Life balance a dream for crazy-busy cook

MY next challenge is to find balance but I’m a very slow learner as I’m nearly 73 and haven’t found it yet.

Maggie Beer at her Pheasant Farm Restaurant in Nuriootpa, South Australia. Picture: Matt Turner.

Beer left school aged 14 and worked in odd jobs including as a lift operator in New Zealand and geophysicist’s assistant in Libya. She has no formal training as a chef but after she and husband Colin relocated from Sydney to South Australia’s Barossa Valley in 1979 and opened the Farm Shop, she has run restaurants, a food production business (making ice cream, quince paste, verjuice, etcetera), written multiple cookbooks and co-hosted several television programs including The Cook and The Chef on the ABC and The Great Australian Cookbook and The Great Australian Bake Off, currently airing on Foxtel. The Maggie Beer Foundation also launched in 2014 to talk up the importance of nutritious food in aged care facilities.

I grew up in … the western suburbs of Sydney; it was Lakemba but it’s Greenacre now.

A vivid childhood food memory is … The most vivid is Christmas Day; we had nothing but an icebox and the ice man came on Christmas morning. It was always a feast, with the family and other people who didn’t have anywhere to go. The table was on the back veranda and we had the Coolgardie safe to cool things down. It was very simple but very beautiful. We always had poultry; my uncle had a farm and raised geese and we had chooks we raised ourselves and we had ham that mum cooked in the boiler where she washed the clothes.

My first job was … as a receptionist at Jeldi Manufacturing in (western Sydney’s) Bankstown; they made chenille bedspreads.

The word that best describes me is … frenetic.

I relax by … music mostly, singing, reading and cooking. I sing in a choir every week. I try to ­arrange my week so I’m never away from home on Wednesday night, which is when we meet.

A band/singer whose music I’m really enjoying at the moment is … Charmaine Jones and the Gospo Collective. My choir performed with them at ­Carols by Candlelight at Christmas.

The question I’m most often asked is … There are two: people are always asking me when I’m going to retire. Never is the answer, there’s too much to do. Or they ask me, do you really cook from scratch every night? The answer is, of course.

A favourite produce item I use in summer is … tomatoes; I have 12 tomato plants just for Colin and me.

A regular weeknight meal I’m cooking now is ... I’ve still got the last of the broad beans, so a very quick meal would be to use them with some wholemeal pasta, ricotta, olive oil and basil.

A go-to dish for summer entertaining is … I love a whole ocean trout that I smoke over the barbecue with orange pekoe tea. It’s really simple; you can add a stuffing if you like. It’s in one of my cookbooks, though I can’t remember which one.

A new year resolution is … it’s always not to overcram my diary.

My next challenge is to … find balance. I am a very slow learner as I’m nearly 73 and haven’t found it yet. It is my challenge. It’s tied to my new year’s resolution.

My last meal would be … sea urchins, eaten with champagne, which would have to be a demi-sec (medium dry).

The point of life is … having purpose and being connected by friends and community.

The third season of The Great Australian Bake Off is on Foxtel’s Lifestyle channel, Thursdays at 8.30pm; also in Foxtel’s on-demand library or streamed on Foxtel Now