A lifetime of cooking has distilled into a passion for preserving for Susan Wise, a familiar voice on Hobart ABC Radio answering listener’s questions on her specialty – and getting much in return.
“The people who ring in have taught me so many things with their tips,†she said.
Sally has always been an enthusiastic cook but when she was first married, had little patience with her husband Robert when he would stay up half the night over the Fowler bottles. Then she tried it herself and thought the experience and the result was sensational.
“And once we have filled all our bottles, the experimentation starts,†she said. “There’s a whole ambiance to this – picking the fruit, doing the preserving and sharing the results.
“I love to cook with wild abandon, to go with what’s available and just maximise it. We have such wonderful produce in Tasmania that we owe it to the produce to do the best we can with it and make it all that it can be.â€
When we spoke to her Sally had picked morello cherries the day before, and now they were in bottles for future pies, others were part way to being processed for a sparkling drink. Some zucchini pickle was on the go and two boxes of cumquats were being preserved in a sugar syrup on a “smothered†bench in her commercial kitchen at home at Eaglehawk Neck.
Sally and Robert have six children, including pastry chef Alistair Wise, just back from rave reviews for him in Gordon Ramsey’s New York restaurant, and working at Café Toulouse before he starts his own business, and Andrew, a chef at Botanical with Paul Wilson.
A self-trained cook, Sally gained retrospective qualifications last year - Certificate III in cookery. She also taught cooking at Tasman District School, and took Years 7-10 “on a culinary adventureâ€. Each week she set exercises to educate their palate, such as picking the base flavour of a jelly – with a pot of the jelly in question for the winner. Towards the end of the year, students were catering for community events.
In about June, Sally’s first book A Year in a Bottle, published by ABC Books, will appear. The following recipes, which do justice to the fruits of late summer, have all passed muster with Alistair Wise.
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