“The single biggest problem with food, for people who don’t love good food, is anxiety,” says Stephanie Alexander as she nestles in a comfortable wicker armchair in the dappled light of her riverside garden.
“They’re anxious about what’s good for them. They’re anxious about how much of it to eat or how not to eat it. They’re anxious about everything about it. They don’t feel comfortable handling it, they don’t feel comfortable starting to prepare it because they don’t know what to do with it … And that’s where The Cook’s Companion comes in, of course.”
It’s been 30 years since the renowned Australian cook, restaurateur and author released her famous tome: nearly 1,400 pages of recipes from sauteed abalone to zucchini soufflé, and a one-stop kitchen resource covering everything from how to stop cut apples from going brown to the difference between fresh and dried yeast. In the intervening decades she’s been busy: she started a charity, was made an Officer of the Order of Australia, awarded a centenary medal, and, naturally, she released more cookbooks.
I tell her that my mother had a copy of The Cook’s Companion when I was a teenager. I called it the “rainbow bible”, and it was the first cookbook I bought for myself when I left home.
I’m not alone in telling Alexander such a story – she says it happens almost every day.
“I think people trust it and they trust me – that I’m not just trying to be fashionable,” Alexander says.
Earlier in our meeting, Alexander shows Guardian Australia the path that winds along the top of the bank of the Yarra River, past her fence. Her apartment garden is overlooked by the tall, gently rustling river gums, and situated a mere stone’s throw from the swiftly flowing water.
“I just love the fact that I look out on gum trees. I love the fact that I can get off the tram – busy, busy – walk through here and instantly feel that,” she sighs and her shoulders relax and the invisible weight lifts.
“Late in the afternoon, you get the most beautiful light on the greens. It’s just a very beautiful place to live. And I’m very fortunate that I also have these lovely neighbours up here” – she gestures to the balcony above her garden – “and next door. So we have little drinks parties.”
During Covid lockdowns, she says, she and her upstairs neighbours rigged up a basket on a rope to ferry each other food and gifts.
Leaving the river path for her garden, Alexander points out a “very luxuriant” sage bush growing near the fence alongside a burst of rosemary. There are also chives, thyme, lemon verbena, parsley and some tomatoes in pots. There are olive trees too but for shade, not fruit.
“The sage I use a lot. I love fried sage, and so I have that with eggs or with fish,” Alexander says. “Last night I had a piece of john dory for dinner, and I picked a big sprig of sage, which I crisped in the same oil that I was cooking the fish. And then I spooned on top of it some stuff I had in the fridge which I’d put on scallops at a dinner with friends the other night.”
Our walk is not a lengthy one; now 85, Alexander’s balance is not what it used to be. Besides, in her garden, there is also cake.
Alexander has baked Mieze’s plum cake, which she serves with a bowl of cream. The recipe can be found in the original and newly revised Cook’s Companion, and it is a special one for Alexander: it was passed down from her mother, who was taught it by the titular Mieze, a refugee from the second world war and “a great friend of the family”.
“The whole of my life, my food life, was really influenced by my parents,” Alexander says. “The model of sharing food and welcoming newcomers and welcoming differences was, I think, a very important part of my growing up. My mum and dad really loved meeting people from other places, and in this case these people had come from Germany and of course they were running from the Nazis. It was a political thing as well as a friendship thing, but the friendship continued for many years.”
Those “early attitudes of food” that one observes as a child are very important to Alexander, and part of the impetus behind her establishing in 2004 her not-for-profit Kitchen Garden Foundation. She has stepped back from the day-to-day business of it now but the foundation is still going strong, with programs in schools and early childhood services to teach kids about growing, harvesting and preparing food.
“I really believe that the earlier you’re introduced to the idea of food being a positive, wonderful, joyful thing, the more likely you are to be a food lover for the rest of your life,” Alexander says.
“There’s no question that attitudes are governed by what happens when you’re very young. And the fact that so few Anglo families really put a lot of value in the beauty and the sensuality of food as opposed to Europeans and Asians is, I think, very, very significant.”
Her own culinary bibles are the works of British cookery writer Elizabeth David – another legacy of her mother’s kitchen – whose books particularly sparked Alexander’s love of French culture and cuisine. That passion for France was cemented when she travelled to Europe by cargo ship in her 20s. Spending a year in France was “everything I thought it would be”, she says. “I really did behave very badly. There was a beautiful Frenchman … It was gorgeous.”
It is no surprise then that European flavours and techniques infuse Alexander’s recipes, and the kinds of foods she prefers to eat. (“Do you need more cream? I think you do,” she comments as I take another bite of plum cake.)
Alexander describes herself as a “sensualist”: she likes the colours and shapes of the tablecloth, napkins, crockery and accessories around food to be as aesthetically appealing as the food itself.
“I believe in a certain amount of celebration with your food – that the food is important, so it needs to have a bit of presence,” she says. “I believe in the idea of families eating together. I believe in the ideas of family celebrations being around a table.”
She’s “realistic enough to know” that working parents can struggle to make family mealtimes occur on a regular basis, she says. “But if it’s a family priority, it’ll happen sooner or later … you will find time to do it. And that’s one of the problems for a lot of people. It isn’t a priority.”
What does Alexander make, then, of “wellness” and diet culture? It’s an issue that appears to cut deep against the grain, carving a heavy frown into her face as she responds.
“I just get so enraged at the idea that to be healthy has become a trend, as opposed to just saying, I know what my body needs. I’m almost speechless, as you see, I just can’t – I cannot believe in it,” she says.
“I mean I know it’s important for people to eat well, I know it’s important to exercise. But … protein shakes and things like that I’ve got absolutely no time for. I worry about people who get caught up in that, because I know, and Blind Freddy should know, that there’s plenty of ways of getting protein without having to have this terrible milky thing that you just whiz up.”
What does she think wellness trends tell us then, about how people caught up in them feel about food?
“I think they’re scared of it,” Alexander says. “I feel sad for those people. I feel they don’t know what they’re missing out on.”
Preparing and sharing good food with loved ones satisfies “a whole lot of things, not just appetite”, Alexander says. Sharing meals pairs naturally with sharing conversation – what better way, she says, to help counter the “epidemic of loneliness” we’re experiencing?
And if you love food, you look forward to your meals and you choose them with care, she says. “If you only have a tomato for breakfast, you want to have a nice tomato.”
The Cook’s Companion 30th Anniversary Edition by Stephanie Alexander is out on 24 March, through Penguin
