Author: The Cook

Bullseye! In search of Sydney’s first colonial kitchen

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Recreated 1780s military field kitchen built at the American Revolution Museum in Yorktown, Virginia, USA. Photo © Jacqui Newling, Sydney Living Museums,.

While the Curator rattles the pots and pans, I’m looking at the cooking ‘apparatus’ upon which they were used at various points in time. We’ve recently looked at domestic hearth cookery from the early 1800’s, but today I’m taking us to the First Fleet encampment at Sydney Cove in 1788.

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Facing reality

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Homemade brawn. Photo © Jacqui Newling.

Some recipes are a joy to follow, others can be quite challenging. For me, brawn is in the latter category. And a cautionary warning – some images in this article may be confronting or disturbing. No offence is intended in showing these images.

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A Birthday Feast

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Students from Fort Street Public School sit down to a 'convicts' mess' of boiled beef, cabbage and potatoes, bread and plum pudding. Photo Andrew James (James Horan) for Sydney Living Museums

This week marks the 200th anniversary of the Hyde Park convict barracks, and local ‘convict’ students joined the Governor of New South Wales, the Honourable Margaret Beazley to celebrate.

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To market, to market…

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Copy of a sketch of the Queen Victoria Markets Building labelled “The new city markets” (detail) looking SE from the corner of York Street and Market Street towards the Town Hall. © State Archives Office SRC10890

Welcome this week to guest contributor, Heather Hunwick, who takes us into the story of Sydney’s early markets, and from a nostalgic allusion to London’s bustling Leadenhall Market, to the splendid Queen Victoria Building 110 years later.

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Eel Festival 2019

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Gumaroy Newman playing the Yidaki (Didgeridoo) at the 2018 Eel Festival at Elizabeth Farm. Photo © Alex Wisser for Sydney Living Museums

Kicking off this year’s Aboriginal Cultural Calendar is our annual Eel Festival on Sunday 3 March at Elizabeth Farm which celebrates the seasonal migration of eels, or burra in local language, into Darug Country. Continue reading →

The art of tea, and tea as art

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Kylie Douglas, Womandala (detail), Cuttlefish bone. Meroogal Women's Art Prize 2018 entry. Photo © Nicholas Watt for Sydney Living Museums

The restorative power and ritualised nature of tea, whether elegantly poured from a pot into a fine china cup, or a bag languishing in a mug on a kitchen bench or work-desk gives inspiration to many of the artists who have entered works in the Meroogal Women’s Art Prize.  Continue reading →