We love the butter made at Inglenook Dairy, just outside of Ballarat. It’s fresh, tasty, luscious, and so delicious. We love pimping the butter and adding different flavours to make it taste even better and putting it on top of a freshly grilled steak.
Read MoreA rich green pasta sauce made with fresh broccoli and enriched with butter and anchovies covers these lovely ‘little ears’ of pasta or orecchiette. We’re using Giuseppe Pasta from Italy. It is made by a family passionate about pasta and who still use bronze dies, or shaped nozzles, to extrude their pasta. This gives a rougher surface so more sauce can cling to the pasta. You can remove the butter and anchovies if you want a vegan version. You can add capers and even use stock to add more body and flavour to the sauce.
Read MoreSpring lamb cutlets are so sweet and tender and just need a salad to accompany them. This is a quick, warm salad of Israeli couscous and is more a concept than a recipe. We’ve added red pepper, parsley, and mint but you can use your imagination and add ingredients like Spanish onion, tiny cubes of watermelon, crumbled feta, diced tomato.
Read MoreI love yum cha and one of my favourites are those little bowls of steamed spare ribs. Blake Family Grocers has all the ingredients to make these fun, tasty, and easy to make version of the Cantonese classic.
Read MoreThis is the dish when you want comfort food and don’t really feel like cooking. You put all the ingredients for the sauce in a pot, cook it until the cheese melts into a gooey sauce then pour it over fresh gnocchi. We love hand salted Arrigoni Taleggio from the north of Italy. Made to a traditional recipe it is luscious, washed-rind cheese with an apricot-coloured rind and an aromatic interior. As it gets older, it gets those well-known ‘smelly cheese’ notes. Great for the cheese board, baguettes, and toasties - here we are mixing it with prosciutto and a little cream to make a very moreish sauce.
Read MoreWe couldn't resist coming up with a great banging dish to showcase Mimi's Laphet fermented tea dressing. This is the classic Bang Bang Chicken – named for the sound of the mallet pounding out the chicken – something we don’t need to do with our tender chicken. It is so delicious and easy to make AND it’s healthy!
Read MorePies are easy with Carême Pastry. This light and delicious puff pastry from the Barossa Valley just needs thawing, unrolling, and cutting. Serve with a mixed leaf salad and a good French-style chardonnay or local pinot noir.
Read MoreSome of us are old enough to remember The Brady Bunch TV show when Alice, the housekeeper, would declare she was making pork chops and apple sauce for dinner. This is a simple and delicious sauce made from baked apples served with your choice of pork cut and some sensational baked potatoes.
Read MoreRecently Jock Zonfrillo came into Blake Family Grocers and asked how to cook our beautiful little baby heirloom pumpkins. One of our staff can’t get Masterchef on her TV at home and did not know that he is one of the judges. She gave him a raft of recipes and he was so very polite. This is one of our favourites. (You can replace the butter and cheese for olive oil and dairy-free cheese for a tasty vegan version.)
Read MoreEveryone’s comfort food! Here is a quick recipe for piping hot mac and cheese that is way better than anything you would find in a packet. Come into Blake Family Grocers and check out our range of local and imported cheeses. This is a great dish and an amazing crowd-pleaser.
Read MoreA tasty and easy fish pie to make for Easter or any time of the year. You can use any shellfish and white fish you can get your hands on. We have a great selection of fresh fish every day at Blake Family Grocers as well along with the beautiful premium all-butter pastry from Carême.
Read MoreIf you have never had Kassler, try one of these. They are brined and smoked pork chops originally from Germany. When they come from Oakwood Smokehouse in Castlemaine, you know they are made from free-range and old breed pork.
Read MoreThis is an amazingly quick meal for two that looks sensational. We use Luv-A-Duck pre-cooked duck breast. They are packed with a load of their own jellied juices that make the perfect sauce! This is a great dish served with Blue Pyrenees rosé or even a Passing Clouds pinot noir.
Read MoreA good tortilla should be rich, slightly wet, and tasting of good potatoes and quality eggs. We stock the best local Daylesford potatoes so you can’t go wrong there. Try using Honest Eggs. They are laid by chooks happily running around green paddocks locally, foraging for bugs and eating grass and grain protected by trusty Maremma flock dogs. This recipe takes a little time to perfect, but the secret is to help form the shape of the edges of the tortilla as the edges begin to cook.
Read MoreWe love Daylesford Cider. It is made by people who understand what a great cider should taste like. They grow the apple trees, harvest, crush and ferment the apples into cider that is reminiscent of the West Country of England but is distinctively a product of these rich volcanic soils. We also grow the best pork in the nation in this region. This hearty dish marries the two: pork and cider. You can use any cut with a good covering of skin, but it is best with shoulder.
Read MoreThis luxurious creamy risotto is perfect for late Autumn evenings and well into the winter months.
Read MoreThe beetroots from Captain’s Creek Organics are so full of colour and flavour you can grate them raw and add them to a salad. But by cooking them you help transform some of the starch into sugar making them a little sweeter and less earthy.
Read MoreThe perfect way to make use of the late summer, early autumn bounty of ripe tomatoes. A time when the days are still warm and the nights long, when BBQs are firing up and there are chops and steaks on the grill.
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