Start reading Delicious by Kate Legge

Read an extract from Delicious by award-winning writer Kate Legge.

Food attracts us like metal filings to a magnet. Friends and family gather in a suburban backyard to make the year’s supply of passata, stoking the wellbeing of bounty as pantries are replenished for the leaner seasons. Sausages on white bread with a squirt of tomato sauce are ballot box fare, a rite of democracy in Australia. These traditions scaffold us.

At a book club to discuss my last book, Infidelity and Other Affairs, the conversation turned to the kernel of the idea for this book, and the nature of food and friendship. The room caught on fire as these women spoke of favourite recipes and what they were cooking for dinner that night, the wintry chill stoking imaginations and appetites. I mopped up the conversation like a chunk of crusty bread in a pan of gravy.

‘It’s only food,’ sniffs a friend fatigued by the rise of celebrity chefs basking in the glory befitting scientists solving climate change. She’s a fine cook who disdains the fussy and overly fiddly and her foray into homemade ice cream confirms food is not just a pit stop. Nonetheless, the eye-rolling that greets another cookbook almost discouraged me from adding to this pile.

For a while I resisted mentioning the idea in certain company, fearing scorn and admonishment. Dr Chris Wallace, an old and dear friend who is a professor of political history, dubbed this project ‘the muffin book’ to help me scale this hurdle. We worked together in Canberra’s Old Parliament House, bent on the romantic endeavour of reviving an afternoon newspaper. The only recipe we’ve ever discussed is for egg and prosciutto muffins. They are delicious, feathery light, yet filling, like a crowded hour spent at her side. Chris’s mother, Bobbie, loved to cook, and was pleased when I moved in with them briefly because she had another mouth to feed. She sent our bureau food parcels of her Anzac biscuits, crunchy and sweet. You had to be lightning quick or you’d be scratching for crumbs. This gift from her kitchen gee-ed up our spirits and blood sugar levels on the longest of days and that is the power of something scrumptious, something homegrown, something made by hand, something one does for another.

Though recipes are sprinkled through these pages, this is not so much a cookbook as a meditation on the alchemy of food, friendship and family— the flavoursome bones of life’s broth.

Chris’s Egg and Prosciutto Muffins

MAKES 12

1 tsp olive oil, for greasing

12 slices of prosciutto (or bacon or ham)

12 free-range eggs

2 tbsp whipping cream

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

4 tbsp freshly grated parmesan

parsley, finely chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C.

2. Lightly oil each mould of a 12-hole muffin tray.

3. Fry the prosciutto until crisp.

4. Line each muffin mould with a generous slice of prosciutto.

5. Break an egg into each prosciutto-lined mould.

6. Drizzle on the cream.

7. Scatter on the salt, pepper, parmesan and parsley and give a tiny whisk with a fork or teaspoon to mix.

8. Slide the tray into the oven and bake for 10 minutes until the egg is set and coming away from the side of the mould.

9. Remove from the oven and sit for a bit before running a knife around the edge of the muffins to release them from the tray.

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Delicious

by Kate Legge

A new memoir celebrating food and friendship from one of Australia's most admired writers.

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