Dani Venn

It’s come to that time of the year where I wake up and never want to get out of bed, it’s just too cold! Unfortunately for me I live in a house where my bedroom may as well be made out of cardboard as there is absolutely no insulation and some days it’s even warmer [...]

You may have noticed that I have not blogged lately. It’s just that I have been very busy working in Thailand eating my body weight in new culinary discoveries, snapping photographs like a woman possessed at every produce market conceivable (even one that is built quite inconveniently on top of a railway track!) and learning [...]

Lamingtons are about as Australian as you get. You can tell this because when you type the word lamington it is not recognised as a word and comes up in spell check. As today is Australia Day I thought I’d get all patriotic and bake a bunch of these sweet squares of sponge cake coated [...]

Unless your name is Heston Blumenthal, it’s pretty much impossible to invent a new dish. It seems that almost everything in the culinary world has been done before. But I guess that was probably what people in the 1950′s thought about music until The Beatles changed all that! Now I’m not saying that I’m like [...]

I can’t get enough of curry. I would eat it for breakfast everyday if I could. I love the complexity of curries and how diverse they are within Asia and around the World. When I was I was growing up one of my favourite meals was mum’s ‘curry’ made up of minced beef sprinkled with Keens [...]

The Brits have bought a few good things, or two, to the shores of Australia. Convicts and colonialists, rabbits and foxes, the common cold and Christianity, but the best things would have to be public holidays and puddings. Let’s be honest, everyone loves a public holiday. Australians love a public holiday so much that they would rather [...]

I’m exited to share with you the very first episode of my new web series Homemade at Dani’s featuring a Tea Cup Creme Brûlée. This series will reveal a little bit more about me through yummy homestyle recipes and personal stories from my very own kitchen in the Yarra Valley. I hope that you enjoy [...]

I grew up believing that I didn’t really like Italian food, and rightly so. What I knew to be Italian food was my Aunty’s stodgy lasagne, the pasta was cardboardy, the filling so dense you could have knocked someone out by throwing a slice of it at their head (perhaps better then digesting it?). Or [...]

Most people are shocked when I tell them that I’ve never really been fond of animals, especially domestic ones. But the truth of the matter is my family’s dogs have always been a bit strange. One had a fetish for my stuffed toys, he would drag them underneath the dinner table and wouldn’t leave much [...]

Spring is well and truly upon us and with it comes an abundance of crisp asparagus, fresh broad beans, succulent lamb, blushed cheeks and ladies that lunch in pink polka dot dresses. Well, maybe that last part is just me? Lunch in spring is always a delightful affair as the sun emerges from winter’s clasp, [...]