In my second year at Claremont High School, I was in the first group of boys allowed to take Cookery as a subject. Oddly, or perhaps typically, boys could now learn to cook but not take Needlework, the other Home Economics subject. Similarly, that year girls could for the first time study Woodwork but not Metalwork, the two Technical subjects.
More than half the 12 or so boys in Cookery took it only because they thought it would be an easy subject and could slack off, while a few of us were actually interested. I learned to make pizzas from scratch, pavlova, roast chicken, some pastries, stock and soup, and a lamb chop with three veg dinner, complete with gravy.
My interest was spurred by my oldest brother Eddie. When our family migrated from the Netherlands, he was 16 and had started an apprenticeship with a baker. In Tasmania, he found bar work, including a stint at the Black Prince Hotel in Hobart, where one time the grill cook necessary for counter lunches didn’t turn up. Eddie asked if he could stand in, was a great success and took over the job.
Eventually, Eddie got a job at the Wrest Point Casino and worked his way up to Grill Chef. Along the way, he tested recipes at home in Claremont, drawing on an enormous photo-filled copy of Larousse Gastronomique, and with me as his kitchen hand. There can’t have been many households in Claremont that had Beef Wellington or Lobster Thermidor for dinner (even if the lobster was actually crayfish).
At a given point, I think in 1974, Eddie decided to return to the Netherlands. He fell out of touch with the family but cousins would tell us what he was up to.
In 1977, I travelled with my father and we decided to surprise Eddie at the Noordwijk-aan-Zee hotel restaurant where he was working. He was certainly surprised and ended up cooking us up a mighty kapucijners (brown beans) feast with all the trimmings and condiments. His staff colleagues were in on it and we were treated like kings.
We travelled to Leiden to visit my father’s sister and her husband, and Eddie and I went to a bar to play billards and chat. He told me was going to stay “home” and make a career out of cooking.
When my father and I returned to Claremont, silence descended again. Not a word from Eddie. Even our cousins lost track of him. When there was a plane crash in the Canary Islands and there was a theory he’d been on board, my parents asked the Salvation Army to find him. They told us that they did find him but wouldn’t give his permission for us to contact him or tell us where he was.
He didn’t even know when our mother died in 1981.
By 1998, my brother Andrys had established some contact with Eddie and told him he was coming to visit him in the small village near Amsterdam where he lived and worked as a chef. Eddie mentioned that he had throat cancer, which not many people survive. Andy worried he’d be gone by the time he got there but Eddie survived surgery.
Five years later when Andy visited him again, the throat tumour was back and accompanied by a tumour in his brain. By 2008, Eddie had had enough and, living in a civilised country, chose to be euthanised. Andy went over again for the funeral.
What Eddie left me was the confidence, craft, and desire to cook. From the time I moved out of home in 1977, I cooked – for myself, for my house- and flat-mates, for my girlfriends and mates, and then for Hazel, dinner parties, and for our children.
What I learned at high school defintely came in handy for the basics and the Women’s Weekly Cookbook that was our only text is still a go-to for me.
I’ve acquired many, many more cookbooks since – particularly during the time Hazel worked at Murdoch Books, which published heaps of chef’s books she brought home for me. Back in Newcastle, Hazel also opened my eyes and my palate with outings such as the restaurant in Stockton where I had asparagus spears with parmesan for the first time.
The time I shared a Newcastle house with Andrew Elliott was also instructive. He was an Indian born chef at a local restaurant cooking modern Australian meals, then coming home to cook feasts of all kinds of cuisines for us on the enormous gas stove we happened to have in the kitchen.
A surprise Hazel birthday dinner party of four courses for six people at Bronte was a watershed moment for me where I realised I was actually pretty good at this.
The tiny kitchen at Lilyfield was a challenge but I mastered dishes like Rick Stein’s fish pie and Stephanie Alexander’s roast chicken, among many others. That’s also where I learned to cook meals for four individuals with very different tastes and tolerances. No meat for one, no mushrooms for another, no tomatoes for another – on and on.
Then the dream house at Corrimal with the largest, best laid out kitchen I’ve ever been in. You could have four people cooking at the same time without crowding each other. Not that I ever did, luxuriating in the bench space, the cupboards with all the pots, pans, utensils, and gadgets I could ever want, and a great oven I over 20 years learned exactly how to use to best effect.
I still have the gas stove but hardly ever use it, turning instead to a dozen or more electric alternatives.
And now, with Hazel gone and my daughters moved out, I cook for one. I can be, and am, more adventurous in the range of dishes I cook, and can afford to buy quality ingredients when it’s just for one person.
I record my recipes, photograph my dishes, and post them on this website. I link to them from Facebook and get very positive feedback, while the website pages get lots of traffic.
There are still things I want to work out. I’ve never mastered my mother’s scrumptious meatballs, larger than typical Italian meatballs, with a particular blend of flavourings and spices that I’ve not found in any other recipes I’ve tried and that remains a mystery to me.
I do cook other Dutch dishes, including stampot and hutspot, boerenkool with rookworst, siepelstip, snert, nasi goreng, uitsmijters and spiegelei, poffertjes, and appel koek.
I also cook a lot of Italian, Spanish, Greek, Mexican, Indian and south east Asian dishes, as well as modern Australian.
One day, I’ll conquer Mamme’s gehaktballen.