Recipes

Braised gentle, glazed loud — the rib pack in its dinner-party clothes

Tamarind is the flavour plenty of us have eaten a hundred times without ever naming — that sweet-sour note running through pad thai and a proper massaman. Here it gets top billing. The ribs braise first, low and gentle, in a pot scented with ginger, lemongrass and star anise until they're tender to the bone. Then the glaze takes over: tamarind, palm sugar and fish sauce reduced to a lacquer and brushed on in a hot oven until the ribs come out dark, sticky and glistening. A weekend cook in two unhurried acts.

The pub classic, without leaving the house

There's a reason steak, chips and salad has never come off a pub menu anywhere in Australia. It works. And the steak the pubs reach for is usually rump — big flavour, honest price, and at 320g it splits between two for a proper plate each. This is the no-thinking Friday ritual: chips in the oven, one screaming-hot grill pan, a salad you could make with your eyes closed. The only skill involved is patience at the end, because rump rewards a long rest like no other steak. No booking required.

The Italian trick for making one great steak look like generosity itself

The Italians worked out the single-good-steak problem generations ago, and their answer was tagliata — literally "sliced". One marbled steak, seared hard and kept rare, rested properly, then carved thin and fanned across a platter of peppery rocket with parmesan and your best olive oil over the top. It lands in the middle of the table looking like abundance, and it came from one 280g scotch fillet. Thirty minutes, most of which is the steak quietly resting while you pour yourself something.

A pantry raid tonight, a pasta sauce tomorrow

Every ingredient in this one is either in your pantry right now or lasts for months in it — a bottle of passata, dried herbs, an onion, a spoon of sugar. The shanks go in raw, the sauce goes over the top, and eight hours later you've got lamb sliding off the bone in a rich tomato sugo that tastes like it simmered on an Italian nonna's stove all day. Which, in a way, it did. The bonus round: whatever sauce is left becomes tomorrow night's pasta dinner, and it might be the better meal of the two.

The whole roast dinner on one tray — no saucepan orchestra required

The traditional roast dinner has a staffing problem: four pots going at once and a cook who never sits down. This version sacks the saucepans. Potatoes, pumpkin and red onion go onto your biggest tray, the lamb sits right on top of them, and everything roasts together in one oven window — the vegetables catching every drop the lamb lets go, which is the best seasoning they'll ever get. One tray in, one tray out, and one very short washing-up list. The roast dinner, minus the roster.

Low oven, sticky glaze, no barbecue and no experience required

Lamb ribs are the cut people walk straight past at the counter, and I've never understood it. There's more flavour in a rib rack than in cuts three times the price — it just asks for time. So here's the honest deal: two quiet hours in a low oven while the fat renders and the meat goes tender, then a barbecue glaze and fifteen loud minutes of high heat. Three steps, one tray, and the kind of sticky fingers that make a Tuesday feel like a Saturday. The oven does the work. You do about ten minutes of it.

The classic French spring stew — chops braised until tender, then baby vegetables added late so they stay bright

Navarin is spring on a plate, the dish French cooks make when the first young vegetables arrive. It's peasant cooking with a light touch — chops browned and braised in a glossy tomato-flecked broth until yielding, then baby carrots, turnips and peas dropped in near the end so they keep their colour and bite. Nothing here is difficult, but the sequence matters, and that's what makes it feel like a proper project. Serve it in shallow bowls with bread for the broth. It's the sort of dinner that turns an ordinary night into an occasion.

Blushing pink from edge to edge, with potatoes that shatter

This is the considered version of roast beef — the one where you trade speed for certainty. Seared hard for a crust, then roasted at a whisper-low 120°C, the 1.4kg roast from your share cooks so gently that it ends up the same rosy pink from the first slice to the centre, with none of the grey band a hot oven leaves behind. While it rests, the oven roars back to life for properly crispy potatoes, and a sharp horseradish cream gets stirred together in two minutes. It's a long afternoon's roast that's almost impossible to overshoot.

Three hundred years of cold-weather wisdom in one pot

If the lamb bones add-on was invented for any single dish, it's this one. Scotch broth is what crofting families built out of mutton bones, barley and whatever the garden gave up — a soup so established that it's been warming people since before Australia had a name. Nothing about it is fancy and everything about it works: the bones make the broth, the barley thickens it, the vegetables sweeten it, and after two unhurried hours you've got the kind of pot that makes a cold Tuesday feel like an occasion. Bread and butter are not optional.