Ella Mittas is a writer and cook who lives and works in Melbourne, catering events and private functions. Her Greek heritage and fascination with traditional foods and cooking styles led her to live and work in Turkey and Greece.

Her debut cookbook Ela! Ela! (meaning 'Come, come' in Greek) is a heartfelt journey of knowledge in food, culture and belonging. She's now working on a novel, and we discuss where her writing began and how it has developed over time. She explains being motivated by the necessity to try new things, how she has navigated burnout balancing both her cooking and writing careers, and why creative work can’t always be fun.

Ella shared her recipe for Fakes, a Greek lentil soup, which has become an instant What Artists Eat classic.

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Naarm/Melbourne based painter, teacher, home cook, romantic, Brooke Holiday lives where food meets feeling, and story meets still life. Her paintings, inspired by objects and domestic rituals, carry emotional weight: a bruised pear, a flicker of candlelight, a beloved market trip.

Food is her other creative language: barfi from her grandmother, a fridge frequently stocked with Salsa Verde, drop-in dinners and butter on everything. “Cooking is storytelling. It softens people.”

Brooke Holiday's recipe is Salsa Verde, which we made right after the interview and served on our oven baked snapper!

You can find Brooke Holiday's Salsa Verde recipe on our website!

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Annie-Rose Maloney has a simple ethos when it comes to writing a song: it must have a pulse, it must feel nice to sing, and it must bear a truthfulness about our human experiences.

We talked about the mixed bag of emotions that come with releasing music, the decisions she’s had to make to be uncompromising with her art and the nourishment that comes from growing her own food and sharing meals with her bandmates during rehearsals.

The seven songs on Circle Walking are all tethered by being grounded in deep truth, and came out “a bit like an exhale - I almost always cried when I wrote them.” It was written over many years without any set intention, songs often blooming subconsciously from a seed of a lyric, or melody line - “I tended to let things reveal themselves to me. Like an archaeologist uncovering a hidden and delicate treasure.”

Annie-Rose's recipe is a garden pie, which is packed full of any veggies you have around, in crispy filo pastry.

You can find Annie-Rose Maloney's Garden Pie recipe on our website!

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Emily Wurramara (she/her) has had a huge past 12 months. After her historic win at the ARIA awards, and in celebration of her multi award winning album ‘NARA’, she has announced an encore tour. Emily is a Lutruwita/Tasmania-based artist, activist, author and proud Warnindhilyagwa woman hailing from Groote Eylandt & Milyakburra/Bickerton Island.

Emily reflects on her formative experiences with music, such as learning the violin as a child, and the sensory memories of the foods she grew up with. The conversation also explores the financial challenges and realities that artists face, with Emily emphasising the importance of financial education and sustainability in the music industry. Throughout the discussion, Emily emphasises the power of art, music, and food to connect, express, and nourish the soul.

Emily shares her Pork Adobo recipe with us, which reminds her of her childhood, family gatherings and her Lola's perfectly balanced flavours.

You can find Emily Wurramara's Pork Adobo recipe on our website!

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

Support What Artists Eat on Patreon!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Manisha Anjali is a writer and an artist. She is the founder of Neptune, a research and documentation platform for dreams, visions, and hallucinations.

She is the author of Naag Mountain, published by Giramondo in April 2024. Naag Mountain was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award at the Queensland Literary Awards in 2024.

Manisha grew up in Suva, Fiji, surrounded by nature, food and books. She has a deep connection to storytelling and mysticism, which we explore in our chat. Living in Melbourne currently, maintaining that connection is something Manisha finds extremely important to do.

Talking about art and food, she says "...they make life worth living. Food is a physical necessity and art is the soul’s necessity, so you’re feeing your soul with art and you’re feeding your body with food and you just need both to enjoy this time on earth."

Manisha shares her Dhal recipe with us and explains that growing up she’d have it almost every day. It was the foundation for everything else she ate. She associates it with a comfortable and homely feeling.

You can find Manisha Anjali's Dhal recipe on our website!

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

Support What Artists Eat on Patreon!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Francesca Gonzales is many things. She’s a psychology student, musician, songwriter, vocalist, key-tar player and facilitator. She’s a staunch advocate for artists’ mental health and finds herself constantly thinking about how she can help artists figure out what’s best for themselves in an industry that leaves many people miserable and burnt out.

Francesca is obsessed with promoting and facilitating mental health for artists. She started out as a musician and really wanted to connect with people. As she pursued music, she found herself alone a lot of the time and it felt wrong. She soon found that many people were feeling the same way, so she created Breakfast Club meet-ups as a way to come together with her peers and foster an environment where artists could support each other and learn from each other.

You can sign up to Breakfast Club events via Fran's instagram https://www.instagram.com/francescagonzales___/

You can find Fran's Chicken Pilaf recipe on our website!

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

Support What Artists Eat on Patreon!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rochelle Siemienowicz grew up as a strict Seventh Day Adventist. Her first experiences of art (particularly writing) was the bible. In terms of food, she went through a renaissance in culinary life when she left the church and was in her early 20’s.

Her latest novel ‘Double Happiness’ is a love story loosely inspired by her own journey of polyamory.

“The journey of writing this latest book has been one of learning to set boundaries and learning to priortise my own need to create over other people’s needs” - she says.

Rochelle believes that food and art are both about nourishment of the body and the soul, sharing, expressing one's individuality, and sometimes for her: rebellion.

You can find Rochelle's Upside-Down Pear & Almond Flan recipe on our website!

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

Support What Artists Eat on Patreon!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a recording of a live panel talk from North Gallery in Fitzroy presented by Food For Everyone.

It was during Gem Leslie's exhibition called 'Pantry Study', where she visited and painted multicultural pantries around Melbourne.

Our guests were Jaclyn Crupi - author of several books on food including PASTA LOVE and GARDEN LIKE A NONNO about her Italian pantry.

Kira Hosking - creative consultant and recipe writer about her Japanese pantry, and food programmer Adriana Bradica Watson about her Croatian pantry.

We talked about the migrant experience, living in multicultural Melbourne and the complexities of assimilation.

We also spoke about how cooking can connect us to our ancestry and where to find the best Japanese, Italian, Croatian and Hungarian food in Melbourne.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.