Christmas Edition: Good Food Australia

Something a little special for you today – preview of the Good Food Australia special Christmas Edition coming out tomorrow featuring exclusive new Christmas recipes!

On the cover of Good Food with JB!

8 years ago when I started this website, never in a million years did I imagine I’d be writing a post like this. I mean, I started my career as an auditor of all things. PricewaterhouseCoopers alumni, right here!

And here I am today, a little embarrassed, a little proud, and very disbelieving that RecipeTin’s Chef JB and I are on the cover of Australia’s Good Food for a special Christmas Edition which will be published tomorrow (Tuesday 5th December 2023)!

The Good Food Christmas Edition

For those of you not in Australia, Good Food is the all-things-restaurants-and-food arm of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age newspapers (Melbourne), considered to be Australia’s most respected food publication. I describe it as the Australian equivalent of New York Times Cooking.

The Good Food is a lift out in the paper each Tuesday and is also online. I contribute a recipe each week for a series called “SOS” (which, as the name implies, are quick recipes for midweek madness!) and once a month I do a cover story which involves a set of recipes.

And this month, it’s a big Christmas special!! A menu of classic Christmas recipes including a never-before-seen game changing turkey breast recipe created especially for Good Food by JB. My signature glazed ham, classic trifle and a sparkling new Christmas Roast Pumpkin Salad.

Here’s a little preview of the spread!

That turkey recipe is really special. The secret is a brine that not only locks in juices (turkey is notoriously lean) but also infuses the flesh with beautiful Christmassy flavours from edge to edge.

Then it’s roasted with a Christmas glaze that’s perfumed with holiday spices, so it comes out golden and sticky, and just everything you dream your Christmas turkey to be. The smell when it’s roasting is the smell of Christmas!

Behind the Scenes at the Shoot

And here we are on the shoot day. While I do all the photos for my website, the photos of our recipes for Good Food are done by a team of professionals in a food photography studio.

And… a familiar face!! You know I take Dozer everywhere with me….so is it any surprise I snuck him into a Christmas cover shoot? Of course not! 😂

He was an excellent supervisor for the day, ensuring the floor was impeccable at all times. Not a food scrap to be seen.

And though Dozer was not specifically part of the brief, there were were many, many photos taken of him (at my insistence) with a secret hope that there’d be a giant full-page photo of him in the paper……..

….but sadly, it seems a golden fur ball isn’t really on point for a food publication so his photo wasn’t quite full page. Rather, a smaller inset. But he’s still in it!!!

In hindsight now, it was quite wishful thinking that this photo would make the front page of a food publication…😂

I’m so glad I was wearing a white dress that day. Made for sliding around on concrete floors…..

Meet the shoot team!

I want to officially introduce you to the incredible team who’s been shooting our recipes all year for Good Food! Here they are:

We have:

• Rob Palmer – One of Australia’s best food photographers, an award winning one actually! Rob also did the important photos (like the cover and Dozer) for my cookbook.

• Emma Knowles (right) – Food stylist and recipe developer! I’ve been fan girding Emma’s work for as long as I can remember, including her days when she was a major presence at Gourmet Traveller. In awe of her work. Makes food look effortlessly beautiful!

• Theressa Klein (left) – Photo Chef. Impeccably organised, swans through the cook of enormous table spreads without breaking into a sweat and knows all the tricks of the trade to make food look amazing, naturally.

We love working with this team. I call them the A-Team, because they’re the best of the best at what they do, with the bonus that they’re an absolute hoot to work with!

Big shout-out to JB

And this post wouldn’t be complete without a big, public, splashy tank you to JB. Not only for his fabulous new turkey recipe (really, that brine is everything!), but his commitment and hard work all throughout this year for the contributions we made to Good Food.

In 2023, we produced over 50 recipes especially for Good Food. The schedule is big and complicated, with numerous stakeholders and tight turnaround times (print is hectic!). He’s been the driving force behind all our work with Good Food, managing our work with the editorial and shoot teams, and with everything else going on in our business, I know I could not have done it without him. He’s a gun with the knife, a machine in the kitchen and now he’s a cover-model Chef! It feels like a fitting way to close out our final issue of Good Food for 2023. 🙂

Where to get the Good Food special Christmas Edition

The Good Food Christmas Edition is a lift out that will be in the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne’s The Age newspapers tomorrow, Tuesday 5th December 2023.

If you miss out on the paper or are not located in either of these cities, the recipes will be available online on the Good Food website.

If you’re planning a turkey breast this Christmas, I really hope you have a look at the recipe. It really is special. Turkey breast has never been so succulent!

And with that, we are officially kicking off a series of holiday recipes leading up to Christmas. I hope you love them as much as we do! – Nagi x

Life of Dozer

We had an adorable Christmas onesy for him. Sadly, it was little small for him. 😔 So we had to settle for a boring Santa Hat.