Jimmy Barnes performs during the 2021 Apra Music Awards. Photo / Getty Images
Jimmy Barnes performs during the 2021 Apra Music Awards. Photo / Getty Images
Jimmy Barnes was ecstatic to share equal billing with the Jane Barnes Band over the past year.
Their at-home performances, with more than 100 million views, revealed his wife smashing it with her beginner's guitar, piano and bagpipe skills.
Australia's first couple of rock'and'write launch their latest duet, their long-awaited family cookbook, as they count down to their 40th wedding anniversary on May 22.
After tantalising their avid online community for years with posts of their family feasts, Jane's recipes take centre stage with sous-chef Jimmy spinning the yarns in Where The River Bends: Recipes and stories from the table of Jane and Jimmy Barnes, to be released by Harper Collins in October.
"Jane's a great cook, this is what she does. And she loves it. I'm a good cook but I get flustered," Barnes said.
"It's funny me and Jane in the kitchen together because she's calm and really enjoying it and I'm sending bits of food flying everywhere and breaking out in a sweat.
"Rosie loves her Da." Jimmy and his new book's muse. Photo / Instagram
"I'm a good finisher, I'll come in, clean up and serve it up. And I'm the gravy king."
The cookbook veers from special family meals – including Jane's famous Thai chicken curry which their MasterChef judge mate Jock Zonfrillo worships – to her "made-with-love" pos- gig cheese toastie.
That was her husband's birthday treat a couple of weeks ago when they got home from the Apra Awards where he performed in memory of his brother-in-music Michael Gudinski.
"When we get home after working, cheese toasties are all I think about and Jane does the best cheese toasties, she makes them with love. And it just tastes better because of that," Barnes says.
"The great thing about us doing this cookbook is the recipes have nurtured our family and helped them to grow, and get through the good times and the tough times.
"We didn't go for anything too tricky or things we thought we had to do; it's the food that fed our family."
The cookbook isn't the only new Barnes family production.
The creatively restless and prolific rocker also wrote his second children's book, Rosie the Rhinoceros, during his months in isolation at the family's home in the NSW Southern Highlands.
Rosie The Rhinocerous is Barnesy's new kids' book. Photo / Supplied
It was inspired by Rosie Rodgers – who charges around like a rhino but believes she is a unicorn. She's the youngest daughter of Mahalia Barnes and her musician husband Ben Rodgers. Rosie The Rhinoceros follows his first children's book, Och Aye The G'nu, inspired by his grandson Dylan.
"She laughed a bit when I told her the story and then I've kept reading it to her at different points when it was edited; she thought the cover was cute," Barnes says.
"I can't wait to sit with the finished book so I can sit down with her as she thumbs through the pictures and I'm sure she'll love it, she loves to read."
Barnes credits his wife for igniting his passion for reading on their very first date.
On one of their early dates, the pair were swapping their "favourites" as you do, and Jane nominated Shakespeare.
Barnes had left school as soon as he could at 16 to join the rock 'n' roll circus. So no, he had never read Shakespeare.
"So she brought me Shakespeare for Children to introduce me to his work and they were such fantastic stories. And then I read the 'real' Shakespeare," Barnes says.
"It was her way of introducing me to one of her favourite writers and it just blew my mind when I read Shakespeare. I remember I wrote six songs in a week after I started reading his works. It's gone full circle now and now I'm reading the Shakespeare for Children books to the kids.
"Jane was always dropping classic books in front of me, suggesting I read them, and I would just soak them up. And she did the same with food, with culture, with travel."
Jimmy, Jane and their clan will also be getting the family band back together in July for a national tour to celebrate the release of the Flesh and Blood album which features the rocker collaborating with several of his children and grandchildren.
Rosie The Rhinoceros will be released by Harper Collins on September 29.
Jimmy Barnes with THE cheese toastie. Photo / Instagram
THE JANE BARNES CHEESE TOASTIE
Jimmy is on a grain-free diet so cheese toasties are a rare treat these days!
INGREDIENTS:
4 slices of thickly-sliced white or wholemeal bread 4 slices tasty cheese 4 slices of Comté cheese Scrape of hot English mustard Cracked pepper
Butter the bread slices. Scrape a thin layer of Hot English mustard on two of the slices and place one slice of tasty cheese and one slice of Comté on top. Crack some black pepper over.
Grill the open sandwiches under the griller to melt the cheese for 1-2 minutes and remove from the oven.
Cover the grilled cheese part with the other slices of buttered bread and butter the top side.
Heat up your pan and melt a knob of butter to sizzle, spread it around the base and place one buttered sandwich into the pan. Turn the heat on medium to low. With an egg lifter press onto the sandwich and let the bottom part come to a nice golden, almost burnt brown.
Turn the sandwich over – listen for the sizzling and press again with the egg lifter. Let the bottom part brown, to your liking and remove from pan, cut up and serve hot.
Unless you have a large hotplate, it's best to pan fry one at a time. Enjoy.
