Recipes of yesteryear are destined for a makeover, with passionate foodies on a mission to bring Barossa’s favourite recipes to a new generation.
Sheralee Menz and Marieka Ashmore, of Those Barossa Girls, have decided the century old “Barossa Cookery Book” with its lengthy community and family food connections deserved a companion edition so its culinary treasures can be shared today.
“The historic Barossa Cookery Book is iconic and beautiful. But all the recipes are in imperial, the method is non-existent and it assumes you are using a wood stove,” said Sheralee.
“So, unless you are a confident cook it can all be a bit daunting and consequently the recipes don’t get used much.”
For the last few months, Sheralee and Marieka have been working with Barossa Regional Gallery, the cookbook’s copyright owners, to create a collaborative project to publish a re-print of selected regional classics.
“This is an exciting project that will involve us selecting specific recipes from the original publication and reformat them into a beautiful Barossa recipe book that is in metric, with full method, instructions and photographs,” Sheralee said.
They want to demonstrate that many of these recipes are simple and easy, hoping to inspire people to regularly use some of our region’s historic recipes. However, with so many to choose from, its not feasible to re-format them all.
“We are looking for feedback from the community regarding recipes that they think should be featured,” Marieka added.
“We are also looking for living connections with original recipe contributors, so we particularly want to hear from anyone who can tell us about people who submitted recipes in 1918. Grandmothers, mothers, aunts, cousins, neighbours – we don’t care what the connection is, but we would love to hear the food stories that are associated with the recipes.”
Barossa Regional Gallery’s Liz Henderson, who convened the successful Barossa Cookery Book’s 100th anniversary exhibition, is excited about the project which will continue to honour the vision of the original publication with proceeds supporting the Tanunda Soldiers’ Memorial Hall.