My Top 5 current taste sensations - or Flavours ‘White People’ Might Like.

Food festivals, high-end restaurant openings, food trucks, open-air farmers’ markets, casserole contests, craft brewery tours, wine weekends, cider nights and “tasting flights” - you can’t open the weekend papers without stumbling across some food-related event in Melbourne’s lanes, some far-flung suburb or depressed country town trying to reinvent itself as a tourist destination. You could be forgiven for thinking we are a culture that places food and dining above all other entertainments – even sport. Crazy, right?

I don’t mind a posh restaurant experience, a lazy and luxurious brunch, a whiskey and cheese pairing or a long drive to a 2-day food and wine festival, but sometimes I like to bring the odd exotic ingredient home for a spot of culinary experimentalism, enjoyed solo in my jim-jams or with Muddy K in front of the idiot box. So, let me share with you my current top 5 taste obsessions:

1. My mother’s dried oregano. She grows it, dries and preserves it according to the traditional method from her childhood.  This stuff is great on lamb, in a bowl of oil for bread-dipping or sprinkled on pita bread before being toasted in the oven. Makes the store-bought stuff seem stale and pale.

2. Truffles – and that includes truffle oil and truffle honey. A whole truffle isn’t cheap, so be strategic - go ‘groupsies’ with a couple of other people and share the earthy goodness of this fabulous fungus. Use truffle oil very sparingly and only when you can’t get/afford the real, fresh thing – truffle oil is amazing on cheesy pasta or scrambled eggs. Truffle-infused honey is delicious drizzled over blue cheese or Brie and makes a change from fruit pastes on a cheeseboard. Again, use sparingly.

3. Salt – pink Murray River salt, chilli-and-lime infused salt, black salt from Cyprus or plain old Kosher salt. Since doing sugar-free Febfast, I have rediscovered my love-affair with salt and reignited my “savoury tooth”. Suitable on EVERYTHING.

4. Ras-el-hanout – a Moroccan spice-blend, which translated means ‘top of the shop’ or ‘best of the market’.  Spice merchants in North Africa sell their own special blends and guard the ingredients and proportions jealously. It traditionally contains no fewer than 12 separate spices – a standard blend includes cumin, coriander, cardamom, cinnamon and ginger. You can make it yourself or buy a good quality pre-mix from a specialty food store or deli. This is a fantastic spice rub for lamb or chicken, is great in casseroles, in sautéed meatballs or in a warm rice salad.

5. Rice syrup or rice malt syrup – a low-fructose alternative to honey or maple-syrup, for those last vestiges of a sweet-tooth and baking. Be warned, the jury is still out on the overall health benefits – it actually contains more calories and has a higher glycemic index than other sweet syrups. The low fructose factor is what it has going for it.