The Great Australian Cookbook

    21 July 2025

    Edited by Helen Greenwood and Melissa Leong.

    Published by Geoff Blackwell

    2025

    A kangaroo is turning a sausage over a barbecue on which there also is a small fish, a prawn, and a pineapple ring. A dingo is looking on tongue hanging out. A one-eyed koala up a tree watches the reader.  All on a grassy spot by a beach.

    It’s the Reg Mombasa inside front and inside back cover illustration of The Great Australian Cookbook riffing on the Great Aussie Barbecue and it brings a smile.  Which is apt for a cookbook of which editors Helen Greenwood and Melissa Leong write in their introduction:  

    We think this book is more than just a cookbook. For us, this book is an affectionate snapshot of Australia and the food we eat.

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    Small Mulch

    Paul van Reyk
    My first essay on food was in Year 10 - people seemed to like it. It took me 56 years to come back to it, so I have a lot of catching up to do. My focus is on Anglo-Saxon settler culinary ways in Australia, roughly from the first days of colonisation to the 1960s - 1970s. I particularly write about stuff that has not been written about before but is very much a part of the Anglo-Saxon Australian table. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I do writing.