Palisa Anderson's Water Heart Food

This impressive-looking salad, topped with matchsticks of asparagus, brings together a small but mighty list of ingredients. A delicate balance of lemon and creme fraiche enhances the sweetness of the mud crab.

This elegant make-ahead dessert is an explosion of tropical flavours, with fragrant guava sorbet and sliced fresh guava, zesty lime curd and tapioca-flecked coconut cream.

Light and airy chiffon cake is the perfect vehicle for allowing the sweet herbaceous aroma and vibrant green colour of pandan to shine. Topped with coconut, a classic flavour combination for pandan, this is a wonderfully tropical dessert.

Davidson plums are a distinctive, deep purplish-red fruit from Northern NSW. In this recipe, they lend a uniquely Australian sour tang to a quintessentially Thai dish. If boning and butterflying the mackerel is a little daunting, then Tasmanian ocean trout fillet is an excellent substitute.

Winter melon (actually in season spring-summer) has a mild taste that absorbs the flavour of this deeply aromatic broth. Add into the mix earthy shiitake mushrooms and duck, and you have one soothing, aromatic concoction.