Logue - In the kitchen: 120 favourite recipes for breakfasts, lunches, dinners, picnics and parties

Simmone Logue and her kitchen team ice hundreds of cakes, bake tens of thousands of pies and stir more than a thousand casseroles of beef bourguignon a week. But this consummate professional hasnt lost any of the passion or forgotten any of the secrets that made her a great home cook in the first place. Every recipe in this collection has a special place in Simmones heart and marks a milestone on her journey to becoming a legendary baker, caterer and businesswoman From the early days as the fairy pudding godmother who hand-delivered cakes to local cafes, to the thriving businesswoman whose 80-strong kitchen team now supplies busy people, supermarkets, footy stadiums and airlines from her artisan bakery and shops in Sydney. The kitchen is Simmones natural habitat the heart of her home and her business, the place where she eats, sleeps and breathes her passion for food.

SO MANY KITCHENS

A LIFE IN THE DAY OF SIMMONE LOGUE

I grew up in a small Australian country town called Muswellbrook, in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. I had an amazing childhood. My twin sister Joey and I were always off on one adventure or another. If there was a tree with fruit on it, wed be climbing it. If there was a watering hole or bubbling creek, wed be in it. Picking, fishing and fossicking, gravitating to the fruits of the land, always so curious about nature and fascinated by what it brought to the table.

Both my grannies were amazing cooks, so it seems only natural that we inherited their interest in all things edible and that a love of food quickly started to flow through our veins.

My Nanna Logue was the cooking teacher at the towns high school, always bringing freshly baked treats home from school, and on weekends working on new recipes to add to her list of favourites. She had an amazing vegetable patch and a chicken coop. As kids we knew exactly where our food came from, and we were intrigued. I have memories of Nanna, huddled down in the vegie patch, taking a big, loud crunchy bite out of the greenest, shiniest capsicum, then passing it over to us kids. We loved retrieving eggs from the chicken coop and learning about animal husbandry. It was Nanna Logue who taught us how to catch crayfish from the dam, using a piece of chuck steak in the bottom of an old pair of her pantyhose as bait.

My maternal granny, Nanna Fairhurst, immigrated from England with my Pop, who worked in the coal pits in Newcastle, New South Wales. Nanna Fairhurst always had something on the stove; she ran the coal mine canteen and on weekends she would bake cakes and scones to sell there during the week. I have such fond memories of her picking rhubarb from the garden and gently stewing it in her kitchen.

As a child, these experiences must have soaked in, as I have always felt a pull towards all things culinary.

My own career in the kitchen began 25 years ago in my small flat in Sydneys Neutral Bay. I baked my favourite recipes, handed down from my nannas, and would walk the finished goods up a steep hill to sell to local cafe owners. Back then, I had little more than a bowl, a hand mixer, a love of cooking and a dream to sell my cakes to the world. In those early days I did everything myself baked the cakes, iced the cakes, washed the pans and floors, did the accounts and even delivered the cakes. It was exhausting, but exhilarating.

In time, I bought an oven and a big industrial-scale mixer and rented an old butchers shop in East Balmain, where I created a range of puddings with accompanying sauces to wholesale to the restaurant and cafe industry, filling a niche in the market I recognised that many chefs and cafe owners didnt have the time or resources to make their own desserts and needed a fairy pudding godmother to deliver beautiful homemade desserts to the back door. My sticky date puddings with caramel sauce were especially popular, and before long I was employing people to help me. It was wonderful to build my business to a point where I could get some support.

From there, setting up a catering division just seemed a natural thing to do. People were coming into the shop to buy their home dinners, then asking if we could come and cook for them in their own kitchen, and now catering is a huge part of our business. I love cooking in other peoples homes; it brings me so much joy to make people happy through the power of beautiful food. The kitchen is my natural habitat a place where I can eat, sleep, breathe my passion for food.

All these years later, I now have 80 employees, and each week my team and I bake tens of thousands of pies, braise 1000 kilos of beef bourguignon and ice many hundreds of cupcakes. We cook for lunches, dinners, parties and picnics, footy games and airlines. Our days are full of foodie inspiration where we exchange ideas, swap recipes, and share new inspirations. We like to think of our cooking as home meal therapy, creating delicious home-style meals for busy people. Handmade, fresh and elegant food, prepared with love and integrity, and based around what we find in the market that week, so the produce is always shining out fresh, seasonal and relevant. It is a truly magical environment, and I owe a huge part of my success to the wonderful people I have around me. I am lucky because most of my key people have come on the journey from cooking in the back of my small store in Balmain, to the humming 1000 square metre facility we now call home. We have all grown professionally together and continue to, as one big family.

When I decided to write this book, I had no idea how sentimental it would make me feel. Every recipe took me back to somewhere along the way in my journey to becoming a great cook and successful businesswoman. Inspired by my colleagues, friends and family, each recipe in this book has a story of how it came about, or a fond memory of the first time I tasted it and made it my own.

I hope you find within these pages some inspiration and new ideas, or maybe a few new favourite recipes to add to your own collection, passing them down as they have been passed to me, bringing enjoyment to so many.

Happy cooking.