ABC Everyday

This is comfort food. The saffron makes it tad sophisticated, the peas homely, the stock, butter and cheese luscious — and the protein adds a little more substance. The heart of risotto-making is the Piedmont/Lombardy region in the north of Italy. Though this may be true, my mother, who came from the Veneto region, served up luscious risottos about two to three times a week, always from chicken stock and always with a maximum of two principal ingredients that sat within it.

This dinner idea also makes for a nutritious breakfast option. The recipe comes to us from School Food Matters Tasmania, so it's healthy and easy enough for kids to cook. Frying Vegetables Vegetarian 1 1/2 cups wholemeal self raising flour 1 450g tin sweetcorn kernels, or 2 large corn cobs which have been boiled and the kernels cut off 1 large zucchini, grated and squeezed to get rid of the excess liquid 1.Sift flour into a bowl. 2.In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and milk.

This recipe is perfect for cold winter nights, when the cupboard is bare. Grab some chicken from the shop on your way home from work and add a few pantry staples and you'll have a feast ready for the family in less than 30 minutes. This recipe comes from Hobart-based cook Kate Caire.

Queensland Food Fellow Alison Alexander says this delicious recipe will quickly become a family favourite! Alison's lamb meatball and lentil soup is a filling meal packed with flavour. Alison says the soup can be frozen and it reheats very well, so it's the perfect meal to take for work lunches, or to bring to dinner with friends and family.

This recipe was given to my mother by her good friend, Don, hence the name. It takes quite a while to cook, but the final dish is extraordinarily succulent. After it's roasted, it then cooks in its own gravy making the meat rich and tender. It goes well with roast potatoes and steamed greens and is the perfect comfort meal to warm you up as the mercury starts to drop.

Alison Alexander says she started making this cake in 1983, and it's become her "go-to" recipe when she needs to bring a plate but is short on time. She's taught six-year-olds to make it, and says it never fails to impress, making it perfect for Mother's Day. Her most important advice is to make sure you use a balloon whisk to mix this cake. Anything else — whether it's an electric beater or a wooden or metal spoon — will result in lumps.

When Carmel Rugolino got the call from her fertility doctor to say IVF treatment could begin, she was on a lunch break, walking to get fish and chips with a colleague. "It was quite an emotional phone call. I was feeling rather overwhelmed, and excited, and impatient, and relieved," the 58-year-old from Naarm/Melbourne says. "And I was walking with a single man who had sperm … and I just asked him, 'How would you feel about being a sperm donor for me?'" He said yes.

This simple vegan bolognese is an excellent example of a maximum approach to minimal ingredients. The building block of this intensely flavourful ragu is the soffritto base — the classic mix of onions, celery and carrots is pushed further than usual, and cooks for around 15 minutes, which allows any water to cook out of the vegetables, deepening the flavours and drawing out sweetness. You will know it is ready when it starts to caramelise and the vegetables become silky.

More than half of Australian parents cite the use of apps such as TikTok, Facebook and Instagram as their top concern when it comes to their child's wellbeing. Jemma Guthrie, a Tartanya/Adelaide-based mother of two daughters, aged 12 and 15, made the decision to keep her children off social media. These are her words.

Queensland Food Fellow Alison Alexander says this recipe is "perfect" as the nights cool down. The base of the curry has a sour note from tamarind and warming spices that pair well with fish. Alison recommends adding whatever vegetables that are in season but says it's particularly good with pumpkin. She says this is a good recipe to attempt if you want to be more adventurous with your food and try different proteins — and it's customisable to what's in season or in your refrigerator.