When you think ahead to your seventies, you might picture yourself sleeping in, drinking tea, maybe spending time with the grandkids, and enjoying the slow life with nothing on your calendar. That's the life that Maggie be a plan to have. But she hasn't shown any signs of slowing down just yet. She's still the director of her food brand, which now boasts a wide range of products that we all know
and love. She's now also running a foundation that's lobbying for better quality food experiences in nursing homes, as well as overseeing the family property, the orchards of the farm and the vineyard. So how does Maggie keep coming up with new ideas and recipes? And what condiments does Maggie have in her cupboard that help her quickly jazz upper meal? And I personally wanted to know how do I cook
the perfect roast chicken. I'm doctor Ramantha Imbat. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science Consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work a show about how to help you do your best work. Maggie is someone who I have admired from AFAR for a very long time. She wears so many hats and seems to have boundless energy despite being well into her seventies. So how does Maggie keep herself and her brain so sharp.
I'm very involved in a lot of things. I'm always trying to learn something new, so I guess my work with the foundation where I'm trying to change the food in age care. I've been really diving into research and practical issues that help me with my goals, so that continually learning really does keep your brain agile. I used to have. I used to I really used to remember it all, and now I have to write myself notes sometimes.
Like the rest of us, me immortals. I'm curious, like, what's something that you've learned recently or started to learn recently.
The science of or the physiology of taste and smell, so that I have learned and that impacts my work in putting food together for the older Australian that it is not just a feeling, it is actually a science.
What's an example of something you've learned there that you've been able to put into practice in the business.
As we age, we have less saliva, and saliva is like a key to knowing whether we want to eat or not. So if someone has dementia, they don't have those natural responses because their saliva is so diminished. So we have to stimulate saliva in other ways by because a sense of taste is actually a sense of smell, So without the sense of smell, there won't be a
great sense of taste. And as the older Australian, as we age, we lose the effect of both salt and sugar, and so we have to really boost those flavors to be able to get the older palette to identify. And so we need to have things in like age care homes. We need to have in the dining rooms bread machines that let off that scent that is so universal and so extreme of baking bread. We have to give really great emphasis on umami in flavor to stimulate the senses.
So it all intertwines with trying to change the food in age care.
Wow, that is absolutely fascinating, Like I had no idea about any of that, And how then like just what you're learning around that does that impact say, like when you're creating a new recipe for a cookbook or for supermarket shelves or something like.
That, Well, It certainly influences the food, the ideas that I have for cooks and chefs and age care because there's absolutely no very specific training for this very complex world. So I do training modules and have masterclasses, so it
impacts all of that. The more I learn about what the older Australian needs in terms of both that sense of smell and taste, but also the amount of protein they need, the amount of dairy they need, because we do not have a guideline that has been scientifically put together for the older Australian.
I want to talk about new products and I want to know where does your inspiration come from?
Oh, that's easy. It comes from It comes from the seasons, and it comes from the fact that I'm lucky enough to live in this Mediterranean climate and we are farmers and we grow, you know, vines and olives and quinces and soft fruits and pears and apples, and so I always have produced a hand to make the most of and sometimes it's produced that no one else wants and I think, okay, for instance, and I have the windfall quinces that we can't do anything else with, But I've
made a syrup with Seville to make a cocktail syrup, and that only comes from the fact that you have this produce. So I am a produced driven cook and I always have. I'm flavor driven, I'm quality driven. I'm not wasting anything driven. So it all makes great sense to me.
I want to know, how do you adapt the recipes that you create, you know, say for a cookbook. How is that different when you're then creating a product for sale and distribution.
Okay, that's an interesting question. It's all about scale up, and so it comes over time when I think that, I guess the first time I started to actually scale up from what you might do in a commercial kitchen of a restaurant into two hundred leaders, four hundred leaders, and then one thousand leaders for a run, say of Quinn's paste. You have to do it in increments, and you have to be driven by flavor profile and not by just multiplying a recipe. You have a guide, and
then experience helps you a great deal. You start to understand, well, you hold back the liquid, you hold back the sugar, you hold back whatever. So yes, scaling up is perhaps the most difficult thing ever in food production, but I love it.
It's interesting because I had Gary Meagan on the show a few weeks ago, and we're talking about recipes, and he said one of the reasons why when a famous chef creates a recipe book inspired from their restaurant, oftentimes the recipes don't actually work that well at home because they've done the reverse of what you've just explained. They've gone from the scale up version to you know, dividing it by one hundred. So like, I'm quite interested in that scale up scale down.
Oh well, now that's interesting because I can agree with Gary on some things there. But there is another thing. When you have a restaurant chef writing a recipe, there will be many gaps in terms of not buy well. Sometimes there will be gaps in terms of things that a chef will just take for granted everyone knows, and that is, you know, if you're blind baking for a keyshe you need to have your pastry warm and your
mixture immediately to go in. You know, there are little little things that are just so normal to a chef that are not written in many recipes. So it's a mixture of those two things, the scaling down and the obvious being left out because it's never even thought about unless there's someone questioning the chef, well, what do you do here? So yeah, there's a bit of both, and then there are those that do it brilliantly too.
By the way, I guess it's making the unconscious conscious.
Yes, I'm packing that into a recipe, well said, Well.
Now, interestingly with I did ask Gary and I also had Ben Shuri on the show not too long ago, and I asked them both for what are their go to cookbooks, like their absolute favorites, And your name came up in both those interviews. So really, yes, why are you so surprised? Now? I want to like, what are you doing in your cookbooks that the thousands and thousands of other people are not doing in there? Like how are you thinking about this? Differently?
I have blown away that and Gary should do that, but I would suspect it might be my harvest book on my early books, which were Maggie's Farm and Maggie's Orchard, because I tackle seasonality. I tackle something, let's say, locuts.
No one writes about locuts, but how they're this amazing fruit that are in season in November when no one else and no other fruits other than strawberries coming from Queensland in season, and so I go through all of the ideas, not just you know, recipes too, but I talk about ideas that then triggers somebody to think about
locuts differently. And I also I love to write, and I a lot of the pieces in Maggie's Harvest experiences that I've had, like doing a cocktail party in Paris for seven hundred to celebrate the Bodin expedition to Australia from France, or the cherry blossom festival in Tokyo for the Australian Embassy with Lou also for seven hundred people, you know. So I interweave those stories that great food stories because they were great experiences. So I think, I think that's the only difference I see.
What about the recipes themselves, Like are you approaching you know, looking at or creating a recipe that goes into one of your cook books, you know, maybe differently from how other people are doing it?
Well, I don't know. Perhaps if I think about Maggie's table, which I did so many years ago, but I remember because I never cooked the same thing twice. I always time the same way. I have to have someone with me who takes down all the notes of what I'm doing.
But I remember my publisher, Julie Gibbs being absolutely astounded because all I did to prepare for the photo sessions was get all this amazing produce delivered from our farm from the river Land, and I had it all around the kitchen and then I decided how to cook it. And Sophie Zelica, who used to be my apprentice a long time ago, came over from Western Australia to be my backer, so she would assist me in the kitchen but also take notes. So I guess my cooking being
a produced driven cook. I'm a very simple cook and I let the produce shine.
That's amazing. So it sounds like it's a really intuitive process for you.
Totally intuitive because I've never been taught to cook. I use instinct entirely so and I'm not great at planning. When I say I'm not great at planning, I plan all sorts of things. But I like to just be reactive to what I have to work with.
I want to try and dig into that intuition a bit to try to find some tipsly to make my cooking better for anyone listening to this, So, like what is like, aside from using fresh seasonal produce, like, what are some other simple rules that you know that I could learn if I was watching you doing your thing in the kitchen.
It seems a bit trite, but just keeping things simple is really important. When I say fresh seasonal produce, I have a very big vegetable garden, and so I am inspired by the flavor that I'm working with. So having your own garden, even if it's only herbs, the difference that that makes to food. What other getting yourself confidence in basic in sort of like a base repertoire. You know how to roast the perfect chok, how to make
a beautiful stock and soup. If you just get a few really basic things down and then then you start they're building blocks and you start to build on that. So you then go on how to braise some beautiful lamb shanks. And because we've still got quinces, you put quinces in. You look to some inspiration from perhaps a
culture that you admire. For me, it's the Mediterranean, because I live in a Mediterranean climate and I love Italian food, and I love Spanish food, and I love French food too, But I look for inspiration there and I find Italian food perhaps the most inspiring because it is almost the simplest. Isn't that helpful?
It is? I want to dig into a couple of those things. So you talk about you've obviously got an amazing garden full of produce. But let's just say you're living in an apartment and you've got a balcony, Like, what, at a bare minimum would you recommend that people start to grow if they've got a small space.
Even on a balcony, just grow your herbs. If you pick flat leaf parsley just before you're going to use it, if you have lemon thyme in the spring and the summer and ordinary time in the winter, if you have in the summer you have tarragon in your garden. Being able to just add that last minute touch of a fresh herb that you've grown yourself, rather than a bunch that you've grown from that could be two weeks old at the supermarket will make the most the most incredible difference.
And if you have room for a big pot, then whatever you do, have a lemon tree fitting in there on your balcony. It's beautiful to look at green all the year, and we'll give off fruit the whole year round, if you look after it properly.
Oh I'm getting excited listening to this. I'm sorry. I'm so going to do something in my island after this interview, Maggie. Now, you also talked about having a good base repertoire, like what would be say five things like.
That should be in our based repertoire, really base things. I'm going to put all the eggs together. You need to be able to boil an egg, poach an egg, and make an omelet, and boil an egg so it's not overcooked and it's lovely inside.
And how do we do that? Like, how do I boil the perfect egg?
Oh, my goodness, the perfect egg? Look, it depends whether it's come from your own chooks or whether it's come from a supermarket, whether it's in come out, straight out of the fridge or being at room and temperature. I have done some videos on just boiling an egg and poaching an egg, and I think it's really worth looking at something like that because all these things will be
slightly different. But get it right with your own parameters, whether you're having to buy a free range egg from a farmer's market or a supermarket there are all these little things that make a difference. And I guess having yourself a dozen eggs and just go for it and practice it and get it right for the circumstances you are working with. I mean, I know that sounds crazy, but that's how variable things can be with eggs.
Wow, Okay, what else should be in our based repertoire?
Making a stock? You roast your vegetables and your say chicken frames or bones. That is extra flavor and it's just the base of so many things. Then, so that's eggs, that's stock. The stock will allow you. Then I think everyone should know how to make a beautiful winter soup, and for that you've made your stock. So then you'll use legumes and vegetables and you'll have soups that are
a whole meal themselves. Then roasting a chook, a perfect roast chook, so long as you have bought a well bought up chook, can be like an absolute revelation.
Okay, So now with roast chicken, I think during twenty twenty, I maybe roasted twenty chickens, right, I was determined to, and then I found like they were getting better and better, and then they started getting worse and worse, and they were undercooked, and you know, all right, risking people's health. So what are the secrets to creating the perfect roast chicken?
The secret to creating a perfect roast chicken is one by yourself, a digital thermometer. Two buy a well bought up took and not a supermarket chok. There is such a difference, it's phenomenal. A supermarket chilk.
Well, I was just going to say, how do we know if it's been well brought up? Is it just a matter of going to a butcher rather than a supermarket.
No, it's asking questions. You know, there's a lot we have to If we're looking for the best washing machine, we would do some research. For the best chook, you've got to do the same. And every state has got really good chicken farmers where they're grown out naturally without antibiotic which I used as a preventative to grow cooks out quicker. And you want to know about their feed. So, like everything, if you want something good, you've got to
do some background and make some choices. For me, it's protecting the breast with some foil when cooking, so the breast will dry out much easier. I always cook a large chook, say two kilos, because that's a chok that's grown out naturally and I've had a good life, and so I will cook for probably two hundred degrees with the breast protected in an oven tray with not very
high sides, because that's important. So the heat gets right into the chok for the first twenty or thirty minutes, and then I will take the foil off and I will rub the chook. I previously rubbed the chook with extra virgin olive oil and salt, and then I will cook for about fifty minutes. Then I will check the temperature at the thickest part. It must be sixty five degrees c at the thickest part to be safe. And
then I will cook it a little bit longer. I'll drizzle it with verdue, and then I will take it out of the oven at about an hour or an hour and ten turn it over because that really helps all the juices go back down into the breast, which is more likely to be dry.
I'm like making notes as you talk. I'm just so excited to try these. Hello there. Maggie will be back soon talking about some of her favorite things to pair together in the kitchen, along with her favorite cookbooks and the best pieces of advice that she's ever received about running business. Now, if you are not currently connected with me on social media, you should because that's where I post a lot of content when I'm not doing this podcast.
So connect with me on LinkedIn. Just look for Amantha INBA I think I'm the only one, and also on Twitter, I'm at Amantha and on Instagram, where I'm now starting to post little bits and pieces, you can find me at Amantha. I now another question, but I guess related to what we're all doing in the kitchen. I feel like I have no idea what flavors to mix with what flavors, or say, what herbs to mix with what foods? Like?
Are there any kind of fundamental pairings that instantly make certain meals or certain foods taste better.
Sometimes it's textures, like if you're cooking octopus on the barbecue and your child it's wonderful with the creaminess of avocado. Know that there are rules, Now that I think about it, I think it comes from experience and reading. And I've never followed recipes, but I read incessantly because things come to you from reading other people's work and stimulates your ideas.
So I would go. I would go to someone like Elizabeth David, the English author who wrote back in the nineteen fifties, and not so much just recipes, but ideas of what went with what. And in fact that octopus and avocado came straight out of Elizabeth David. And I can't believe the difference it makes.
Wow. What are some of your favorite cookbooks?
Well, I think if you're if you're a novice of any kind, I don't think there are two books of Stephanie Alexander's, The Cook's Companion and The Gardener's Companion. I think it gives you such a base of knowledge that because you might go to the supermarket and buy some beetroots, and then you'll come back and open Stephanie's and see what she does with beetroots. I think that's a better way than starting with a recipe.
What are like some of the key condiments or ingredients that are in your pantry or fridge that you know we can think about, you know, all of us having in our kitchen just to easily jazz something up.
All right, Well, there are things that I can't live without and that Australian extra virgin olive oil of the freshest possible. Certainly, you would never buy oil that didn't have a year of harvest on. So that is extra virgin olive oil first, verdue second for me vinocotto, but you might have balsamic, but I prefer vinocotto which has that agradolce of sweet sour, of vinegar, a good red
wine vinegar, good salt, and pepper and pepper. We always buy Australian pepper from Queensland, and parmigiano in parmagiana reggiano in the fridge, and a good stock in the pantry of legumes and good pasta.
Now we've been talking a lot about food, but you are, of course a very very successful business woman, and I want to know, like, what are some of the best pieces of advice that you've been given about running successful businesses and how to do it? Well?
Well, oh, I'm not sure that advice from others has come to me, and I've taken much notice of because I was always it took us twenty years to be an overnight success, and we started in nineteen seventy nine, so it took twenty years for that to really be considered successful, which meant that our base was really strong, and it was a very organic growth, not driven. We were never driven by money, but driven by ideas and
quality and excellence and sustainability. So I'm not suggesting that it is a business model for everybody, but it was a business model for us, and we made many mistakes along the way. And the biggest mistake I always made was not getting the right people, not taking the trouble
to get the right people around us. Now that happened because we didn't have the money to do that, But then when we were successful enough to do so, we didn't use enough knowledge enough to bring the right people in, and then we waited too long to move them on
because they weren't right for themselves or for us. That's a very long winded way of saying the most important thing you can do in business is bringing people around you who have skills that you don't have that you need to make a viable economic business.
What are some other lessons that you've learned.
I've learned that my basic premise has always been, without me identifying it when I was younger, that I'm driven by continuous improvement. It's always been part of my nature, and it means that you have to have people around you that are excited by that and not feel that continuous improvement is a criticism if they're not embracing it, there has to be a sense of your on a
path of continuous improvement together. I also have learned that the most important thing is to have positive people around you, that if you have, if there are people that don't want to be there, it's better for them that they're not positive. Energy is one of the most important things in business.
How are you, I guess assessing that when you're recruiting new people?
Ah, well, of course you realize that we have sold entirely Maggie beer products.
Yes, yes, and we did.
That because we had no succession plan and the fact that we believe so much in the management team I had around me before we sold and who are still there and driving the business in a way that I never could. And so, but from my business at the farm, which is still very extensive business, it is now using understanding that you really need to use psychological profiling to gather that information. Who is a natural leader? How do people cope with change?
I couldn't agree more about psych profiling, and inventing. We have this tool that we use. It's called the Savile Wave, and we call it like our own personal clairvoyant because it is so uncannily good at predicting people's future behavior when you know when and if we employ them, you know, to what their strengths are, to where the areas for development aren't. So I'm a huge fan of that.
Oh me too, Me too. In fact, I think every school child should be put through that for them to understand what their potential is. You know, are they a leader? Are they a follower? Do they they creative? Are they logical? And all of those things. I think it would help enormously in our community.
Now, you mentioned that you're working fifty plus hours a week, but I've also read that you're like aiming to slow down, and I am live right now. I want to know what what are some of the habits or things that you do to have the energy to keep up with everything that you're doing.
Well, I'm very lucky. I just naturally have energy. I love what I do that gives me energy. I walk every day because I love it, not because I should. I have things in my life that joy that give me energy, so yes, and I have a positive outlook on life that it doesn't mean that you don't go through terrible times, but it does mean that it helps you through them.
With your walks, Maggie like, what does that look like? Are you listening to things on your walks? Are you thinking about things or solving business problems? What does that look like?
It's a bit of everything. Because we live in this beautiful area of the Barossa, and from our own home we have lovely walks up the hills. Sometimes I walk with Colin and we talk about things. Often I walk on my own and listen to music or a podcast, but not all the time. I tend to take notes on my phone as I think about things, and sometimes I just stop and look at a tree that is so beautiful that I say hello too.
Oh it's gorgeous. Oh well, that is a very nice note. I think. To finish on my final question, which is for people that want to consume more of what you're doing and connect with you in some way, what is the best way for people to do that?
I guess I do a monthly newsletter about my life and all the things that I take on, and that's on the Maggie Beer Maggie Beer Product's website, because I'm still very involved with that, because I still, even though I don't own it anymore, I feel I do because I'm so connected to everyone in it, so that there is a food club which is free to join. I also write a newsletter for the Maggie Beer Foundation, and
that website shows the work that I'm doing there. And our Instagram is good too, so that sort of fills a whole lot of gaps about my life amazing.
I will link to all those things in the show notes. Maggie. It has been an absolute joy connecting with you and chatting with you. I'm such a fan of everything that you've done. Thank you so much for your time today.
It's my pleasure.
Hey there, That is it for today's show. If you are enjoying How I Work, then hit subscribe or follow wherever you're listening to this from, because next week I have Emily Osta, who's an economics professor at Brown University, and we're going to be talking about how she makes better decisions in work and in life using principles from economics. How I Work is produced by Inventium with production support
from dead Set Studios. The producer for this episode was Jenna Coda, and thank you to Martin Nimber who does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound amazing. That's it for today and I'll see you next time.