Newsletter: 🧑‍🍳 Remembering Australian culinary legend Tony Bilson + Afternoon Tea Week treats 🫖

Our favorite sweetcorn recipes 🌽

Tony Bilson – ‘the godfather of Australian cuisine’

“His influence on the Australian food scene was profound. He helped shape the way we eat today, through his own cooking and the ongoing influence of the generation of chefs he trained and mentored.”

Roberta Muir on Tony Bilson

With the arrival on your ckbk bookshelves of two important books by Australian culinary giant Tony Bilson, we asked food writer and chronicler of the Australian food scene, Roberta Muir to write a profile of the late Tony Bilson.

Roberta takes us through the great restaurants, and great dishes, that made up this chef's remarkable career.

Muir's profile gives us a whistlestop tour of the life of a chef whose childhood vocation blossomed into a flourishing career at the stoves, taking him to the forefront of Modern Australian cuisine, where he developed a style which took his beloved French cooking in uniquely Australian directions. Roberta’s feature is packed with standout recipes – a list of culinary greatest hits .

Tony Bilson’s Recipe Book, published in 1987, was the great chef’s first cookbook. It documents how French cuisine influenced him and includes recipes to bring these dishes to the domestic kitchen.

Try his Scallops with Hot Vinaigrette, or bake a batch of delicate Almond Tuiles.

In the updated Murdoch Books edition of Bilson's 1994 classic Fine Family Cooking, 250 recipes are ordered by subject – The Cheese Shop, The Pâtisserie, The Delicatessen. The wealth of ideas in each section run from basic recipes to finished specialities.

So you can create a Crème Anglaise, and then use that to make a Honey Ice Cream. Or check out The Wine Merchant (Bilson's guide to choosing good wine and matching it with food) and then make a Sauternes Ice Cream, perhaps to serve after Chicken in Riesling.

Feel like staying on in Oz for more culinary adventures? Check out our Australia Bookshelf.

Read Roberta's profile of Chef Tony Bilson

Pictured above: Steamed Mussels with Sauce Poulette from Fine Family Cooking by Tony Bilson

It's Time for Tea

Afternoon Tea Week, that annual celebration of the least necessary and most fun meal of the day, runs August 12-18. The fashion for afternoon tea began in the mid 1800s and follows the habit of the seventh Duchess of Bedford, who used to get peckish between lunch and supper. Nowadays it is a popular luxury, enjoyed across the British Isles, by locals and visitors alike.

To partake of a real afternoon tea, you would begin with sandwiches and savories, then move on to small cakes and patisserie, rounding off with scones, served with clotted cream and jam. And, of course, you will be drinking fine leaf tea. While going out for tea is an indulgence worth enjoying, preparing your own at home will give you full control of the menu, and ensure your delicacies taste as good as they look. We have several collections of recipes to help.

Sandwiches can be anything you like. But Cucumber Sandwiches are non-negotiable. No one would complain if you threw in a Sausage Roll – just make then a daintier size. Bake any of these Mini Cakes for Afternoon Tea. Stay on theme with Earl Grey Tea Fairy Cakes, or try these Meringue-Topped Cupcakes with Lemon & Raspberry Filling.

Look no further for Scrumptious Scones. Rich Fruit Scones are traditional, and often served alongside Plain Scones. Enjoy your tea!

Find 60 recipes in The Official Downton Abbey Afternoon Tea Cookbook

Ingredient focus: sweetcorn

Sweetcorn is the name often given to sweet varieties of maize, a grass crop whose large seed heads are suitable for human consumption. One of the most important crops in the world, and of central importance to Aztec and Maya populations in early Central America, corn is naturally less protein-rich than wheat or rice.

Naturally sweet, with small crisp kernels that are tender when boiled or steamed, sweetcorn is understandably a popular food for all ages. Other, less sweet varieties of corn can be dried and used for popcorn, or ground to create cornmeals such as masa and polenta – key ingredients in Mexican and Italian cooking, respectively.

But much of it is eaten as corn-on-the cob, the fashionable ‘corn ribs’ – try these Lip-Smacking Corn Ribs with Green Chilli Mayo – or removed from the cob as sweetcorn kernels.

Try Halloumi and Sweetcorn Fritters, Creamy Sweetcorn Chowder, or any of these 12 Ways with Sweetcorn.

6 of the best recipes with rum

Rum brings warmth and depth to dishes both sweet and savory. With National Rum Day on August 16, we bring you lots of ways to Cook with Rum, and an extra half-dozen here.