Matt Perger is the go-to guy for coffee in Melbourne.
Salvatore Malatesta calls Perger his "coffee consigliere" only half-jokingly (head of coffee at St Ali is another title that gets tossed around), and he has won nearly every barista comp that's worth winning: Australian Barista Championship, World Brewers Cup for filter coffee, World Coffee in Good Spirits championship (a coffee cocktail thing), as well as finishing a very close second in last year's World Barista Championship.
Apart from running the coffee experiments at St Ali, Perger maintains a blog at mattperger.com, where the hard-core go for his ruminations on the science and art of brewing the perfect cup.
My pantry I try to eat quite paleo so coconut oil is good on that kind of diet. It's also great for crisping things up and getting a bit of caramelisation on the outside of food when it comes out of the sous-vide machine. I've also got a heap of different dried chillies, onion and garlic powder for deep south cooking. St Ali makes its own Bastard Hot Sauce, which I put on everything – it's awesome.
My fridge My fridge is huge and usually holds as many cuts of pork as it can fit. I get my dry-cured bacon from Skinner and Hackett in Melbourne, which I like because it's really fatty. I fell in love with 36-month-aged Comte gruyere cheese, which I know is a pretty vanilla choice among cheese lovers, but I can't get enough of it. Primavera salted caramel gelato is great, mostly because salted caramel anything has to be the best flavour in the world. Pepe Saya cultured butter is the best butter I've found in Australia. It's flavourful and makes any bread taste incredible. I've got brussels sprouts too, which are great fried with bacon.
Heston Blumenthal. My favourite of his is The Big Fat Duck Cookbook. I really like his cooking, not because of how fancy and amazing it is, but because he thought about it from a simple scientific perspective first and then leveraged that to get more deliciousness out of the food. I also go to chefsteps.com all the time for inspiration.
That was at Maaemo in Oslo. I was there with a few other coffee professionals and had been competing in the Nordic Barista Cup. The food was all from Norway, which I don't really consider the greenest of pastures, but the inventiveness was just incredible. The most amazing thing was the wine pairing with every single course. Even the bread – they nailed it. They actually paired the bread with a wheat beer and it tasted like the beer was made from the bread. The sommelier was a savant.
Last dinner at home I made pulled pork carnitas and slathered on heaps of sour cream, salsa and coriander. We had grilled onion and capsicum on the side.
Wondersnack peanuts coated in bacon fat, maple syrup, chilli and salt. That's like all the major food groups represented in one food!
I really love the PolyScience immersion circulator (sous-vide), not just for the accuracy of the cooking but also because you can "set and forget''. I do work long hours so I like to be able to put something like lamb ribs in there in the morning and when I come back from work they're gelatinous and delightful. I also poach white fish with butter and herbs in the vacuum bag – it's unbeatable.
I braise a lot in my Le Creuset pot. The rest of my kit is All-Clad stainless steel. I don't have any non-stick cookware because I'm after maximum caramelisation and I can get everything more crispy golden in stainless steel.
More space. I'd like to say I'm really clean when I'm cooking but that's just not true. I need to have everything chopped in advance because I can't multitask so I need heaps of space to spread out.
Morgon Beaujolais from Côtes du Py winery is really fruity but complex. I enjoy it because it reminds me of Kenyan coffee which is renowned for its acidity. It has lots of blackcurrant and grapefruit flavours. I don't drink coffee at home. I love Tasmanian 666 Butter Vodka, which I just have cold and straight. Unfortunately there's no actual fat in that but it retains the flavour of it and adds viscosity.
I've been drinking West Winds gin with tonic, probably too strong. I'd have that or a negroni.
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