Yeah, and you can really taste the magic with handmade food like this as well. I often think about that warm loaf of bread that Trish baked for us when we visited her home and winery in Lazio, Italy. Such a simple gesture, but it makes all the difference when food is made with love. 

Absolutely! My favourite vibe is when you go over to someone’s home, and you are all cooking together. That’s why pasta is so much fun because it ends up hanging all over the room and everyone gets involved in the creation. There is a real community spirit about it. 

The first meal you ever made for me was a pasta actually—spaghetti carbonara—and we have perfected that recipe together over the years, adding special little details along the way. It has become a pure expression of our love and it is so wonderful to share that dish with our friends or family now too.

I think we’re really into the traditions surrounding food and so we have cultivated quite a few special dishes like that one. Another tradition that comes to mind is the lobster bisque that we’ve been making to celebrate New Year’s Eve for the past five years or so. 

We have just prepared our sixth New Year bisque! 

And how we then use the leftover sauce to make a big pasta the next day, on New Year’s Day.

…

Break Bread

Come together, this time of year seems to be saying. For January is a month that calls for much socialisation with family and with friends. It involves New Year’s Eve parties and summer barbecues in the southern hemisphere. Though it can feel like an overwhelmingly busy time of year, it is also an opportunity to slow down and enjoy the moment. To prepare food with our hands and cherish this time spent with loved ones. 

I remember the joy of sitting down for family dinners as a child and there always seemed to be something so reverent about the simple act of coming together and sharing a meal. 

Family meals have always been really big in our house as well! We set the table, light some candles, and say a gratitude blessing for the food that we are eating. It is nice to connect with what’s on your plate in this way, because there is so much disconnection from what we eat these days. 

It is also why I love preparing homemade food for friends and family. Especially anything that involves a dough of some description. Making dough—whether it be for pasta, pizza, or bread—is a pretty magical thing. You always have to knead it for a little longer than you think, but then it suddenly just transforms. You have to feel into the experience and learn to recognise the fleeting moment when it is just right. 

…

Yes, it is so special. A really time-consuming and indulgent treat that traditionally marks our very last supper for the year. I usually like to serve it with some homemade baguette as well, kneaded beneath my fingertips. Rest, rise, and repeat—in a soothing sort of ritual. 

Bread is so earthy and wholesome like that. As Salvador Dalí puts it, ‘Bread has always been one of the oldest subjects of fetishism and obsession in my work, the first and the one to which I have remained the most faithful’. It really is like a universal language. 

And it is so lovely to share the ritual of making dough with our son now, as well. Watching his tiny little fingers explore the textures, so elastic and full of life. Textures that will then transform into crunchy crust and fluffy bread, perfect for mopping up all that lobster bisque. 

Our very last supper of the year. The leftovers of which will then get turned into our very first supper of a brand new year. I really like the cyclical nature of this culinary tradition. Rest and repeat.

…

 
fin.