ever afters …

Pasta loves: Parmesan, olive oil, butter, salt, tomatoes, anchovies, broccoli, bitter greens, zucchini, all the greens (!), breadcrumbs, olives, cured meats, sausages, eggplant, slowly cooked meats … and on and on …

Select and store: Do try to think about how your intended sauce will get along with your pasta shape. Will the sauce remain entwined as you wrap the spaghetti around your fork? Are there small vegetables searching for crevices to hide in? Small pasta shapes are happy swimming in soups, while big shapes are made for stuffing sauce into. NB I haven’t even entered into the delicious world of fresh pasta here – where eggs take the ingredients from two to three, bringing a richness and silkiness, making them particularly excellent with silky sauces.

An ode to pasta water - That glutenous water has magic properties: loosening the sauce, bringing a creaminess without the cream and providing a bridge for the pasta to meet the sauce; pulling out a cup of pasta water before you drain your pasta is a culinary habit that will change your cooking forever. Do be careful how far you salt your pasta water - not too much that the sauce will be overwhelmed, not too little that the pasta is insipid - I like to add the salt just as the water starts to boil, as it gives the bubbles a little boost before I pop in the pasta.

Historically I have been a little timid when it comes to cooking with beans. Perhaps timid is not the word: lazy? disorganised? It is a rare day when my mind is sufficiently in advance of its culinary desires to suggest what I hope to be eating tomorrow. Unfortunately, the humble white bean has fallen victim to this malaise.

That’s why I love this column, it forces me to consider my decisions, my biases, my habits. And here’s the mic drop … in researching this column I learnt not only was my avoidance misguided, it was unnecessary:

Beans do not always need soaking.

I do not come at this lightly. Many of my favourites suggest soaking: Elizabeth David, Paula Wolfert, Claudia Roden (not to mention many of the modern day cooks). And yet, there it is, clear as day in Harrold McGee’s scientific bible, it was also there in Diana Kennedy’s book (Kennedy is a culinary queen of Mexican cookery). No soak. A longer cook, granted, or in some cases even a pre-cook, but soaking is optional, if not altogether unnecessary.

Salt’s presence, too, appears to be incorrectly controversial. Not only has salt been somewhat falsely accused of hardening the beans, its early presence, or that of a saline friend such as a rind of parmesan or ham hock, will enhance the flavour of the beans, with less salt required overall and only a minor penalty to the cooking time (and sometimes none at all). Salt’s more alkaline companion bicarb can actually help speed up the process.

What time I now have to make up! Beans, with their gentle flavour, soothing and glutenous texture (while remaining gluten free) remain astoundingly cheap for a high quality ingredient and are packed with complex carbohydrates, fibre and protein. For these reasons, they have been feeding the world for millennia: from the French cassoulet to the Italian pasta-e-fageoli; from salad to soup, baked beans to chili. So revered was the humble bean in ancient Rome that the four key legume crops leant their names to key families: Fabius from the fava bean, Lentulus from lentils, Piso for the pea and Cicero from the chickpea.

I have learnt a few deft tricks in my culinary awakening: a tiny pinch of bi-carb to the cooking water will help them soften and decrease the cooking time; their cooking water can also be delicious and add joy to your dish (in a similar manner to the benefits of pasta water); removing a few beans and their precious liquid, then giving them a blitz before returning to the pot can help to make more harmony between bean and companions; some dishes are totally fine with the canned option – including the liquid they come in, although be sure to give it a taste before committing to your dish and season accordingly (the liquid is most often water, salt and the starch released from the beans – these tend to be the purees and soups were the texture is less important); and the zinger … you can freeze cooked beans!

I don’t think I’m alone in my antipathy. In Australia many of these pulse crops are turned over to animal fodder as there is such a small market for them. This may indeed lead to some of the problems we have with them in the cooking arena – the majority of the beans we can get our hands on are old beans and old beans do take forever to cook.

And yet, they’re easy to grow (and often carbon fixing so actually good for the soil, leaving more in than they take out), easy to dry and store, they are light in weight and heavy in nutrition. Not only are they great for the health of our soils, they are great for us. Support a farmer, support our soil, eat more pulses today!

Select and store:

I want to suggest you play around yourself here. There are hundreds of varieties of beans from all over the world – find a variety that pleases you and learn its foibles. Perhaps, even more important than the variety and brand will be a good turn-over; old beans will take days (literally) to become soft, no amount of salting, bi-carb or cooking will help. A parmesan rind or a ham hock will add wonderful flavour (and natural salt) to your cooking water. If your stomach is particularly sensitive to beans, you will find relief by draining and replacing the soaking/cooking water – a few changes of fresh water will help.

Some options:

(1) Soak beans for 6-8 hours in a bowl of salted water in your fridge. Be warned, if pulses are left soaking for too long they will start fermenting. Add beans to boiling, salted water (you can re-use your soaking water if it’s not too salty) and cook until tender, generally around an hour.

(2) Pre-cook your beans by covering them in cold salted water, bring to the boil, turn off and allow to cool in their water (draining cooked beans while they’re still hot causes them to explode). Leave for an hour or two, then turn the heat back on and leave them to simmer. Here, too, you’re looking at about an hour’s cook time.

(3) Pop those beans directly into salted water (jury is out here – can be boiling, can be from cold, bean depending). Reduce heat, and allow them to simmer until they’re tender, somewhere between 1 and ½ and 2 hours.