DO MEN COOK DIFFERENTLY TO WOMEN?

So many variables in that, I'll let you decide. But here is Terry’s lamb and carrot stew, a recipe pulled together from memory, marriage, instinct, preference, experience and red wine.

When Terry cooks, it’s a project, a mission, with a beginning, middle and end.

The beginning is throwing himself into finding a recipe, which may or may not start with one of mine, then go to google, then to the book shelf, until there are cook books strewn all over the table.

The middle usually gets a little messy.

The end is always a fabulous dinner that makes you reach for that glass of wine and propose a toast.

What I really like about his cooking is that the depth of flavour is positively Jules Verne. Leagues of it. You could get the bends. Not hit-with-a-truck stuff, just layers of aromatics and flavonoids that make you go mmmmm.

Take this lamb stew. There is red wine and garlic and tomato passato and tomato paste and anchovies.  There’s a base of onion and celery and carrot, only two of which are still visible at the end of three hours cooking. The onion has melted into the sauce, giving up its almost-too-sweet sweetness.

It started with a recipe of mine inspired by Tuscan peposo, in which I throw everything into the pot and leave it to turn into something fabulous on its own while I go about my business.  That is The Jill Way. That is not The Terry Way.

Then last week, when I ladled his leftover lamb stew on top of my baked potatoes, it became A Thing. Some of you even asked for the recipe for the lamb stew, as if it were more important than the baked potato. Hmmph. So for you, I just interviewed him, got the recipe, and gleaned the following.

# Terry’s stews always have a silkiness about them because he refuses to skip the step of dredging the meat in flour and browning it.  Like, really browning it. Just that small amount of flour seems to pull the whole thing together. Not thick, not thin.

# He always grabs a few strong herbs and ties them tightly with kitchen string as a bouquet garni. Let’s say two sprigs rosemary, a clutch of parsley stalks, a few sage leaves, a few thyme sprigs. Plus a few bay leaves get thrown in separately.

# I don’t think Terry has ever added water to a stew. I’m often okay for water to be the thing that gets infused with everything else and turned into a sauce, but not him. Has to be chicken stock.

# Once it’s all put together and cooking away, he doesn’t worry about it. He doesn’t poke at it or turn things over or turn it around. His work here is done.

#  He’s quite laissez-faire about fat. “You need fat” he says. Even so, he’ll give the stew the overnight test in the fridge so he can scrape off a fair amount of the fat in the morning. Or if there’s too much liquid, , he’ll drain it off, reduce it by boiling, cool it, let it set in the fridge, and skim off most, but not all the fat before returning it to the meat and veg.

# Herbs are big.  Not only is there the bouquet garni, but fresh herbs – always flat-leaf parsley – get roughly chopped and put in about 10 minutes towards the end. He says they do more good in, than on. Not a great one for a gratuitous garnish, our Tez. If you see parsley on top of anything here, it’s because I put it there.

That’s the short answer to the question posed by the title. We all bring ourselves to our cooking, whoever we are. It’s an extension of ourselves, put on the table for all to enjoy. Treat this, then, as an invitation to make your cooking more you.

TERRY’S LAMB AND CARROT STEW

The swede makes an interesting turnip-like addition. It started as a random thing because there was one in the crisper, now he has to have swede in his stew every time.

• 1 kg lamb shoulder meat, boned

• 3 tbsp plain flour seasoned with salt, pepper and dried oregano

• 2 tbsp oil for browning meat

• 2 onions, halved and roughly sliced

• 3 celery stalks, chopped

• 3 carrots, peeled and cut into thickish rounds

• 1 swede, peeled and chopped

• 400 ml red wine of choice

• 4 garlic cloves, grated

• 4 anchovy fillets

• 100 ml tomato passato or sugo

• 2 tbsp tomato paste

• sea salt and coarsely ground black pepper

• 2 bay leaves

• 400 ml chicken stock

• Handful of parsley, roughly chopped

Herbs for cooking: 2 rosemary sprigs, some parsley stalks, some sage leaves, some thyme sprigs, tied tightly with string. Sometimes he wraps them first in muslin.

Heat the oven to 150C.

Cut the lamb into largeish chunks (bigger than bite-sized, because they will shrink by almost half), and toss lightly in the seasoned flour.

Heat the oil and fry the lamb a few pieces at a time until really nice and brown and crusty. Transfer to a plate.

Add a little extra oil if necessary and cook down the onions for 5 minutes.

Add the carrot, swede and celery and cook down until softened, about 10 mins.

Add the red wine and let it reduce by about half, to make it more intense.

Add the garlic and anchovy, tomato passato, tomato paste and bay leaves, with sea salt and black pepper to taste (I suspect he is generous with both).

Place meat and veg in a large casserole dish, and add the chicken stock to just cover the meat.

Bring just to the boil on the stove, then transfer to the oven and cook, covered, for three hours.

Fold through a shitload of chopped parsley towards the end of cooking.

Serve with mashed potato or beans, polenta or risoni. But it’s always mash.

Serves 4.

And here’s a good idea for the left-overs the next night.

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Special thanks to my right-hand man, Terry Durack, for making the lamb stew in the first place, and then for making it AGAIN because I, um, didn’t get a pic of the first one.

I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I fully support the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to be enshrined in Australia’s Constitution.

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It’s NAIDOC Week this week (3-10 July), and here’s a quick explanation of what that means and what you can do to support it, from Business Chicks. Maybe find out what land you live on. It’s a good week in which to set aside a few minutes to think about the Statement from the Heart. If you’re agreeable, add your name to the canvas to show your support. As Narelda Jacobs said to Ben Pobje this week: “Just read it and sit with it. Just acquaint yourself with it. It’s an invitation to the Australian public, that’s all it is. And it just gives First Nations people a voice in parliament, to be able to contribute and advise on policies that impact them. That’s all it is.”