A chef's tips for cooking fresh & local at home

When it comes to food, it doesn’t much more 'real' than Darren Robertson’s recipes. The laidback chef’s farm-to-table, root-to-stalk approach means his restaurant Three Blue Ducks is the sort of place a cook might pop out to the back garden to make sure the vegetables in your dish are as fresh as can be.

It all started at the Three Blue Ducks in Sydney, where Darren and his fellow co-owners decided to grow some of their own produce to jazz up the menu.

“We had a little kitchen garden. We had a few chooks and some beehives. And then we created a bit of a food hub, with planter boxes and composting. Then we were invited to run a restaurant on a farm in Byron Bay,” he recalls. “So again, we just kind of jumped at that and moved up!”

Darren got a taste for local and natural produce when shopping at farmers markets, an experience he recommends to anyone keen to revitalize their diet. Not only is the produce fresh, it also comes served with expert knowledge.

“The knowledge and the passion that often the guys or the girls that have grown that produce are there serving you, they're talking to you, they're sharing their little tips,” he says, “That's amazing. That's absolute gold.”

The British-born, Byron-based chef has seen it all, from high-end kitchens to cooking breakfast for his family, and brings this wealth of knowledge to his recipes for Centr. “My dietary choices are around nutrition but also having something really tasty for every meal. Food should be exciting, something worth dropping everything for,” he says.

“The most gratifying thing for me in sharing any sort of knowledge, recipes that are gonna improve people's cooking skills and health and well-being, is just seeing the instant change and gratification that they have. And there's no greater reward than someone actually cooking your recipes.”