Chef Curtis Stone. Source: Supplied

Gone are the days of meat paired with peas and potato; whether you’re eating out or eating at home, our eating is more adventurous than ever before. Just ask Curtis Stone.

“As a society we’ve become quite multicultural, more interested, better travelled than generations before, so we have a bigger appetite for different foods,” he tells news.com.au.

“I mean so much about food has changed. Even like, when I first started my apprenticeship, which was maybe 25 years ago, the chefs wore big white hats, neckerchiefs and silly white aprons, it was seriously the most uncool thing you ever wanted to do. But now, somehow this huge spotlight has been shone on the industry, and especially the way you cook at home. A lot of people say, oh it’s because of Masterchef, or it’s because of My Kitchen Rules or Delicious magazine, but the truth is, it’s just because we want it. We want to to be a lot more adventurous when we cook at home. It’s supply and demand, and someone was smart enough to put it on TV. That, and so many amazing things come from cooking your family a meal.”

With his seventh cookbook due to be released in 2015, a successful partnership with Coles and several home cooking shows under his belt, Stone knows what he’s talking about.

“I grew up in the generation of meat stuck under the grill, cooked on the barbecue, roasts, and that’s kind of it. Maybe a spaghetti Bolognese or a lasagne here or there! But these days, we’re a lot more adventurous. South East Asia plays a part in people’s kitchens at home, people are thinking about how to ‘plate up’ their food because of the shows we watch, even if you just walk through a supermarket and have a look at the variety on the shelves, it’s changed drastically. I think the appetite for something new is bigger and better than ever.”

Curtis Stone also opened restaurant Maude in LA earlier this year. Source: Supplied

But because of all the variety presented to us, in some ways it’s harder than ever to choose what to eat. Add that variety to the confusion around things like elimination diets, no grain diets, sugar free diets, caveman diets, 5:2 diets, and it’s east to get yourself into a bit of a muddle about what you should be eating.

“I think the truth is, the key to any healthy diet is balance,” Stone says. “Your diet and your exercise need to be in balance as well. The body doesn’t require certain nutrients one day and not on the next, so by nature those elimination diets don’t necessarily give your body everything it needs. But, if we all knew exactly how to live with balance, the whole publishing industry would go out of business. It’s not easy, that’s the truth! For me, I’ve always been an advocate for seasonal eating. You can’t go wrong. I’m on this huge drive to get people to eat seasonally. It’s better for the country, it’s better for the farmers, it’s better for the growers, it’s better for us. It means the food is more plentiful, it’s cheaper, it tastes better. It makes sense.

“I moved to London when I was 21 and I worked for a guy over there who would go to Paris every Wednesday to go to a huge market called Rungis, where we’d pick up all the fruit and vegetables from whatever was there and drive it back to the UK and divide it between all his restaurants. You get more in touch with the seasons doing like that. Supermarkets have made the shopping experience quite homogenised, and it’s a shame. From a consumer’s perspective, how do you know what’s in season? You walk into a supermarket and there’s asparagus all year round. Is it better at a certain time of year? Yes, absolutely!

“My attitude is, let’s celebrate citrus in winter when it’s in season, let’s go big with not just the standard orange and mandarin but the blood oranges and cara oranges and really enjoy it. Then as you move into spring, let’s move into spring fruit and veg.

“It’s so interesting, I’m like the sounding board because people know I work with Coles, and in spring time people are like, ‘Oh I got really good strawberries, actually, last week’, and they don’t necessarily know that they’re good because that’s the time to buy strawberries! So my work with Coles is encouraging them to get the best of the season to the front of the store, discount it even more than ever, get people loving it because I want people to have a really good experience. We’ve been working at it for a while and it’s coming together, but it’s a big job.”

Seasonal cooking is the best kind of cooking, according to Stone. Source: Supplied

Curtis’s commitment to seasonal eating stretches as far as Christmas, and it’s hard not to catch his enthusiasm as he rattles off all the produce available in summer in Australia that we should be using.

“Over here of course, you’ve got cherries and berries and mangoes and nectarines and peaches and tomatoes and avocadoes. So how do you keep those elements of tradition alive, but give it a bit of an Aussie twist? It’s interesting when you talk about Christmas, because it’s traditionally more European in its focus, in terms of meat, root vegetables, brussels sprouts, carrots and honey. That’s because in winter time, that’s exactly what you find in the UK and Europe.

“So for Coles, I did a piece of roast pork with some pickled blueberries which was pretty fab, some prawns with some blistered jalapeños … I think seafood should be a bit more of a part of an Aussie Christmas, especially as an appetiser.

“I also did my mum’s mince pies, because I love that element of tradition, some mango parfaits — mangoes are at their absolute best around Christmastime, and a quarter of the price than at the other end of the year.

“I think the other thing about Christmas, apart from eating seasonally, is picking your battles. Understanding that you’re going to be cooking for four times as many people, and that you want leftovers as well. So if you can do the mango parfaits or the pot de cremes or whatever you’re doing for dessert the day before and pop it in the fridge, you know the dessert’s taken care of. Or the salad, have it done so that all you need to do is drizzle the dressing before you serve it.

Curtis Stone's fruit mince pies are made using his mum’s recipe. Source: Supplied

“I’ll be cooking for about 18 people this year. Roast pork is what I’ll cook, that’s what my mum always made. Tradition is so interesting around Christmas, those little elements that make it your Christmas. But then my wife’s family is Korean on one side so we’ll have some Korean food, and we’ll have a piece of roast beef which is what they have for Christmas in the States. It’s funny, we do roast turkey here thinking it’s American, but no one has roast turkey there for Christmas, it’s all for thanksgiving. Usually for Christmas they’ll do beef or ham. So I’ll be doing a beef for my guests.”

I tell Curtis I cooked my first ever turkey over the weekend. “Did you brine it?”, he automatically asks. I guiltily answer that no, I didn’t — but should I have? Quick as anything, he says this:

“In the States a brine is literally sugar, water, and whatever herbs you want to include. You bring it all to the boil and let it cool, and you sit the entire turkey in the bath — the brine — and leave it in there for ten hours. It penetrates and keeps it juicy and gets the salt and the sugar in there so it seasons it right throughout. It’s a beautiful way to cook a turkey.”

I’m sold. This guy knows his stuff.

More: Check out some of Curtis Stone’s recipes on taste.com.au