A word from Stephanie Alexander

"my growing belief that despite all the interest in restaurants and ‘fancy food’, we were raising children and young adults with little if any understanding of what to do with fresh food in their daily lives."

If you live in Australia and are interested in food then you will know of Stephanie Alexander. She and Maggie Beer are the queens of Australian cuisine. Well of course there are others, but these two are the most well-known. I'm tempted to say it's because they are both very canny marketers. Mostly though their position at the top of the tree is, I think, due to the influence they have had on what is produced and what is eaten in this country.

Stephanie Alexander began her foodie career (previously she was a librarian - which ought to resonate with me, an ex-librarian), with a small but famous restaurant Jamaica House. I think that's what it was called. She and her then husband ran it. I can't quite remember when or why, but then she opened her own small restaurant - in Brunswick St., Fitzroy perhaps - I'm not quite sure - almost next door to Mietta's first establishment too. I think we went there once and the food was indeed lovely. But then she moved to a large mansion in Hawthorn and became 'posh'. Fine dining was now the thing and I never went there, though I think my husband may have done. Expensive and doubtless wonderful, it was nevertheless not for the common man - or woman.

I'm not quite sure why she closed this down. Maybe she lost money, maybe she had had enough, for her next venture the Richmond Hill Larder was on a smaller more approachable scale, and I may have actually had lunch there once. I have only the vaguest memory of it, and I don't think she actually cooked there much anyway.

At some point in this restaurant career she wrote a number of cookbooks of which I have two - A Shared Table and Cooking & Travelling in South-West France, both of which were combination travel and food books. I actually have a signed copy of the second one because we went to a special dinner at a nearby winery where her book was being promoted and she was signing books. Well how can you resist buying?

But of course, as far as cookery books go she is most famous for the mammoth work The Cook's Companion - a kind of encyclopaedia of ingredients, how to buy and keep them and what to do with them, as well as a very useful lists of what other things go best with the ingredient in hand. It was revised and republished, so I passed on my first one and bought the revision. I dip into it every now and then and there are some recipes of what are now basic things - e.g. pesto and tzatziki - which are my go to recipes. But I actually don't use it as much as I should. And in complete contrast to her earlier books which are glossy coffee table volumes, this one has no pictures - well the occasional arty photo of scenery or produce but not of finished dishes.

And since then her mission in life seems to have been to teach young children the joy of food, through creating kitchen gardens and then cooking the produce. She began in Collingwood and I believe the program has spread to other schools. So she's a bit of a crusader, like Jamie Oliver and she should be admired and praised for that. You can read all about it on her website.

Her latest book is called The Cook's Apprentice and it's aim I believe is to encourage young people to cook. But it has no pictures. Which I believe is a mistake. I have got a copy and will be looking at it in detail shortly, but at first glance I am not impressed. Well I'm sure the content is good but these days if you want to get people in then you need to be visual or have some kind of gimmick - which The Cook's Companion sort of does. I think that book is much more useful - partly because of the arrangement but also because of the very brief little recipes in the margins which are super easy. Tellingly Beverley Sutherland Smith copied the format In one of my very favourite books A Seasonal Kitchen.

I don't know why but I have a slight resistance to Stephanie Alexander. I can't say that her recipes are failures. Those that I have tried have been delicious. I think it's something to do with the general adulation that she gets. And although she says all the right things - you will see from the quotes that follow - somehow she is not a warm personality.

Anyway here are some of her words of wisdom gleaned from the various introductions to her books.

“Sharing food and wine with family and friends is very important to me. Brushing past scented leaves in a garden, looking over a vineyard with the vines glowing gold in autumn sunshine, picking parsley outside the back door, pulling a cork from a bottle of wine, cutting into a ripe cheese, appreciating a wonderful apple, setting out a picnic on a bush table, debating the questions of the universe over a fine wine… all these things seem to me to confirm our humanity and to make me want to live for another day, another meal. In the end, I still believe there is no greater joy than sharing food, conversation and laughter around a table.”

"On the top of my wish list is a desire to make every one of you a lifelong food lover, to enjoy cooking for yourself, your friends, and for your own family without anxiety, and to become a supporter of the very best we have."

"The most significant characteristic of food in Australia is its diversity: our population is diverse, our climate ranges from tropical to cool temperate, and new ingredients or new varieties of old favourites appear regularly."

"Special meals have their ceremonies, small courses are more satisfying than one enormous plate and most important of all, the presence of an interested audience means that success is practically assured for the cook, barring some culinary disaster."

"I believe in encouraging personal style, be it in cookery, painting, writing, or any other craft or art. A recognisable personal style seems to me to be far more stimulating and exciting than attempting to tack onto some 'school' or 'movement' or fashionably identifiable trend. My own personal style is continually evolving and it is based on the totality of my experience, not merely culinary experience."

"I am saddened that there is so much anxiety surround food. Food should be joyful, a pleasure to obtain, to prepare and to share."

"It is more important that young children be raised to enjoy the widest possible range of food, especially fruit and vegetables, and that they experience the pleasure and satisfaction of preparing it, than that everything they eat be certified organic.

I start not get anxious when claims are made that organically produced food necessarily tastes better than conventionally produced food. There are responsible farmers on both sides of the fence, just as there are no doubt less careful farmers on both sides of the fence."

"I am still frequently asked what constitutes Australian cuisine. My answer is: diversity and energy."

And incidentally The Cook's Companion, which is subtitled "the complete book of ingredients and recipes for the Australian kitchen" has been sold around the world and appears on many 'best cookbooks of all time' lists. I think I would agree that every kitchen should have a copy. Really you probably don't need anything else. But then you could say that of a number of books.