Matchett will be familiar to blaze readers of long standing: for many years she adorned our pages with tantalizing recipes and cooking tips, all the while developing and expanding her range of salad dressings, chilli chutneys and water crackers.

After quite some time spent working as a chef at an on-shore oil-rig near Moomba, catering breakfast lunch and dinner for up to 30 workers at a time (“I really enjoyed it,” Vic says, “But came a time when I thought I just had to move on.”) Vic has spent the last year expanding her business and developing the recipe book.

Cleverly designed like a desk calendar so that it can be placed on your worktop while you cook, the book features everything from dips and savouries to fish, poultry, meat and vegetarian dishes.

“People have been asking me for a long time to do a recipe book,” Vic explains. “And also people who buy my products say “How do we use them?” So I said, right, I’ll give you recipes!”

The 44 recipes also feature common ingredients - with the odd exception like Greenwheat Freekeh – which most people will have in their pantries as a matter of course, and feature easy to follow steps.

Matchett’s products feature sensual names: her salad dressings are called The Goddess, Seduction and Storm, for example.

“Food is a very sensual experience,” Vic explains. “It has to look good, smell good, have a good texture and taste good, of course! There’s four senses at work.

“As a cook you use your sense of hearing as well: is the meat sizzling like it should? Is the fat popping because it’s too hot? You must use all five senses when preparing food.”

Down on her farm south east of Adelaide, Vic prepares all her own products by hand in her industrial kitchen, with the help of one assistant.

“Some days Kim gets to mow the lawn, bring the washing in and clean the cattle. On other days, she’s labelling jars or peeling onions. She’s fantastic!” Vic laughs. “I grow a lot of my own organic ingredients on the farm. Everything I source for my products is ethically grown.”

It’s not all Ma Kettle on the farm though. Vic is off around the eastern states at the moment, attending food fairs and community functions, chilli festivals and the like, spreading the word about her hand-made organic products, as well as picking up tips she can use later for her own recipes.

“It’s good,” she says, “I like the travel and meeting people, talking to them, teaching them and learning from them. It takes it out of you, though. I can spend up to two or three months on the road. That’s tiring.”

In other words, it’s good to get back to the farm.

Distributors and stockists: www.matchettproductions.com

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