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Bryan Martin and David Reist's new cookbook Tongue and Cheek hits Canberra

Bryan Martin

Tongue and Cheek by Bryan Martin and David Reist
Tongue and Cheek by Bryan Martin and David Reistactnatasha.rudra

Each week for well over eight years now I have submitted a column about the food to the Canberra Times' Food and Wine magazine. This started as a small, straight-to-the-point attempt to get guys interested in cooking beyond the barbecue. It grew in length as I have the inability to write anything that might be considered concise - in fact I had to look up what that word actually means – and, I also, apparently, overuse commas making sentences a paragraph long. I knew skipping high school English classes would come back to bite at some stage. Sure I learned how to play the guitar and drink coffee but neither of these have really stood me in good stead as I've got older.

Along the way I have tapped into something that surprised me as it happened and continues to this day. That is the wealth of produce that is available in the greater capital region. Just about every week you can unearth another product that someone feels passionate about. The growth of the regional markets, in Canberra and out here at Murrumbateman, has also been a continuing source of inspiration.

When you have great raw produce like grass-fed beef, fat lambs, Murray River cod, south coast oysters, sea urchins, truffles, seasonal fruits and vegetables, plus a huge range of wild game, well the rest is easy.

Steak tartare and accompanying ingredients.
Steak tartare and accompanying ingredients.David Reist
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Once we got photographer David Reist on board to follow me around getting snaps of all this wonderful produce being made, we thought why not put it all in a book.

The first question you have to ask yourself is "Does the world need another cook book?" The bookshops are so full of them, each year hundreds must be released. Well the answer is obviously yes, it does and here is one. However I'd say that this book is more than a delivery method of a range of recipes, it's a journal of life, of living, of all of us getting old together and reminding ourselves that it's OK. There's no plan here, we are not in the fifth decade and thinking that this was the time to crank out a book. It just happened.

The book did take the best part of a year to put together, we haven't any stylists, designers or much experience publishing but we rejoiced in our freedom of ideas for topics and photos. David Reist seems to be able to get a fresh angle of food photography. Sure it might take him a few hours to get that one photo, my image of him, perched over our kitchen bench, photographing a plate of food from all angles until he was happy, is a weekly experience.

Tongue and Cheek by Bryan Martin and David Reist
Tongue and Cheek by Bryan Martin and David ReistDavid Reist

There are around 40 recipes that generally move through the seasons that was 2014. My favourites tend to be the simple dishes, a toasted sandwich full of gruyere cheese and truffles, making ichiban dashi with katsuobushi that you shave yourself, or learning how to make hummus from an Israeli winemaker.

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Our book documents this journey we are on with local produce, cooking and just getting through life with a bit of humour and passion.

Tongue and Cheek by Bryan Martin and David Reist is out now.

Bryan Martin's top 5 tips for cooking

1. Keep an open mind, never say no to anything, no matter how weird it sounds

2. Temperature, use much lower temperatures to cook larger cuts of meat, like down to 80C for roasts. The meat will have more flavour and never dry out

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3. Learn how to make dashi, it's the easiest thing and opens up so many opportunities

4. Make your own sour dough starter, or borrow some from a friend. Your life will change.

5. Raise chooks, there is nothing better than a fresh laid egg, poached on your own bread

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