FB: How would you rate your cooking skills?
EM: I have the perfect marriage. I have a wife who loves to cook and is very good at it and I like to eat. This is embarrassing, but I have rarely cooked anything in my life. I walk through the kitchen, I sniff, I poke and prod and I taste – and then I get told to get out. There is a latent cook in me somewhere.
FB: What don’t or won’t you eat?
EM: I can’t eat the white of an egg, but I can eat scrambled eggs. I cut a poached egg like a surgeon. (Also) cooked cabbage, which – coming from an Irish background – was a problem because I could not physically eat it.
FB: If you could only have one more meal, what would it be?
EM: A plate with foie gras. Risotto with white truffles. A beef dish – medium rare with fresh greens and potatoes … boiled, Heston’s three-times cooked, scalloped … in fact, every potato type known to mankind. Tiramasu for dessert.
FB: What is your favourite food?
EM: Hard question because we are so spoiled with choice. If I had to choose, it would be Italian/French with Asian right in there as well.
FB: What is your favourite drink?
EM: The change in my palate in recent times has seen me pairing wines with different meals. Matching different food types with wines is wonderful fun.
FB: Which five people would you most like to invite to dinner?
EM: Jesus, John F Kennedy, Jock McHale (first coach of Collingwood), William Shakespeare and Thomas Jefferson. Paul Newman as first reserve.
FB: Do you have a kitchen tip for us?
EM: Keep me out of it.
HUMBLE PIE
Recently, I’ve developed a bit of a fascination with pies. Not the Collingwood variety – thanks, Eddie! Not the boxed-up supermarket variety you fish out of the freezer for a quick feed. No, the pies that inspire me are the ones people happen to be churning out in their pie-makers at home. Lately, social media has been serving me up pictures of everything from pie-making appliances to piping hot apple turnovers and hand-made cherry pies. There are entire Facebook threads devoted to popular pie fillings. I’m not sure there’s room in our kitchen for a portable pie-maker (obviously it would have to find room alongside The Starship Enterprise, as we call Kev’s portable pizza oven). But I think I want one. My mum used to have one, and I seem to remember leftover spag bol made an excellent pie filling! For smaller home-made pies that make delicious snacks on the run, the Sunbeam 4210 pie-maker is getting some great reviews. It makes two deep dish pies from one sheet of ready rolled pastry and is a great way to serve up leftover casseroles (think butter chicken or beef strog) or vegies. The non-stick surface gives a crispy, professionally sealed finish and it comes with its own pastry cutter. It’ll set you back about $50.
Listen to the weekly Food Bytes podcast at mypodcasthouse.com. Recent guests include Eddie McGuire, Rebecca Maddern and Shane Jacobson.
