Rob Masters

OK, so here in OZ we have instituted a regular get-together of state and federal heads to discuss issues around The 19, and how to deal with it. Officially it is called The National Cabinet.  Enter the ABC Coronavirus Live Blog - an informal stream run by the ABC Newsroom to allow readers to ask questions and get clarifications about the various restrictions, lockdowns, vaccine rollouts, and so on. It has developed into quite the tight-knit community, with their own in-jokes (Hi Barbara - how's the pool-boy doing?) and their own slang. One of the central pieces of which is the nick-name for the National Cabinet - forever known as the NashyCab. Which resulted in extensive speculation about just what that was. Over the past couple of weeks, we have entered Nashi season here, and my chance to strike has arrived. I now present, for the first time in public, The NashiCab. The Ingredients For the Nut Crumble 200g Almonds (or Macadamias) 60g Butter 50g Brown Sugar 50g Raw Sugar For the Cr...

Well, that was a fairly epic long weekend. The epic bit started on Sunday morning, when we dropped by the Stirling Farmers' Market to pick up our tomato order. 45kg of them. Plus capsicums, onions, apples, chillies, and some other vague veggies. Then it was back home, and dusting off our old Weber kettle BBQ, and pulling out the GoSun Fusion. Into each we tossed as many tomatoes as would fit (in trays in the Weber), and set them to roasting. Inside, we started chopping onions, more tomatoes, and capsicums - which then went straight onto the stove to become salsa.  Around the same time, we bolted the tomato mill to the kitchen island, and brought in the first batch of tomatoes. These went into the mill, and quickly became the first of many batches of passata. The squeezings joined still more tomatoes, onions and apples in another pot.  By the time we hit 11pm, we had produced and processed in the preserver 22 bottles of passata, and 10 jars of salsa, representing about 3/4 of t...

It will come as no surprise to folks that I tend to acquire a variety of cooking devices - some of them traditional, some of them on the bleeding edge of technology. What I do avoid are devices with one purpose - unless they happen to do it extraordinarily well, and take minimal space. My pear corer, for example, or the peach pitter. Everything else serves multiple uses. A rice cooker, for example will also cook many other rice-based dishes, and will serve as a steamer as well. Today four of these devices met in in the creation of a simple dish, but made so much simpler and tastier as a result. The first two tools were actually used nearly four months ago. Our Fowlers Vacola preserving system, and our tomato mill. These were used together to produce two of today's ingredients - a bottle of preserved tomatoes, and a bottle of passata. The Fowlers Vacola domestic kit. The Fowlers preserving system has been around since the 1880's, and the Australian company since the ...

GoSun are running a giveaway for their solar-electric Fusion oven. Usual rules apply if you use the link below. GoSun Fusion Ultimate Bundle Solar Oven Giveaway #giveaway #win https://kingsumo.com/g/y9vohi/ultimate-gosun-fusion-bundle-giveaway/m5kvldl