The Entertainer Virginia Trioli rates as well for her roast duck at dinner parties as she does for the morning radio show she hosts on 702 ABC Sydney, reports ELIZABETH GRAHAM
Virginia Trioli is telling me how, after years of attempts, she has finally mastered the art of roasting a duck. This is the same woman who took Peter Reith to task on-air over the “children overboard” allegations in 2001 and then won a Walkley award for it (the second in her career). You’d think a duck would be a comparatively easy subject for Trioli to roast.
“It’s so hard to do — you can turn out something that’s just like leather and you see your guests chew, chew, chew, trying to get through it,” the journalist and ABC 702 Mornings host says with a laugh.
Tough ducks aside, cooking is a passion that sustains Trioli’s daily life.
“We cook every night,” she says of herself and husband Russell Skelton (Sydney correspondent for The Age). “I have to. I get really sad if I eat out too much. It’s part of how Russell and I connect and relax — it’s a huge part of our lives.”
Trioli, 43, later reveals that a pivotal moment in their early relationship was when Skelton cooked an impressive eggplant dish for her late one evening. “If you’re going to salt it, and drain it, and rinse it, and pat it dry, and then cook it, you’re committing to a series of steps that can’t be rushed,” she says. “And I looked at my watch and it was quarter to nine and I thought, ‘Wow. He’s really committed! I could fall in love with this guy!’”
Trioli began cooking in her early teens, helping her mother with dinner parties at their home in Nunawading, a quiet suburb in Melbourne’s east. She cooked her first proper dinner party on her 16th birthday.
“I think it went something like salmon mousse for entree, some sort of chicken fricassee was the main course and the dessert was a chocolate baba with an orange sauce — how 70s was that!” Trioli smiles.
Her Italian grandmother was a strong culinary influence on her, as were her six siblings, all foodies. “It’s true that we can sit around and talk about food for a very long time,” she says.
These days, it’s she and Skelton throwing the dinner parties at their eastern suburbs home in Sydney. At the moment, the cuisine is likely to be Middle Eastern, but Trioli says she keeps getting “drawn back to classical Italian and very traditional French”. The preparation for a dinner party takes up a whole Saturday, much to Trioli’s delight.
“It’s a big prep day, but that’s what I love about it. We’ll have beans soaking over there, meat marinating and some other vegetable under water there,” she says, fingers skipping over her imagined feast.
While Trioli’s audience at ABC 702 Sydney doesn’t get the opportunity to be charmed by her lively gestures, her voice is working well enough on its own. By the end of her first year as host, the program is enjoying the number-two position in the ratings for its timeslot. The frostiness that surrounded the departure of her predecessor, Sally Loane, and Trioli’s arrival (from ABC Melbourne’s drive program) three months later in October 2005, thawed quickly.
“I’ve said this before and it’s still true: it’s an amazing open-hearted, open-spirited community, and I could just tell this from the first couple of days of being on air,” Trioli says. “It was like meeting someone and immediately realising, ‘Oh, I get it. I can feel comfortable here. Now, what should we talk about?’”
Which is just as well, considering Trioli describes the decision to leave her three stepchildren (Skelton’s twin sons Daniel and Tim, 23, and daughter Rebecca, 25) and a city and job she loved as “terribly nerve-racking”. Then there was the couple’s house in North Melbourne, which featured a “perfect kitchen” with a double oven. “It was my pride and joy!”
Trioli and Skelton have been together for 10 years and she enjoys a close relationship with his children. It’s not surprising to find that food played a role in the family bonding.
“I have a theory about how to be a good stepmum: hit the kitchen,” she says. Sunday afternoon high teas were a tradition in their house. “We’d have a fruit tart and cups of tea and talk — and that works.”
And, while Trioli concedes she probably didn’t initially let the children help in the kitchen as much as she should have, certain team efforts have become family favourites, such as the Italian ricotta cake affectionately called “torta Daniele”.
“I took a basic recipe for a cheesecake and, just using it for a basis of quantities, completely changed it,” Trioli explains. “I was so, so proud of it because it worked. And Daniel helped me with that, so it was named after him.”
Over the summer break, Trioli is spending Christmas with her family then holidaying on the NSW South Coast. While the seafood there is impressive, she happily admits she won’t be creating five-star cuisine with it every night.
“There’ll be some big occasions and some nights of cheese on toast, because on holiday you don’t want to do anything!”
Virginia Trioli hosts Mornings on
702 ABC Sydney from 8.30am to 11am.
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