Leila Khazma likes to cook the old-fashioned way: with patience, good ingredients and her hands. Based in the Blue Mountains and drawing on her Egyptian and Lebanese heritage, she has spent years cooking across Sydney, leading kitchens at Where’s Nick and P&V and collaborating with the likes of Café Freda’s and Baba’s Place. Her food is shaped by the flavours of the Mediterranean and North Africa, but also by the seasons, the people around her and whatever is looking best that week. The result is thoughtful, generous cooking that feels grounded, nourishing and unfussy – food made to be shared.
10 ingredients you always have in your fridge…
Sauerkraut, thick yogurt, cod liver oil, good butter, lemons, garlic, a jar of olives, and usually some kind of cured or pickled fish. I’m not home very much, I’m usually in the kitchen at work so my fridge leans towards things that keep and that can become a meal very quickly.
What is your most memorable dining experience?
Eating sayadieh by the sea in Lebanon. This is fish and rice deeply spiced with cumin and caramelised onions, served with tahini and sharp lemon. The table is usually plastic, the sea is a few metres away, and everything tastes of salt and smoke.
What influenced your love of food?
Partly a desire to stay close to my culture while living far from home. Cooking is a way of maintaining a relationship to places, flavours and habits that existed before me, a kind of inheritance.
Who is the best cook you know?
When my Mum migrated to Australia, she came with her best friend, who is Ghanaian. Some of my fondest memories are going to her house after school and eating Waakye (black-eyed beans and rice) with Shitto, a deep, smoky chili condiment.
Who is on your dream dinner party table?
My Grandmother, who I never had the chance to meet. My Mother as a young woman before she migrated. A fisherman and a butcher, the people who understand animals, patience and the sea.
Share the menu of your last supper…
Stuffed mussels (midye dolma), with rice, spices and lemon. A large herb salad dressed with olive oil and lemon.
What is your favourite vegetable?
Bitter greens; endive, chicory, dandelion. They feel cleansing, like something the body quietly recognises as good for it.
Top five favourite places to dine?
Butchers in Lebanon serving fresh raw liver. My family’s table. My Mother’s village. La Pinta in Reservoir. Clarence and V in Sydney.
Leila Khazma’s recipe for stuffed sardines
They rest like buttons in a sewing tin, orderly, soft-spined, pretending not to smell of the sea.
Ingredients
Makes 8-12 sardines
Sardines:
8–12 fresh sardines, cleaned and butterflied
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Breadcrumb Agrodolce Stuffing:
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
2 tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, grated
2 tbsp sultanas or currants
2 tbsp pine nuts, toasted
1–2 tbsp sherry vinegar
A splash of white wine
Zest of ½ lemon
Salt and black pepper
Chopped parsley
Method
Make the stuffing by warming the oil; softening the shallot; adding garlic, sultanas, and pine nuts. Stir in breadcrumbs and toast lightly. Add vinegar, if using, and wine. Finish with lemon zest, parsley, salt, pepper.
Prepare the sardines. Lay skin-side down; season lightly.
Stuff the muscles. Place a spoonful of stuffing in each; fold closed like thin silver books.
Bake the muscles. Arrange in a tray; drizzle with oil and zest. Bake at 190°C for 10 minutes.
Finish. Squeeze lemon over everything.
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Dining and Cooking