Southern Hemisphere · Dec · Jan · Feb

Summer on the table.

Stone fruit. Tomatoes that taste like tomatoes. Prawns on ice. Mangoes ripened on a Queensland tree, not flown in from Peru. This is what we cook and what we drink while the sun refuses to go down.

Why we cook like this in summer

Summer is when the kitchen barely closes. Breakfast on the deck, lunch around the pool, dinner on the deck again. The menu writes itself: whatever’s in season, raw where possible, cold where possible, with a cocktail in the other hand. Corn, stone fruit, snapper, octopus, watermelon, basil, lime.

What to pour

Sangiovese, vermentino, riesling from Eden Valley, a Chablis-style Marg River chardonnay. Cocktails: margarita, paloma, daiquiri, hugo spritz, gin and tonic over a lot of ice.