Fire, Saffron and Triple Cream: A Conversation with Chef Alastair McLeod

Hospitality is a craft of its own, the art of making people happy with what you cook. Sometimes it starts with a single smell: fragrant curries, apricot chutney and desiccated coconut drifting from a family kitchen in South Belfast, a household table where adventure and generosity came standard.

Chef Alastair McLeod carried that table with him from Belfast to Scotland, London and the Languedoc-Roussillon. There he cooked over open fire at La Frégate in Collioure. He then joined Paul Rankin's landmark Roscoff before settling in Brisbane, where he became head chef at Baguette and earned a chef's hat at Tank Restaurant and Bar. Television audiences know him from Ready Steady Cook, and Valérie knows him from the stage of the Good Food & Wine Show, where he is national MC. This conversation was recorded in Brisbane on the eve of the show.

His guiding principle took root in a Scottish dining room that bought in its squid from the North coast of Scotland and its truckle cheddar from the Isle of Mull, decades before provenance was fashionable. Good cooking, in his words, is "for deliciousness and to give a sense of origin." Valérie presses him on whether a chef can belong to both the stage and the stove. Today his catering company works within deliberately narrow parameters, drawing on the farmers, fishers, brewers and cheesemakers of Moreton Bay so every guest tastes the season and the place.

With International Champagne Day the following morning, Valérie opens a Canard-Duchêne Rosé alongside Délice de Saint-Cyr, a triple crème from Île-de-France enriched with cream until it is almost spoonable. The Champagne cuts cleanly through all that richness, a pairing with real personality, and a reminder that Champagne deserves more than one day a year.

Al'FreshCo is Alastair McLeod's Brisbane catering company, cooking for ten guests or a thousand from Moreton Bay produce.

Champagne in this episode:
Canard-Duchêne Rosé https://www.canard-duchene.fr
Paired with Délice de St-Cyr, https://smellycheese.co/products/delice-de-st-cyr

Valérie Henbest is a French cheese specialist born in Normandie. Her fine foods company, Smelly Cheese Co., based at the Adelaide Central Market. She was awarded the French National Order of Agricultural Merit in 2023 and inducted into the Guilde Internationale des Fromagers, Paris. Sensing Up is a space to slow down, pay attention and let the senses lead. Shop: smellycheese.co | Instagram: smellycheeseco | Facebook: SmellyCheeseCo