NICOLE CONDOS, SINGER AND DJ
FB: How would you rate your cooking skills?
NC: If you can read, you can cook. I am not too adventurous and prefer traditional recipes – I have confidence in the classics!
FB: What is your signature dish?
NC: Roast lamb and potatoes.
FB: If you could only have one more meal, what would it be?
NC: As I have a Greek background, multiple courses and sharing plates is what it is all about! Dishes would include homemade yoghurt and eggplant dips and bread, grilled haloumi, sheftalies (Cypriot sausages), grilled octopus, Greek salad, marinated olives, slow-cooked oven-roasted lamb and potatoes. If there’s any room left, loukoumades for dessert – Greek donuts drizzled with hot honey syrup, sprinkled with cinnamon and garnished with chopped walnuts.
FB: What is your favourite TV food show and who is your favourite TV food person?
NC: While Anthony Bourdain and Gordon Ramsay are entertaining to watch, My Greek Kitchen, hosted by Tonia Buxton, is my favourite.
FB: What is your favourite food?
NC: I love Italian, Greek and Middle Eastern cuisines, but – in particular – I am a Nutella lover.
FB: What is your favourite drink?
NC: Fresh coconut water.
FB: Which five people would you most like to invite to dinner?
NC: Coming from a big family, I am not used to just five people at a low key dinner, so I would have to sneak in a few extra guests – Madonna, Gary Ablett Snr, Anna Vissi, George Michael, Princess Diana, Tupac, Gianni Versace, Arianna Huffington and Roger Federer.
FB: Do you have a kitchen tip for us?
NC: Feed the ones you love and cook what you love to eat!
WHERE’S THE CHEESE?
I’ve noticed quite a trend towards vegan cuisine. Yet while I greatly admire the principles of my vegan friends, there’s one thing I can’t imagine cutting out of my life – cheese. And by that I mean real cheese. In fact, I’d cut meat from my diet before I’d cut cheese.
Cheese has long been a celebratory part of my life. In my younger days, I fondly remember my flatmates and I enjoying our weekly “Cheeses Of The World” day, for which I would assemble the world’s biggest cheese platter … a rustic-looking, heavy-handed affair boasting as many international cheeses as we could lay our hands on at the local Woolworths deli counter. We’d sit around drinking cask wine and gorging ourselves on Dutch smoked cheddar.
On a recent trip to Gippsland, my hubby and I enjoyed a rather more refined and creative ploughman’s platter at Prom Country Cheese. We were treated to the Cheviot, a mature, tangy, semi-hard sheep’s milk cheese with a mild, piquant flavour, and the gold-medal winning Prom Picnic, a mild, semi-hard pecorino cheese that teams beautifully with apple and pear.
When assembling your own cheese platter, there are a few things to remember. Don’t crowd the platter. Leave enough room between the cheeses so that guests don’t accidentally stick their hands into the aged cheddar when they’re trying to cut themselves a wedge of brie.
Keep it simple – go for one or two really special cheeses, as opposed to half a dozen ordinary ones. You don’t need to go overboard with accompaniments … some dried fruit and nuts or some generous strips of prosciutto will suffice. Go for a few different textures and provide different knives for different cheeses – or they’ll all end up tasting the same!
