Short course (or 2) in replicating Australian culinary legends

I’ve never been much cop in the kitchen. It is a room I rarely enter, except to procure something instantly edible.

My one attempt at haute cuisine, an ambitious and ill-fated bid to cook a souffle, was an unmitigated disaster and has been chronicled on this page previously. Picture Chris Kidd

I’ve never been much cop in the kitchen. It is a room I rarely enter, except to procure something instantly edible from the fridge. I’m an expert at eating ice cream straight from the tub, or hacking off a great hunk of cheese to be gnawed at like some giant rat, and I’ve been known to shove two bits of bread in the toaster and smear some peanut butter across them, but that’s where my culinary skills begin and end.

My one attempt at haute cuisine, an ambitious and ill-fated bid to cook a souffle, was an unmitigated disaster and has been chronicled on this page previously. An old friend, who would effortlessly construct curries that would turn Madhur Jaffrey greener than a mutter paneer, expressed surprise when I mentioned I’d be road testing new cookbooks from the superchef stratosphere. “I thought two-minute noodles were more your speed,” he scoffed.

Having recently reviewed some fancy cookbooks as a “layman”, which is journalese for “completely useless imbecile in the kitchen”, I thought it would be a lark to try to replicate some of the dishes described in all their complex, food-pornographic glory in tomes that would stop a dunny door banging in a force 10 gale.

So it was that I found myself bound to a promise to whip up a three-course dinner for a friend with a course each from three cookbooks by genuine Australian culinary legends, to wit: Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Table; Good Cooking by recently minted squillionaire and Rockpool luminary Neil Perry, a man who knows a skillet from a skullet and an oxtail from a ponytail, and the ethical carnivore’s guide to guilt-free dining, For the Love of Meat, by Matthew Evans and Friends (friends, presumably, referring to his furry, four-legged chums who end up drawn, quartered, chopped, sliced, diced, roasted, fried, fricasseed and sous-vided, snout to tail, in the nicest possible way).

The first dish in this folie a deux comes from the glossy pages of Perry: Scampi crudo with orange, pistachio and mint, which apparently flies out the door at Perry’s Melbourne restaurant Rosetta. I am running too late to swing by Sydney’s Fish Market in the city’s inner west, so I settle for the fish shop outside Coles. First setback — a shortage of scampi. I figured it won’t make much difference to come the raw prawn, so I procure a bag of green butterfly shrimp.

As instructed, I peel the orange with a sharp knife, removing most of the pith and a small portion of one digit. (Remove all, the great Perry thunders, but he must be taking the pith). I shell and devein, and from there, the instructions are more or less idiot-proof. Cut in half and arrange on a platter (his are artistically and no doubt artisanally random, I opt for a slightly contrived anticlockwise spiral), season with sea salt and black pepper, drizzle with olive oil, add the orange segments, mint and pistachios (an outrageous $40 a kilo shelled, more expensive than the prawns) and serve immediately. Second setback — my friend reminds me she’s allergic to prawns, so I scoff the lot while she watches.

On to the main course, basically a culinary exercise for dummies, to wit, cooking a steak. For this I turn, of course, to Evans. The book is something of a scream, from its extreme close-up of a cowskin frontispiece to its upfront pictures of oh-so-cute critters destined to be fritters. Every time I opened it I began to hum Morrissey’s hectoring vegetarian dirge, Meat is Murder.

The recipe is Steak tagliata, which means “sliced” in Italian and would be traditionally served with rocket and parmesan. I improvise, adding some strawberries.

The steak is a triumph. Or at least mine is, a perfect medium rare, pink and succulent, if not fancifully fried. My friend insists on hers well done, a culinary crime that would have most chefs cursing in their toques blanches.

Dessert was to be whipped up from the great Alexander’s oh-so-organised instructions: Brown sugar meringues with salted caramel cream. It sounds exquisite. But we are both so sated by the steak, and I am so exhausted by my efforts, that we agree on a raincheck.

Stephanie is always banging on about efficiency, regaling us with lists and timelines. What could be more efficient than not bothering in the first place? As the great gastronome Meat Loaf once said: “Two out of three ain’t bad.”