5 Minute Food Fix

Chrissie Swan and your food fix host Yumi Stynes used to eat a lot of weekend lunches together when they lived in the same city.

Back then it was crunchy, chewy bread, butter and maybe a burrata.

But that was 15 years ago. What now?

MAYBE, it's a foccacia.

There's a great Karen Martini recipe here - ignore all the toppings and just use the foccacia basic as a template - it's excellent and you don't need to "rice" the ...

Chrissie Swan is guest co-host again and she is absolutely FLUENT in Bolognese.

Here are the hacks, by Chrissie:

As I mentioned - with bolognaise every single batch is different.

Here’s my base:

2 onions

8 cloves of garlic

2 carrots, peeled and quartered

3 celery stalks, quartered

1kg coarsely minced chuck steak from the butcher

1 heaped teaspoon of flaked sea salt

3 chicken stock cubes

500g tomato paste

2 x 800g tins of tomat...

Simon has been booked to be a guest on a cooking show, shooting soon.

So... what to cook?

It can be agony to decide, but Simon's first impulse is to make his famous and delicious FISH FINGER SANDWICH.

The legendary sando is easy AND supremely yummy, so is there a problem?

POSSIBLY! Warning! This episode contains contagious LoLs! Stay til the end!

FISH FINGER SANDWICH - serves 2

Pre-heat the oven to 220C

Spread out 10 fish fing...

Yumi and Simon ask some age old questions about why some cooks are hectic and they come up with some theories...

A chef who is completely NOT hectic but calm and delightful is Marion Grasby and Yumi has been fun cooking a few recipes from her website, including today's Chicken Lemon and Orzo, that you can whip up in a LEGIT 30 mins.

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There's no convincing Yumi that garlic deserves to be eaten.

HOWEVER, she does have memories of loving garlic bread and that is because it is, in fact, Very Yummy (if you are not a vampire or FODMAP).

Simon's ULTIMATE Garlic Bread:

Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Get a good-looking baguette and slice it but not all the way to the bottom, leaving the base intact.

100g softened butter and 4-5 garlic cloves grated on the side of a box grat...

COME TO YUMI'S 'WELCOME TO FRIENDSHIP' book launch!

Saturday 8 August, 2026. 2pm at Gleebooks in Sydney.

On today's episode, Simon is excited and psyched about a book called 'SMOKE, RICE, WATER' by Kishwar Chowdhury.

From it, he's recommending as a starter dish, the Pumpkin with Nigella Seeds.

METHOD:

Prepare 500g butternut pumpkin by peeling and cutting into cubes

heat 3tbs oil over a medium heat

then add in 1tsp Nigella See...

Why do some recipes fall out of rotation?

And how good is it when they come back, like a beloved friend?

OTTOLENGHI'S PRAWN, ORZO and MARINATED FETTA recipe can be found here.

(Yumi leaves out the garlic and uses a whole 500g bag of frozen prawns, defrosted in a sieve over a bowl overnight in the fridge, and it's perfectly great.)

The whole cookbook SIMPLE by OTTOLENGHI can be found everywhere, including here.

Fill out our l...

Yumi is deep in book promo at the moment - with WELCOME TO FRIENDSHIP - the long-awaited fifth book in the 'Welcome to' series, due for wide release July 28, 2026. (FYI you can pre-order and get yourself a set of free badges by uploading your receipt to this website. Not to hustle but you need to do it TODAY! because eligibility expires 27/07/2026)

Also, it wouldn't suck if you could please fill out this survey! Won't take long ...

Packet gnocchi, but make it useful

A message from Simon:

Today’s fix is packet gnocchi. And I want you to not boil it.

I know the packet tells you to boil it. Ignore the packet. The packet does not know your life.

The best thing to do with shelf-stable gnocchi is roast it.

Straight onto a tray. Olive oil. Tomatoes. Garlic. Lemon zest. Olives. Into a hot oven. Done.

What happens is the gnocchi goes golden and a little bit crisp on t...

Impressing friends with one's cooking skills is truly one of life's joys. Yumi has found a new way that is super easy and you probably have 90% of the ingredients already.

BELINDA JEFFEREY's CHEESE BISCUITS

Combine all the dry ingredients: 300g plain flour, 50g Self-raising flour and a teaspoon of salt. Add in 2tsp mild chilli flakes.

Mix well in the food processor.

Add 40g freshly grated parmesan and a whole grated block of Mersey...

Yumi organised an adult playdate for HERSELF with a friend for some cooking fun.

It didn't work out exactly to plan but they *did* get to make this amazing gnocchi from Ottolenghi's 'SIMPLE'.

You can find a full version of it in this article - and Simon's recommendation is that you roast up a sweet tomato sauce alongside the gnocchi and then serve with a rocket salad lightly dressed with lemon juice and good quality olive oil.

It's time to fancy up your humble piece of fried salmon with a recipe from a cookbook that's a couple of years old but Yumi dusted it off and has been cooking from it quite a bit in the past weeks. It's - OTTOLENGHI's 'SIMPLE'.

Simon has good news if you're a fan of the cookbook and its author...

And you can find the salsa and salmon recipe here.

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Yumi is threatening to host a dog re-naming ceremony to honor Norweigan striker, community boyfriend and everyone's emotional support Viking, Erling Haaland (it's not her hound so technically NO, and also, just no.)

Simon, meanwhile, has been impressing adults with this really easy-to-nail and incredibly yummy Marmalade Self-Saucing Pudding,

RECIPE: Marmalade self-saucing pudding

Serves 4–6

Preheat the oven to 180°C and g...

Yumi and Simon have been watching the World Cup football and it's been both fun and heartbreaking. If you're feeling bitter about Australia (or Japan, or Korea, Ghana, Canada etc etc), maybe you can enjoy the bitter feeling with the perfect winter salad.

Crunchy Bitter Winter Radicchio Salad

Toast a half cup walnuts in a dry frypan.

Set aside.

Tear apart a head of radicchio lettuce. Finely slice a small fennel bulb.

Peel two ...

ARE ALL RICOTTAS CREATED EQUAL?

It's a question to kick off today's episode.

Yumi has also been entertaining one of her besties, and whenever she comes to visit that means it's time to revisit the legendary Spanish dessert Burnt Basque Cheesecake. I've been making this for quite a while using Nagi's recipe, but after a visit to unmissable Redfern eaterie, Flyover Fritterie, I was inspired to try adding saffron, rosewater and card...

ORZO TRAY BAKE WITH FETTA AND PEPPERS

Turn oven on to 220C.

Quarter 4 peeled red onions, one whole chilli, one roughly chopped red pepper, and split a head of garlic across the hemisphere of the bulb.

Drizzle with olive oil then roast for 20mins until the onions are cooked and the veg are starting to char.

Add in a tin of cherry tomatoes, a tsp of nigella seeds and a tsp of crushed coriander seeds.

Cook for 20 more mins, squa...

Simon and Yumi belly-laugh over some food-related nonsense and it's contagious, so listen if you need to get some sunshine today. Yumi also shares a bit about what happened at her recent (and very fancy) birthday lunch.

And maybe you also need ...chocolate cake? The quite legendary CHOCOLATE CAKE recipe from the wonderful Helen Goh can be found here.

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Yumi and Simon haven't seen much of each other recently so have much to catch up on, including what's going on with Yumi's extremely adoring foster dog, a fantastic Japanese snack that her kids LOVE, and what to do with that leftover chilli oil you've had cluttering your pantry ever since the Great Chilli Crisp Oil Fad of 2014...!

If you want to buy the crunchy "osembe" crackers, they look like this. They're not available at all...