Everything I know about cooking I learned on the road while living or travelling abroad.

My first experience was in Paris after leaving high school, when I was perfecting my French at Alliance Francaise. I lived in a starving-poet style garrett in the 17th Arrondissement, near Champs Elysees, for free in return for some light household duties for my landlady - a divorcee and single mother with two teenage children and who was a fashion buyer at the famous Galeries Lafayette department store.

Part of the deal was that I make lunch for her children who used to come home from school for lunch. I thought I would get away with making them sandwiches, but my lack of culinary skills was discovered when I was told to prepare a ’simple steak, frites et salade’.

Shocked to find I did not know how to cook a steak, Madame Cochery took me in hand and I was soon cooking steak to perfection for my two charges.

This simple recipe for four can be expanded and refined as the occasion demands:

1. Dry the steaks on a paper towel, turn them in the olive oil, garlic and pepper and leave out until they have reached room temperature. Straight out of the fridge, the cold steaks will cool down the pan and the steaks will end up stewing instead of the juices sealed in. Add salt just before searing the steaks. Since I cooked my first steak, I have discovered that adding soy sauce really helps bring out the meat flavour.

2. If making pepper steaks, crack the peppercorns beforehand in a mortar or on a wooden board with the bottom of the frypan and cover each side of the steaks with the mixture.

3. Heat a ridged griddle pan (or use a BBQ) on high until smoking hot, add the steaks to the pan - two at the time if the pan is not big enough - and cook for one to two minutes on each side, depending on desired doneness. Place the steaks on heated plates at very low heat in the oven, while preparing the rest of the meal.

4. If making sauce, use a flat pan and deglaze the pan after removing the steaks with red wine or cognac and set it alight, add the cream, stir in the mustard and garlic, season and continue cooking for a scant minute until the sauce thickens. Pour over the steaks.

5. If adding mushrooms, remove stalks and wipe them outside, toss in the olive oil, soy sauce, garlic and pepper before adding them to the pan on their ‘heads’. Leave sizzling until juices start forming inside the cups. Place a mushroom on top of each steak. When cutting into the steak and the mushroom, the mushroom juices will flow and blend with the steak’s juices, making a very rich, flavoursome meal.

6. Alternatively, remove the mushrooms and slice thinly on a cutting board reserving the juices. Make the sauce and add mushrooms and their juices at the end.

Frites

‘Frites’ are simply thin cut chips or better known as French fries. These days, you can get good quality French fries from the supermarket freezer which can be cooked in the oven, following the instructions on the packet.

When making French fries from scratch, use a potato cutter which can quickly turn out fries from one potato at the time. I calculate one medium-size potato per person:

1. Rinse the chips in cold water and dry in a paper towel. This will remove the high glychemic starch which affects diabetes and glucose intolerance. Heat up oil in a chip pan. Test the heat by putting in one of the fries and when the oil immediately starts to froth around the potato, put in the rest of the fries in a chip basket and lower them into the oil, leaving them to fry until just coloured.

2. Lift out the basked, shake off excess oil and leave it resting raised out of the oil while preparing the steaks. Just before serving, plunge the chips back into the oil for a second time and cook until golden. Line a bowl with paper towels to absorb the excess oil, empty the chips in the bowl, sprinkle with salt, shake to distribute the salt, pull out the paper towel, leaving the chips in the bowl and serve.

French Salad

For this simple salad, use  mignonette lettuce or a packet of any mixed green leaf lettuce leaves which blends deliciously with the herby French dressing.

1. Wash the lettuce thoroughly, tear up the mignonette lettuce leaves into bite size pieces and dry on a paper tower or in a salad spinner.

2. Make salad dressing: In a salad bowl mix vinegar and mustard with a fork or small whisk, whisk in salt, pepper and add the oil gradually, whisking until the dressing thickens, add the herbs. Add lettuce leaves to the bowl and toss the salad just before serving.

3. Alternatively, make up several batches of salad dressing, omitting the herbs, and keep in a jar in the fridge and drizzle over salad with the herbs just before serving.

4. Serve with the steak and French fries.

Serves four.

Domino’s Pizza Enterprises recorded a strong 14.5% sales growth in the half year ended December 30, to $328.6m, producing a bottom line increase of 2.8%, to $9.4m.

Don Meij, Domino’s chief executive officer, attributed the strong performance in an otherwise difficult economic climate to increased online business, prompting the company to upgrade its Australian and New Zealand websites.

Online orders now account for 19% of orders in Australia - up 290% on the previous corresponding half year. The site was the most visited site in the food and beverage - restaurant and catering category in November and December, according to Hitwise.

‘Online ordering continues to impress us. That’s why we’ve launched new websites in Australia and New Zealand.’ Meij said today. ‘We will also see an increase in online sales across all countries going forward, following the launch of France’s stores.’

The increase in sales chiefly reflected the increase in outlets - up by 15 to 756, including 11 stores in Europe and four in Australia and New Zealand, two of which were stadium stores.

Same store sales in the period were slower than the previous year at 4.2% - down from 7.6%. However, same store sales in January were up 5.2% on the previous year.

‘Despite the economic downturn, customers are still appearing to be supportive of the fast food category,’ Meij said.

The franchisor of the Domino’s Pizza brand operates 513 outlets in Australia and New Zealand and 243 in France, Belgium and The Netherlands.

Company revenue was down 2.1%, to $113.4m, reflecting the transfer of company-owned stores into the Domino’s franchise system.

At present, the corporate store sell-down is moving slower than expected and 20 stores are still left to sell.

The company expects to maintain growth momentum in 2009 generated by an on-track increase of 40 stores, growing online business and menu expansion into pasta.

Further reading: Domino’s Pizza enters pasta wars