What type of food does a Gourmist eat?

In the words of my mother, hotch potch (which I later learnt is actually Hodgepodge and means any mixture of things that are not really meant to go together, but it originally referred to a dish of all sorts of ill-suited ingredients jumbled together in a pot). This, amongst Pakistani, Timorese, French, Swiss, Australian (whatever that is lol), is what I grew up on. I can recall many a dinner time, asking my she-ro, full time business owning and working Mum, ‘what’s for dinner?’ to which she would respond ‘hotch potch’ which was her version of saying ‘I’m exhausted, stop asking questions, some type of food will be on the table shortly’ and hand on heart I can say it was always delicious.

Whether it was a daal, sabzi, noodle dish, pasta bake, salad or roast it always hit the spot. What made it better, was that my self-taught brilliant cook of a grandma lived with us so we’d get her delights as well. From chili beef, to kofta, biriyani and desi cheese toasties, food was varied in form and flavour in our house. Couple all that with Darwin as the background, a multicultural market-hub, and you’ve got quite the flavour bomb.

This is where it all began really. Not to discredit or remove the founders of these incredible cuisines, but the simple truth was that growing up, I never had one, authentic type of food, it was an amalgamation of many beautiful stories, people and foods I got to learn about, enjoy and devour, and still do to this day. This influenced my cooking in a big way because I cook a bit of everything and love to get inspired by flavours to create simple, yet elevated dishes.

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