What I See with Peter Fiorenza: Whether it’s a success or failure, food is about technique, flavour and love

Anyone who knows me or is a social media friend knows I like to dabble in the kitchen. Not only do I share some great foodie ideas, I also often post some of my own successes. Note, not my failures, of which there are many. In fact, you could say that the ledger has just started to even out, with the successes making up quite a bit of ground in recent years. For some reason, I’ve always been interested in cooking, going right back to the days as a toddler, when my brother and I were first introduced to licking the big wooden spoon after mum made a cake. I can vividly remember, on school holidays, watching my cousins and neighbourhood friends suffer, when I made them eat poorly prepared soggy, hot chips and under cooked sausages. My family would often wade through watery spaghetti bolognese, because I forgot to drain the pasta. There were scones that were drier than the Gibson Desert and muffins that could be better served as porridge. I’ve boiled eggs until the saucepan was dry, baked a roast with the pumpkin and spuds still raw, and even failed with osso buco. Mistakenly, I used neckbone instead of beef shanks, and made my family physically sick. You could say, over time, there has been quite a bit of trial and error. It does take a little while to come to terms with the fact that cooking is more than just a heap of ingredients thrown into a pot and put in the oven for 45 minutes at 200 degrees. Now, after watching a myriad of foodie TV shows and reading some great publications I have learnt quite a lot. This included the fantastic travel journeys of cook and chef notables around the world. There is a lot to be said about technique, flavour and love. Programs like Rick Stynes’ Venice to Istanbul, Jamie Oliver’s Great Italian Escape or Ainsley Harriott’s Street Food show you that food is not just about putting something in your gob when you are hungry. It’s all about how it’s made, what it tastes like and getting emotionally involved with what is happening — really enjoying the whole experience. Food is all about where it comes from and how it is made and its connection to culture. It’s about who we are. Many cultures don’t treat preparing food as a chore, rather, the time spent preparing and eating it with family and friends is one of life’s great events. It is indeed a vital conduit in sheer living itself. Peter Fiorenza is a Greater Geraldton councillor who hosts Fiorenza on Sunday from 10am to noon on Radio MAMA