Stephanie Alexander

Most present-day Australian chefs (that is to say, cooks who earn a living through their training, practice, and culinary skills) who have written cookbooks are at the same time telling us about themselves. Is it not curious that, in general, cooks repeatedly praise the table for its central role in hospitality, conviviality, generosity, and equality, yet seem so needful of, so greedy for, praise?

Gay Bilson, in her Plenty: Digressions on Food, is good on garnish. She describes the occasion of the queen mother’s tour of this country in 1958, during which the royal visitor ‘was offered white-bread sandwiches in the shape of Australia, with a sprig of parsley at the south-eastern tip, thoughtfully representing Tasmania’. Bilson understands, wisely, that the anecdote speaks for itself, and requires not further garnishing from her. Instead she reflects on the strange resilience of the parsley sprig, and the way it keep turning up on plates, decade after decade, as a signal to the diner that the dish had been composed by someone with an interest on how it looked on the plate; that somebody in the kitchen was taking the trouble, even if only to the extent of adding the sprig of parsley that had been sitting patiently in chilled water, waiting for its big moment.