He has seven restaurants across Australia, has written seven cookbooks, had dozens of television roles as a presenter and producer, and his famously lustrous ponytail makes him recognisable around the country. Despite a life lived largely in high-end restaurants and consulting on the food Qantas serves up the front end of the plane, Perry still loves simple food, a fact that has made his cookbooks generally so approachable. He lives harbourside in Sydney with his wife and two youngest daughters.
In the pantry
Tinned tomatoes, white beans. Olive oil - we normally use Ravida from Sicily for the cooking and Colonna for finishing dishes. Forum red wine vinegar, Maldon sea salt, pepper. I love having the chipotle chillies in adobo sauce because they're so easy to throw into anything for some smoky kick. I have dried chillies as flakes and as powder, including chipotle chilli powder. Giuseppe Cocco pasta.
My fridge
Sheep's milk yoghurt, which I have with bircher muesli, honey and whatever fruit's in season. I have reasonably high cholesterol so I try to have oats every day. Tonnes of fruit and veg because Sam, my wife, makes fresh juice every day; blood oranges, apples, carrots, beetroot. Schultz bacon, which makes a good pasta sauce with chilli and tomatoes.
Probably chipotle chillies. They're smoked jalapeno chillies and I love that heavy smokiness.
I drink espresso with hot milk on the side. Fresh juices. We drink a lot of different wines. In Australia, I love basket-pressed shiraz, Jeff Grosset Riesling, Giaconda Chardonnay, white burgundies. Since opening Rosetta in Melbourne I've been drinking a lot of Barolo, Barbera and Barbaresco - Italian reds.
Saturday night tipple
I love Campari and tonic; the tonic adds another layer of bitterness I like that you don't get with the usual Campari and soda mix.
A good Japanese knife by Shun. A stick blender is indispensable for chermoula, marinades, soups. I love my mortar and pestle, steamer oven. I have an induction wok that is actually more a commercial than domestic item, like the ones we use at Spice Temple. You get ferocious heat without dangerous flames.
I eat frozen chocolates such as Caramello Koalas, Twixes and Kit Kats. They're really industrial commercial chocolate, so they're too sweet but when you freeze them, it takes a lot of that sweetness out and makes them crunchy.
I cooked chicken with La Costena chipotle chillies in adobo sauce in the pressure cooker, took it out and shredded it. Then I shredded cabbage, jalapeno chillies, coriander and cucumber for a salad, roasted tomatoes in the pan with some chipotle chilli powder and then we just made tacos. We have that quite often.
Travelling, going to markets and restaurants here and overseas.
A book I'd bought in 1978 when I decided to start cooking professionally. Called Great Chefs of France, it was about the 12 chefs who had three stars in France at that time, outside of Paris. There were only 18 three-star restaurants in the world then and it's a blow-by-blow description of their day. It shows how hard you need to work if you want your restaurants to be great.
It was at L'Archestrate in Paris. Alain Senderens owned it. To start we had foie gras wrapped in cabbage and steamed, there was a beautiful lobster salad, roast lamb with gorgeous spring vegetables. It was incredible cooking, sticking to the notion that ingredients need to speak for themselves. So from 1984 on I stopped putting jus and reductions with meat and fish and covering them in beurre blancs and butter sauces and began focusing on bringing the best out in the main ingredient and its relationship with the vegetables it was cooked with.
CORRECTION: The original version of this story described chipotle chillies as smoked habanero chillies. This is not correct and has been changed to jalapeno chillies.
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