Jolene Laverty devoured every vanilla slice she could find between Canberra and the Adelaide Hills. But did she find Australia’s best? I’ve started a summer fling with an old love of mine, and it has been utterly delicious. The relationship was rekindled during a long car journey between Canberra and the Adelaide Hills in the small town of Balranald in the Riverina district of New South Wales. My husband Tim was driving, our two small children were in the back seat – and I had in my hands the first vanilla slice I’d bought in years. From the moment I took it out of its paper bag, I knew this v ..read more

Porteño chefs share the recipe for one of their patrons’ favourite dishes, complete with celeriac puree and radicchio salad Known for their Argentinian cooking and rockabilly charm, Porteño’s co-chefs Ben Milgate and Elvis Abrahanowicz have been shaking up the Sydney food scene since they opened their first restaurant in 2010. The restaurant has moved a few times but their braised octopus has appeared on every menu. It has an interesting origin story: Milgate dated an Italian girl when he was young and her father would make braised octopus for the family. While Milgate has given the dish a Por ..read more

With respect to the excellent Jamie Oliver, making a simple dish that’s over and done with in under an hour is a very inefficient way to cook Recipes are the listicles of the food world, and I say this as one who has written more than his fair share of both recipes and listicles. Both are short, incomplete collections of vaguely interesting but not entirely useful information designed for ease of consumption, but which ultimately convey very little of the knowledge required for their purpose. Related: The $600 dinner. Have we all gone mad?Adam Liaw Related: Top of the pops: a novice's guide to ..read more

Indigenous chef Mark Olive, aka The Black Olive, makes Christmas lunch with Australia’s native ingredients such as wattle seeds and warrigal greens, and eggnog using an emu egg. ‘Indigenous herbs are an exciting thing, we should be using more of them,’ he says in this special Guardian film. ‘Australia has an opportunity to invent its own cuisine. We have this amazing cuisine here that we don’t use. We’ve embraced every other culture in this country except what we’ve got in our own backyard … get out there, explore these flavours, smell them and try them’ • Follow the recipe here ..read more

The Indigenous chef shares his recipes for festive dishes filled with native Australian herbs and spices 200g caster sugar1 large emu egg or 10 chicken eggs1.5L full cream milkVanilla essence375ml thickened cream250ml brandyNutmeg Related: Low-grog eggnog: Christmas cocktails that won't knock you out Related: Bush food: warrigal greens ..read more

Do you know your champagne from your Australian sparkling, your cava from your prosecco? Four Guardian staff who love to drink bubbles take a blind tasting and make their picks for Christmas Of all the beverages, champagne will reveal the ignoramus most brutally. There’s the sparkling wine versus champagne debate, heated opinions about the best temperature to serve it, long discussions to be had about the most advantageous shape of the glass in which it is served, how the cork must be eased from the bottle not with a pop but with a ladylike sigh, and all manner of curious “did you know?” facts ..read more

The rise of the everyday gourmet has created an online food culture that could be making our diets and wasteful habits worse Whether you follow dude food restaurants, fine diners or wellness advocates on Instagram, like many other Australians you’re consuming hundreds of images of delicious-looking food each day. Today meals are prepared and consumed for audiences of millions on TV and social media, or at live events. Eating has become a cultural pastime and what you choose to eat is a marker of your identity. But this isn’t necessarily good news for our diets or how much food we waste. Figure ..read more

Now that we’ve brought about this revolution and reversed the red hot gears of late snack capitalism, what other long lost foods and flavours can we manifest? Tell us in the comments Ask those who know me well what I most like to eat, and they’ll all tell you the same thing: Pizza Shapes. My love of the polygonal snacks is so well known that I’ve on occasion received Pizza Shapes as gifts for significant milestones. I can “put away” a box of Pizza Shapes at a speed that would make competitive eating champ Takeru “The Tsunami” Kobayashi nod in impressed recognition. Until yesterday all of this ..read more

Chocolate cake? Yes, chocolate cake. And how did soggy muesli ever become a thing? How much caramel can they inject into a ‘gourmet’ doughnut? There is no accounting for taste, but here’s a grumpy man’s guide to the food you are probably seeing a lot of on Instagram. Related: Adam Liaw: five simple dishes, and the mistakes you’re making with them Related: Adam Liaw's 10 dishes you should be able to cook by the time you’re 30 ..read more

Lamb ham, sausages made of turkey and cranberry, and pavlova with local peaches and raspberry coulis – these are a few of my favourite things Related: Australia's transplanted Christmas will never stop being surrealJason Wilson The modern Australian Christmas is often mocked as being a bit like Santa Claus in board shorts – a slightly odd, unseasonal pastiche of European traditions and true-blue backyard barbecues. But as Australia’s love of food has grown, our Christmas has become a unique cultural event all its own ..read more