Dish with Kate Gibbs - a cooking podcast

Dish with Kate Gibbs is a unique, candid, inspiring and on-point cooking podcast that brings together food experts and all types of home cooks from around Australia and the world. DISH is a conversation around the kitchen table, talking whole food, simple but beautiful everyday cooking, the people who love to cook and love to eat; with real-life, raw examples from the kitchens of our best loved chefs and food experts, as well as inspiring people from all kinds of industries - think actors, authors, politicians - mixed with how-to advice, tips and tricks, stories and inspiration for those of us who want to make our own dinner tables more delicious. Dish will empower every one of us who loves to eat, who maybe wants to raise the bar on our own food, and bring our people to the table.

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Hello! This is Dish, a cooking podcast set in Sydney, Australia - I’m Kate Gibbs your host. Today the writer and MasterChef Australia judge Melissa Leong joins me on the show.

I should preface this episode with an explanation that we refer a lot to Melissa’s Instagram profile, simply because it’s so inspiring from a food angle and such a clear perspective of what Melissa eats and how she cooks. So when we talk about her homemade hash, her “fridge dive dinners” or her “put on egg on everything” ideas, just take a peek at her Instagram grid and you’ll get what we mean.

Melissa Leong co-hosted The Chefs' Line with chefs Dan Hong and Mark Olive for two seasons in 2017, and 2018. As of 2020, Leong is one of the new judges for MasterChef Australia, alongside Jock Zonfrillo and Andy Allen. And I’m so happy to finally get her on the podcast.

She’s the epitome of style and class and what looks like the good life, but in this episode Melissa goes into up-cycling leftovers, a recurring theme of her own cooking (and her Instagram feed). If she can inspire people to give it a go via her Instagram page then that’s a good thing, she says.

Her top tip for the fridge dive dinners: “when in doubt, throw an egg on it”. Melissa talks about her hash - a melange of flavours that’s always great to eat and at the least a very indulgent breakfast. Her breakfasts are usually savoury, but she admits she loves a porridge with lots of bits in it.

Melissa, who tells me she has autoimmune issues, talks about how she balances indulgence with doing good things for her insides. The way we feel is directly impacted by what we put in our body, she says. She shares the way she reboots, what she eats and just as importantly what she doesn’t eat. She eats intuitively and eats as many whole foods as she can, and she tried to find harmony with her body and what she puts in it.

Melissa is often asked what she would cook the other MasterChef judges, she says, and she goes into how she navigates being around other amazing cooks. She cooks simply and focuses on flavour and texture. There are top chefs out there, but Melissa’s cooking is proud, packed with flavour, and always presented with pride.

A discerning and intrepid traveller, Melissa is a regular contributor to various food and travel magazines - and we met for the first time years ago while both contributing to Australia’s delicious. magazine. We talk about where we want to travel next, covering Singapore and Europe, deep diving on what we would eat for breakfast when we finally get there.

Heritage and the handing of recipes through the generations has long been a passion for me, and Melissa is also passionate about it. We talk about the layers each generation adds to a recipe, the power of cooking with family, and making recipes our own.

It’s refreshing and enlightening speaking with Melissa. She’s intelligent, graceful, and I loved this episode. I hope you do as well. Enjoy.

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Welcome to episode 5 of Dish with Kate Gibbs, a cooking podcast. In this episode Kate and her mum Suzanne Gibbs ponder whether, and why, mum's food really does taste better, and how to raise unfussy kids - with some really practical tips.

Suzanne goes into her wooing prowess in her younger years, and the power of cooking to win the heart of your amour. Fresh from entertaining for friends post rigorous isolation in Sydney, Suzanne tells us about a perfect fish soup, tempura-style vegetables, and what inspires her cooking. A London Cordon Bleu-trained cook, Suzanne gets into the minutia of how she cooks at home. Making no-knead bread, how to use up a two kilogram portion of ricotta, how she's been inspired by travel as well as her mum (and Kate's grandmother Margaret Fulton), it's all covered in this candid episode, recorded in Suzanne's mum and Kate's grandmother Margaret Fulton's sitting room in Sydney. Suzanne talks about the joy of entertaining (after isolation) and the importance of praising the cook. Join us as we delve deep into our favourite subject: food and cooking. Follow us on Instagram @kategibbs

Suzanne Gibbs, aka Kate Gibbs' mother, is a London Cordon Bleu-trained cook, author of twenty-something cookbooks including The Thrifty Kitchen (co-authored with Kate Gibbs, Penguin Books (Lantern)), and daughter of Margaret Fulton.

www.kategibbs.com

https://kategibbs.com/dish-podcast-episodes

Herbie's Spices: https://www.herbies.com.au/

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In this first episode of Dish with Kate Gibbs, former MasterChef Australia judge Matt Preston reflects on how he's cooking now, during this strange time of isolation and eating at home more often. He talks about the power of vegetables, naming baked potatoes and sour cream, sweet potato skins, window boxes filled with herbs, bringing forgotten vegetables back, a vegetable tray bake he loves, and his essential gadgets in his kitchen. Matt Preston gives his tips for feeding vegetarians, but also carnivores who want to eat more veg. Download the episode show notes and recipes at www.kategibbs.com

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Hello and welcome back to Dish, I’m your host Kate Gibbs. You can find me, my recipes and more of these episodes on my website kategibbs.com

Australia has a difficult relationship with fire - it has ravaged our landscape in recent years, destroying homes and lives, and yet it is a principal means by which we connect with each other food. The humble barbecue is one of our favourite pastimes, and while we’ve mastered the techniques in recent years, no longer blackening steaks into dried inedibles as we once did, it’s rare to find an Australian home without a barbecue in the backyard or balcony.

My guest today is the master of barbecue, and fire. Lennox Hastie starred in an entire episode of the celebrated Netflix documentary Chef’s Table earlier this year and his restaurant Firedoor in Sydney’s Surry Hills has (outside lockdown) a waiting list of up to eight months for a table.

Fire has taken centre stage throughout Lennox’s career - he moved from his English hometown in West Sussex to Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe, pintxos bars in Spain and an apprenticeship of sorts at the fire-powered restaurant, Asador Etxebarri.

But he’s here to talk to us about how we can use fire, and why we should. He tells us his tips for cooking over fire, why the quality of ingredients matter, and even explains how to do a no-frills, DIY outdoor barbecue at home. He talks about the important and practicalities of involving children in cooking, and how he helps his own son connect with the food he eats.

We talk using smoke and wood and flames, and why now is the best time to cook outside, at least in Australia, before the real heat of summer arrives. He gives us some of his favourite recipes for home, and how he does dinner at home. This is a practical but also insightful conversation about how we can eat now, how to reconnect with the food and create a community despite lockdowns and physical separation.

I hope you enjoy this episode with Lennox Hastie. Here he is.

Episode links:

Firedoor, Sydney

Firedoor Instagram

Kate Gibbs Instagram

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