Queen of all things culinary, Nigella Lawson, was in Melbourne recently to headline the glorious return of the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival in its 30th year.
The main event, Sunday Lunch with Nigella, featured a Q&A with the incomparable British food writer and TV cook, hosted by local food personality Matt Preston.
Lawson chatted candidly about her most recently released cookbook, Cook, Eat, Repeat; what it was like to dish up dinner for one in lockdown; and her internet-famous pronunciation (or mispronunciation) of the word “microwave”.
She also called out a small-batch Aussie condiment she had stockpiled ahead of her return to the UK: “Alice in Frames' Tumami – I’m definitely going back with that.
“I might just be lying in the plane eating it. I begin to worry I’m not taking back enough.”
Preston interjected: “It can always be shipped.”
“Or I can always come back,” Lawson quipped, to the kind of applause you’d expect from a room full of Nigella diehards.
Tumami is by Alice Zaslavsky (aka Alice in Frames) – Masterchef alum, author of epic, award-winning cookbook *In Praise of Veg*, and host of Melbourne Food & Wine Festival’s Saturday event, Drinks With Nigella.
“Burgundy bombshell” is how she describes her Tumami spread. It’s made from just two ingredients – organic Aussie tomatoes and black garlic. And while it has the consistency of tomato paste, there’s a deeper colour thanks to the garlic.
It tastes as if salt has been added, but none has – it just packs a rich savoury-sweet punch that’s perfect for adding a thwack of umami to your cooking.
“It’s about teaching people they don’t need to cook hard – they just need to cook smart,” Zaslavsky told Broadsheet last year.
“This is about having condiments and additions [to your cooking arsenal] where all the hard work has been done – where you add a swish and everything tastes better.”
Tumami is available online and at specialty grocers nationally. Find a list of stockists here.
