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How to play with your food: KERB Magazine
2026
Throw away all your measuring spoons and cups - you won't need them for these recipes. Here, we step away from precision and measurements—reflecting on how we cook, and how we were taught to cook. Through environmental uncertainty, and increasing digital attention—this intuitive method of cooking helps us prepare food seasonally and independently.
Recipes are food archives, a form of preservation—an opportunity to record, hold, and share stories. The choice to preserve food is a powerful action.
The digital formatting of recipes is a useful tool in sharing, and accessing global food stories. However, as this space develops, it floods us with streams of cutscene-sensory overload that tends towards virality, rather than reflection. This form of media plays to our attention, transforming a considered and mindful process into a rushed, no fuss meal-hack. A 20 second compilation of clips that condense: cut, slice, dice, sautee, add, reduce, season, fry, plate, garnish, DONE speaks nothing of Mum’s lamb Korma. Following recipes that follow this formula allow us to fall into unconsidered indulgence. We crave space for food reflection.
Recipes tell stories shaped by place, seasonality, and heritage. Their components are not regime, but rather a reflection of the environment—using what is seasonally abundant, and culturally important. We cook with our learned habits, tastes, and preferences and when we follow a recipe, our own stories are folded into the dish. Cooking, as a process, is intrinsically personal–and the way we follow recipes should reflect this. We can adapt even the most prescriptive recipe to honour what we have on hand, and what can be sourced locally and ethically.
Here, we share deconstructed food pairings using local ingredients that surround certain Wurundjeri seasons. We have merely indicated foods, and their processing—leaving specifics up to the reader. We hope this encourages an intuitive way of cooking, allowing us to play with food in a way that is considerate to ourselves, and our surroundings.
