What I See with Peter Fiorenza: Treat cooking like sport with technique, tips, flavour and your own style

That other day at morning tea, my mate was hoeing into a small plate of an old favourite, bangers and mash. For the uninitiated, it’s the classic staple of sausages, mash potato, peas and gravy. I just love sausages, so this, for me, is close to heaven on a plate — minus the peas. If you’re a regular reader of my column, you would have come to the conclusion that I like to cook. My social media friends probably get annoyed with my frequent postings of culinary success stories, with most being photo snaps of my sausage rolls. And because Siri hears everything, my social media feed is constantly filled with recipe posts and reels. You can understand too, that a lot of this is Italian fare, but also classical ole favourites such as bangers and mash. There is quite a lot of spam online these days — information that on the whole is quite irrelevant. But I find a lot of it really adds to my cooking ability. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s all about technique, tips and flavour. You can have the most exotic dish, but if it doesn’t have enough flavour, it’s sadly a waste of time and effort. To me, cooking is like playing sport — you can do the same thing as someone else, but how you do it is the difference. And with cooking, like sport, it’s about doing the simple things well, coupled with a touch of your own style. The simple things include cooking something a bit longer, using the oven instead of the frypan, boiling your spuds before roasting, or putting something in the fridge for a period before you fry or roast it. Often, it’s the social media reels about recipes that have helped me so much with this. So, a good feed of bangers and mash with a bit of style and great flavour will always trump fancy food like filet mignon and caviar with red wine sauce if it lacks the basics. And that brings me to the latest cooking Facebook reels sensation, “I’m Not A Chef, I’m Italian”. I don’t know who he is or much about him, except that you’ve got to get on board with this fella who has the quintessential New York-Italian accent. I started watching him a little while ago and have become hooked on his irreverence and stupid antics that make up the side show surrounding his terrific recipes. He is one of many who continually keep me enthused with knocking up a few meals here and there — and that includes bangers and mash. Peter Fiorenza hosts Sports Shed Saturday (9am to noon) and Fiorenza on Sunday (10am to noon) on Radio MAMA. He’s also on Radio Geraldton (radiogeraldton.com.au).