The Agrarian Kitchen

The much-anticipated first book from the founder of The Agrarian Kitchen in Tasmania, now in paperback

When former Australian Gourmet Traveller food editor Rodney Dunn moved from Sydney to Tasmania, he and his wife Severine set about transforming a nineteenth-century schoolhouse into a sustainable farm-based cooking school. Nestled in a misty valley outside Hobart, The Agrarian Kitchen struck a chord with people seeking respite from fast-paced lives and a meaningful connection with the food we eat and the land that produces it.

This collection of recipes from the phenomenally popular cooking school celebrates the simple pleasures of cooking and eating in tune with the seasons, and the rhythm of a life lived close to the earth.

Rodney Dunn grew up on a farm in rural New South Wales. During his chef apprenticeship he worked under Tetsuya Wakuda at esteemed Sydney restaurant Tetsuya's, before moving into food media. He has since developed recipes for most of Australia's food magazines and worked as food researcher for the Better Homes and Gardens television program. In 2004 he joined Australian Gourmet Traveller as food editor, and continued in the role of contributing food editor for the next 11 years.

In a quest for flavor that only the simple life could bring, Rodney and his family left Sydney in 2007 to begin The Agrarian Kitchen in Tasmania, a farm-based cooking school in the Derwent Valley that allows Rodney to indulge his passion for all things food by growing fruit and vegetables, raising pigs, milking goats and keeping honey bees. And of course to share this bounty with his students in the form of cooking experiences, including butchery, smoking, wood-fired cookery, baking and preserving. Rodney has a deep love of cookbooks as is evident in his 800-plus strong library. In 2013 Rodney published his first cookbook, The Agrarian Kitchen.