5 of the Best

By WENDY HARGREAVES Cookbooks are perfect festive presents, but how do you choose from the dozens of fresh releases on offer? Your resident cookbook addict at Five of the Best has done the hard yards to make it easy for you. Here are my favourites for 2022. 1. WILD DRINKS by Sharon Flynn Is there a drinks guru on your Christmas gift list?

Everything tastes better with truffle, right? This weekend (August 12-14), Spotswood dining precinct Grazeland is celebrating the decadent winter fungi with a truffle festival. From truffled raclette to shao long bao, there are plenty of delicious adventures at the unique waterside food mecca. Grazeland’s managing director John Foreman took one for the team and did a taste test for Five of the Best. Here are John’s top five truffly dishes at this weekend’s inaugural festival. 1.

By WENDY HARGREAVES Jaw-dropping mountain views, fresh alpine air, adrenalin-pumping ski runs, snowball fights and toboggans are all great reasons to head to the hills for a winter holiday, but his snow bunny has bigger plans. Snowy alpine holidays are a licence to eat and drink to fuel up and stay warm. Just walking around Mt Buller’s picture-postcard village is enough to build up an appetite. If you’re also carving up the downhill runs, there’s no excuse.

As head chef at East Brunswick’s acclaimed Etta restaurant, Rosheen Kaul has won acclaim for giving diners a taste of her unique culinary heritage. Born in Singapore to parents with Kashmiri, Peranakan Chinese and Filipino heritage, Rosheen grew up between Melbourne, Malaysia, China and Indonesia. To her parents’ horror she pursued a career in cooking, working at new-style Chinese diner Lee Ho Fook and Smith & Daughters, followed by Dinner by Heston Blumenthal.

Growing up in his parent’s fruit and vegetable store in Springvale, Thanh Truong learned to love seasonal produce and has devoted his career to sourcing the freshest food. As the soaring fruit and veg prices continue making news, Thanh (AKA ‘Fruit Nerd‘) has amassed a loyal following on social media for his food shopping advice. Some of his video tips have been viewed more than 25 million times, leading to appearances on ABC TV and partnerships with companies like Mazda.

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Winter in Melbourne is heating up with a feast of outdoor festivals across the city, from Firelight and Lightscape to the pumping Queen Vic Winter `Night Market. But our favourite reason to don the raincoat and beanie is Truffle Melbourne, the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest truffle celebration. Whether you’re curious about the underground fungi, or a rusted-on fan, this free event at the Queen Victoria Market has something for everyone on June 18-19. Here are five reasons to go… 1.

The German Film Festival is back in Melbourne, and here’s an insider’s guide to the program from one of Germany’s leading cultural ambassadors in Australia, Christoph Mücher (pictured). Mücher is the director of the Goethe-Institut, Germany’s cultural institute, which has operated in Melbourne and Sydney for 50 years.

Melbourne’s Food and Wine Festival celebrates its 30th birthday in 2022 with a bulging menu of events from March 25 to April 9. Most of the big ticket events (Nigella Lawson, Jowett Yu, Skye Gyngell) sold out almost immediately, but never fear. There are still plenty of fabulous events to check out. Five of the Best asked MFWF’s creative director Pat Nourse for his last-minute tips for checking out the festival.

Melbourne’s own carnival of Italian bubbly is back, popping up on the lawns of the spectacular Abbotsford Convent on Saturday, March 26. After four years at Northcote Town Hall, the ProseccoFestival is shifting to the old convent, giving fizz fans the chance to try dozens of sparkly whites from Italy and Australia.