When your shared interests are cooking, wine and karaoke, your hangouts qualify as gourmet bonding.
Together Lara and Pedro have been to Singapore (actually where Lara was born), Paris, London, Japan, and Mexico many times, to name a few. That time together sparked their love of food dining out, and, when Lara was an adult, amazing drinks. “Our travel always centres around food and drink,” says Lara. “The whole itinerary is always about the next place we were going to go and eat or have a drink. Anyone who watches my Insta stories will be sick of it.”
Back at home, Lara and Pedro are inspired by the food from their travels, and get together often for a day of cooking, eating and drinking, recreating the meals they remember fondly. Ambitious? Sure, but they’ve gotten pretty good at it, and with a penchant for buying a lot of cooking gear (they each own sous vide machines), Pedro’s incredible taste recall, and Lara’s attention to detail, no consommé, soufflé, or flambé is too tough. Mostly because it’s more about spending time together than the meal itself.
Never was there a better duo to show us how to do Father’s Day right with an incredible cook-up menu, karaoke, and top tips for drinking tequila and mezcal.
Home essentials
- Q.Who taught you to cook?
Pedro: “I never intentionally sat Lara down to watch me cook, but I do love to cook and do a lot of it at home. When she was little, I’d decide what we were having and she’d help find the ingredients.”
Lara: “He’s an excellent cook. My parents split when I was little, they’re still good mates, and I do have a much younger half-sister now, but I was an only child for most of my upbringing. When you’re an only child with a single parent, you go to the supermarket with them and you do the cooking with them, because you don’t have siblings to be off playing with, so I was always there for the cooking process and have always loved food, but I actually didn't get into cooking that much because my dad was such a good cook. Why do it myself when he makes such delicious things?”
Pedro: “Food is very important for Mexicans in general, but for our family in particular. My grandfather, on my father’s side, was a cook in Yucatan, which has one of the most delicious cuisines in Mexico, and he would always prepare food for the big events in our family. He would ask us to come and help, so we could learn, but then he’d send us to look for some special ingredient so he could add something without us knowing. There would always be one ingredient that was a secret. It’s very common for men to cook in Mexico, but mostly for the special occasions when they get to show off. The poor mums are left to do all the day-to-day cooking. So my dad used to cook a lot on the weekends, and like I have with Lara, he would take us to the markets and show us how to pick fresh ingredients. For us, picking an avocado is almost a sport.”
- Q.How do you choose an avocado?
Pedro: “Colour matters, depending on whether you want it for today or later – and this is in reference to Hass Avocados – the stem has to be between green and brown, but not black, and there’s a particular way of touching them. It’s like how you would touch your baby’s cheek. You don’t squeeze, you touch with a little bit of pressure with your whole hand, and it should feel soft, but not squishy, and not hard like an apple. Like a mango.”
Lara: “I get so annoyed when I see people in the supermarket digging their thumbs into the avos and putting it back because it’s too hard. I’m like, well it won’t be now, you’ve bruised it! You’re wrecking the produce!”
- Q.Go-to drink order?
Lara: “Whatever the bartender suggests. Let the expert choose for you. It’s always good. I was recently at Transformer in Fitzroy and the bartender made me an Espresso Martini, but instead of vodka, he used 1800 Coconut Tequila. It was next level. So often bartenders have something they're excited about that they wanna share. Obviously, you don’t want to be a pain in the ass if they’re busy, but if they are happy to chat, it’s the way to go.”
Pedro: “I like Australian gins. Never Never Distilling Co (the Juniper Freak is my favourite), or we found Threefold Distilling when we went to the Melbourne Gin Festival together. I’m also a big fan of rum – Zacapa is the best for sipping neat – and tequila. Wine, I let Lara pick. I recently had Baileys Churro, and it might sound like something a real Mexican should hate, but it’s delicious.”
- Q.What inspires you to cook?
Lara: “Often we just get a craving and it’s inspired by somewhere we’ve been or something we’ve eaten before. We’ll decide we really feel like a hot dog, and then spend a whole day making seven types of hot dogs and going really crazy with it. Otherwise, we’ll remember something we ate years ago and decide to try and make it.”
Pedro: “I am reasonably good at guessing ingredients by taste.”
Lara: “Yes. I’m a very structured person by nature – I like lists and heaps of preparation and heaps of research, while Dad is like the total opposite, you know, everything by intuition and flying by the seat of his pants. I have a lot of admiration for that because it took me a long time to get comfortable doing that in the kitchen and it was cooking with Dad that made me get comfortable. I still love to follow a complex recipe, believe me, but that kind of courage to just follow your taste buds and create something is very cool.”
- Q.What’s your favourite way to entertain?
Pedro: “We both like parties, that’s definitely something we both have in common.
Lara: “That’s an understatement. Dad is the biggest party animal. No one loves a party like Dad. He will throw a party for any reason and regularly gets asked to throw parties for the most random things. He’s been throwing baby showers for people, but they’re like big parties. He’s thrown the most amazing bashes over the years.”
Pedro: “We love having people over, both of us. Very often we’ll cook for just ourselves, but also we’ll invite small groups and treat it almost like they’re coming to an intimate restaurant and sitting at the chef’s table. I also quite like cooking in other people’s houses, as long as they have the right instruments, so we’ll volunteer to cook for people. We love surprising people so we’ll get all the ingredients and just do it for them. For birthdays, I was always very allergic to the generic, organised kids parties, so we always make it a family affair with all the adults too. My own birthdays are big, and I like to do it in a way where I provide all the food and drink.”
Lara: “It’s quite a Mexican thing to provide the full bar for every event, as opposed to Australia where people bring their own stuff, unless it’s like a 60th. Of course friends always contribute, and Mexicans always bring food, but Dad always has the bar set up where the whole liquor cabinet is up for grabs. Australia is quite BYO, whereas Mexican culture is much more about sharing and providing for your guests.”
- Q.Do you prefer to be the host or a guest?
Pedro: “I prefer to host. When I don’t have a party coming up, I tend to invent a reason. I have many couple friends where I’m closer with the wives than the husbands, so often I’ll say, “Ladies, it’s your turn to be looked after”, and invite five or six of the wives only, and I prepare dinner, serve wine, and clean everything after. It’s just a way to have a party, for sure, but also to give them something away from the usual grind. However, after the last one the husbands complained that the wives were now expecting them to cook for them. Which they should be anyway.”
- Q.What makes a great event?
Lara: “I think there’s a lot of things that need to line up for a great event. I’m the type to worry about it, so I always try to think about who will get along, but Dad just invites everyone and it always works. The right balance of people who know and don’t know each other is ideal. Music is a massive factor. Dad still has a huge CD collection, even though he could listen on Spotify. I think it’s because his Google Home never understands his accent.”
Pedro: “Quite often we’re showing each other a playlist we’ve found. If it’s a party, we tend to put on music that people will eventually dance to. It doesn’t have to be Latin, could be ‘80s or ‘90s. Just something that gets people dancing. Karaoke always goes down well too.”
Lara: “You might not know this about Mexicans, but they love karaoke. Often they’ll have set ups in their homes and almost every event ends in karaoke. Even just Dad and I will get together to cook or have a drink and end up doing karaoke together ‘til 3am.”
- Q.Go-to karaoke songs?
Lara: “For a duet, we always start with New York, New York – Frank Sinatra’s version.”
Pedro: “For myself, I quite like Suspicious Minds.”
Lara: “Elvis sung with a Mexican accent is something to be heard.”
Pedro: “Lara does a great Midnight Train to Georgia, by Gladys Knight.”
- Q.How do you choose a wine you both like?
Lara: “We have similar tastes in spirits, but when it comes to wine, we diverge. I love a natural wine, something grippy and textural and savoury – the stuff that’s verging on kombucha. I really like small-batch winemakers and experimental runs of wine, but Dad’s more into the classics.
Pedro: “I believe that wine is one of the things that Australia does best. I very seldom choose international wine. I love Australian shiraz, chardonnays and pinots too, and you can find such Australian good wine at such a good price, for me there’s no need to look anywhere else. I do like a sauv blanc from New Zealand though.”
Lara: “Sauv blanc is not my vibe, at all. But we like to show things to each other and we always try, and we’re flexible, I mean I won’t say no to a lovely Barossa Valley shiraz. So when we’re at a restaurant picking a bottle, we’ll end up with a red, usually because we’re matching it to some slow-cooked meat dish. I’m really loving the Garagiste Merricks Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir right now.”
- Q.Tips for buying Tequila?
Lara: “We always bring back tequila from Mexico, but there is so much more range available in Australia than there was a few years ago. My favourite is the Herradura Reposado.”
Pedro: “Tequila has a bad reputation – terrible nights fuelled by the cheap stuff. The best tequilas are meant to be sipped, and with a good quality tequila you can happily do that. I actually prefer silver or blanco tequilas (unaged) rather than reposados or añejos (tequila aged between two to 12 months, or one to three years, respectively), and Patron is a good pick from the reasonably priced ones. On the mezcal front, I’m really enjoying Burrito Fiestero. I was quite hesitant at first because it doesn’t look like a traditional mezcal, but it's great.”
Notable mentions
- Q.Favourite drinks experiences?
Lara: “God, that’s hard to narrow down. We went to the Melbourne Gin Festival together last year. We started with a strict self-imposed limit of taking home three bottles each. I think we each left with about eight.”
Pedro: “We also made wine together last year! Shiraz. It was a Father’s Day present from Lara actually, through Shiraz Republic’s Rent-A-Row. It was an incredible experience – we both really enjoy learning about wine – and we can’t wait to do it again. Plus we’re hoping to do our WSET qualifications together this year.”
- Q.Successful virtual party?
Lara: “There was a long period during lockdown where you could have up to 10 people in your home. It was around Dad’s birthday and he’d planned a huge party that kept getting pushed back, so instead he decided to get 10 people to host 10 of his friends at their own houses and they would all join up on video. I was like, that’s madness and a lot to ask of people – I would never have tried it. But everyone was so into it! Somehow Dad’s weird ideas always pan out well. There were people turning up to houses where they didn’t know the owners, but they were all Dad’s friends. It was adorable.
- Q.Last thing that inspired you to cook?
Lara: “Dad got me a Luv-A-Duck Cooking Class and it was so cool, I highly recommend. After, we became obsessed with cooking duck and have been cooking it in every way shape and form since.”
Pedro: “The most recent time was when we were talking about Tasmania and the amazing scallop pies there. That gave us a craving for it and decided to make it.”
Lara: “Yes, those curried scallop pies are so delicious, and we were like, they can’t be too hard to make, so we each bought half the ingredients, Dad came over and we made them ourselves.”
- Q.Best restaurant you’ve ever eaten at together?
Pedro: “There is a place in Mexico City, in Polanco, called Comedor Jacinta. They used to have this one dish, sopes con tuetano y escamoles – basically like a thick tortilla with beans and other things including bone marrow and ant larvae, and it was just the most delicious thing.”
Lara: “I know it might sound strange to some, but don’t knock it till you try it. Mexicans love their bugs and this larvae is buttery and stupidly delicious. They call it Mexican caviar. We talk still about this meal all the time.”
Pedro: “A local favourite is Scopri in Carlton.”
Lara: “We both love classic Italian, and service is so much a part of your experience and the service there is phenomenal. I don’t mean super formal, but they way they take you on that food journey, it reminds me of the service in Mexico, and far out the food is good.”
Let’s plan... a Father’s Day cook up
- Q.Who’s coming:
Lara: “Just the two of us. A true father-daughter bonding sesh.”
- Q.The guest brief:
Lara: “We’ll cook at my place, but start super early and go shopping for groceries together. We always plan to start cooking a lot earlier than it actually happens, and that sometimes means the main course is at 10pm, but we’re eating all day. I mean, this is like a 24-hour hangout. We make one thing, then we eat it, then make something else, eat it, and the cycle repeats for hours.”
- Q.Drink on arrival:
Pedro: “We both love gin, so we’ll start with a Gin and Tonic – usually with some sort herby addition – to have while we cook. I like 23rd Street gin for cocktails. We’ll pair that with cooking snacks (essential), like cheese, paté and some really nice bread.”
- Q.The entree:
Lara: “A while later we’ll have a Paloma cocktail made with Jose Curevo Silver, alongside Coctel Campechano – which is basically the Mexican version of a prawn cocktail. Until way too recently I thought that when people here talked about prawn cocktails they were talking about this, but they’re actually pretty different. The Mexican one is better. It uses all sorts of weird ingredients like orange soda and tomato sauce – again, don’t knock it till you try it. We stopped at a food stall once when we were in Mexico, at this beautiful spot in Bacalar, and we ordered one of these and it was just mind-blowing. I asked the waiter what was in it and wrote it down in my Notes app. I was kind of glad I asked after because the orange soda might have put me off, but it was a life-changing meal.”
- Q.The main event:
Lara: “The duck course! We both fell in love with sous vide machines over the last year. Dad has a huge sous vide oven that takes up his entire bench top. We have a lot of cooking gear. So we’re using that for the duck and finishing it in a big cast iron pot. Serving with mash and asparagus and a rich jus.”
Pedro: “You could definitely have this with a bigger red, but we often go for something medium-bodied. Lara showed me the Longview Shiraz Barbera and we both love it.”
- Q.The dessert:
Lara: “We like theatrics, if you can’t tell. Dad’s quite into flambéing fruits. Looks impressive, but it’s dead easy.”
Pedro: “I like to use Cognac or Grand Marnier to flambé pineapple, mango, or peaches and serve it with crepes.”
- Q.The finisher:
Pedro: “All Mexican events have to finish with a sipping tequila or mezcal. Something really nice, served in a traditional glass.”
Lara: “We also always make a midnight snack with leftovers. Karaoke is hungry work. So we’ll shred up some of the duck and fry it off, whack it in small corn tortillas with some fresh chopped onion, coriander, chilli, lime. Bloody good.”
