My Cousin Rosa Rosa Mitchell ISBN 978-1741963632, Murdoch Books, RRP $59.95
There have been quite a few books of this genre written by men, so it’s great to find Rosa Mitchell of Melbourne’s Journal Canteen in Flinders Lane putting her story on record.
She was a young girl when her family emigrated from Sicily yet many things remained the same – as fortunately they do. Family traditions don’t disappear and it’s great to think they remain alive and well on new shores.
This is classic Sicilian food, simple and family focussed. Memories of home, yet fare that we, on the other side of the world, totally embrace.
Even I, a product of English, Irish, Scottish and French stock, regard many Italian dishes as my favourite comfort food and I know I am not alone.
I was flicking through this book with a friend the other day and we were quickly identifying recipes we wanted to try – cauliflower fritters, rabbit ragout, sweet and sour rabbit, fruit crescent, a simple pasta with frozen peas, an aggressive broccoli pie laced with anchovies and parmesan, fried dried broad beans. In fact, so many I am convinced books like this should be sold with pad of post-it notes attached.
Woven through the pages are Rosa’s family photos and stories.
Lovely photos by Alan Benson and quaint illustrations by Hugh Ford double the enjoyment and the cover unfolds into a cute poster – something that is becoming an added bonus with various Murdoch books,
Rosa was a founding member of Slow Food Victoria and runs a small vineyard in central Victoria with her husband Colin, specialising in Italian varietal wines. She also holds classes at Melbourne’s Centre for Adult Education.
This is a book from the heart and will really be appreciated by people wanting to expand their regional Italian repertoire.
This isn’t a book for people who want to drool over food porn. The sole illustration is a few tomatoes on the cover. No, this is a book that means business and there’s more than 550 pages of recipes with nary a photo of olive oil drizzles, strategically placed mustard seeds, dustings of icing sugar or large designer raspberries.
Author Anthony Telford had in mind a basic and useful cookbook from the outset. “These are the recipes I grew up with and you can set about cooking with confidence,” he says. There is “a wealth of recipes from times past that are as relevant today.”
Each recipe is accompanied by hints and tips and these set this apart from other cookbooks, be believes.
And so this book of basics has 15 chapters covering breakfasts, dip and accompaniments, soups, seafood, poultry, meat, vegetables, salads, grains and pulses, dressings and sauces, desserts, baking, toppings and drinks as well as basic recipes for batter, stocks, doughs and so on.
The “really useful” information covers information on specific food items like cheese, dried beans, eggs, fats flours and other ingredients, as well as food allergies, pantry essentials, cooking techniques, basic preserving and conversion charts.
There’s both a recipe index and a general index, making the contents readily accessible.
The recipes themselves form a useful repertoire for the home cook and the hints and tips accompanying each will give newer kitchen recruits confidence-building ideas.
It’s a pity that a dated typewriter face has been used for the text. Maybe that is getting just a little too basic. But don’t let that distract you from the content.
Over the centuries we have relied on plants to nourish, clothe, shelter, transport and heal us. They clean the air we breathe. They have provided us with paper, rubber, dyes, fibres, water carriers. They’ve been used to poison our adversaries, give us mind-bending experiences, numb our pain, control our fertility or enhance our sex lives. In short, they’ve changed the way we live. The word used for a landscape bereft of trees and plants is “barren” and indeed we would not have survived long without them.
Intrepid explorers would return from long voyages with booty from their travels – tobacco, spices, seeds for exotic fruits and vegetables. The history of mankind can be traced by the way conquerors brought plants from their homelands to new borders.
The chapter headings in John Newton’s absorbing new book reveal the many uses man has found for the plants around him:
Plants for containers
Dye plants
Plants for fibres
Food plants
Flowers
Medicinal plants
Poisonous plants
Psychoactive plants
Aphrodisiacs
Trees
Weeds
And let’s not forget some of these plants come from under the sea, as well as on land.
The ingenuity that led women to weave the reeds and grasses around them, also led to the production of items of great beauty and artistic merit as their skills grew. Many races have developed their own distinctive baskets and weaving techniques.
Other plants provided fibres for fabric and plant-based dyes brought colour.
In each chapter, Newton unearths interesting facts about the plants around us. While many fruit, vegetables, grains, legumes, fungi, mushrooms, nut trees and other food plants are familiar to most of us, other have been harvested for their medicinal qualities and are still in use today.
Psychoactive plants have been providing mankind with altered states of consciousness since the beginning of time and continue to be surrounded in controversy and, like opium, have led to wars.
Longer, better, harder – man’s quest for extending the sex act that gave him a fleeting respite from his hardships and miseries, has seen many plants experimented with to determine their aphrodisiac qualities.
Crop failures, genetic modification, bee colony collapse, deforestation, greenhouse gases – where to next?
This is a thoroughly readable book, one to pick up in a spare moment or one to pore over, being constantly surprised at the many wonderful stories behind the plants that surround us. It’s one that will take cooks, gardeners, nature lovers and the curious into a fascinating world.
If inspiration deserts you when you have to make a birthday cake for your eight-year-old princess, Miss Sweet 16, or Mr 40, this book has 30 stunning cake and cupcake designs that will get the creative juices flowing.
Paris Cutler’s Planet Cake design studio in Sydney has created cakes for celebrity occasions like Celine Dion’s 40th and the Kidman/Urban nuptials. But the business also has a school where Paris and her team teach a commercial level of modern cake decorating. Now the rest of us can learn some of the secrets behind a whole range of exciting cakes.
This won’t be a journey for the faint-hearted, but the instructions throughout the book are clear and explicit, and there’s invaluable troubleshooting for when things get a bit tricky or sticky.
You can copy the cakes shown, or use the techniques to design your own. You’ll learn how to make the foundation cakes, bows, frills, zippers, ribbons, ropes and other decorations. There a instructions on rolling out the icing, shaping the cakes, getting that perfect flat finish.
There’s a good section on the tools you’ll need for the job – but you don’t have to buy them all at once.
The cakes are a far cry from those white creations with pastel icing flowers that spring to mind when we hear the words “cake decorating”. This is a whole new look at what can be achieved. Step-by-step instructions and photographs guide the cake-maker through the process of achieving an outstanding creation.
This book will be a welcome addition to the dedicated baker’s library.
If you’re a caffeine addict and can’t start your day without a fix, specially if you need to munch on something at the same time, Coffee & Bites is the book for you. Here you will find lots of info about coffee itself, how to choose, buy and brew your precious beans and about the different ways you can take your medicine.
The various types of beans are described, along with their characteristics and their source.
Roasting techniques are explained and those curious about decaffeinated coffee is produced will find the answer here. Next topic is grinding and the various grinds needed for various brewing methods. With or without milk? These variations are also described.
The “bites” part of the book is a great collection of recipes to enjoy with your coffee morning, afternoon and night. There are sweet and savoury choices, muffins, toast options, pastries, panini, tarts, twists, cheesecakes, cookies, cake and after-dinner indulgences.
In 2003 Andrew Carmellini was waiting for construction to finish on his new restaurant. In his tiny home kitchen in Manhattan he was forced to face life as lived by the home cook. Ripped out of his professional kitchen, he did not have the luxury of a prep team or other assistants. There were no daily deliveries of fresh produce.
This book is the result of what happens when a great chef has to live like the rest of us.
It is not merely a cookbook, however. Carmellini is as adept with the pen as he is with a chef’s knife. He tells a lovely tale.
When things go wrong in the kitchen at home, we can generally hide the evidence, sort something out or open a can of baked beans. But when it hits the fan in a restaurant kitchen, particularly when there are 500 people waiting for a meal, it’s not quite so easy to save the day.
Carmellini relates the sorry story of the night things went wrong at a party for a top Italian designer at a New York venue called Casa Italia. The upscale Italian restaurant where Carmellini was working catered the event. His job was antipasti but as these were getting passed around – dainty toast points with smoked salmon, baby zucchini stuffed with olives – in walked the restaurant owner, screaming this was French food, NOT Italian, and throwing the plates at the garbage. He wanted Italian – prosciutto, parmesan, panini with buffalo mozzarella.
It was downhill from there. Cooks were despatched by cab to the restaurant’s kitchen to round up the required ingredients but there were no plates or forks and the waiters had to pass the antipasti round on napkins. By then the place was filled with skinny models and stars, hungry drinking people, baying for more of the salmon toast points.
The traditional fare chosen for the next course had the Italian designer screaming. Polenta!? Snails!? Polenta was “peasant food” and “fattening”. Snails were “disgusting”. The designer suggested those who declined the snails be offered a salad. Of the 500 served snails and yellow gruel, 495 said they would prefer a salad. Then, of course, the salad ran out… Things were now running two hours late.
The next course was a rack of lamb. Time to plate up. But someone had forgotten to turn on the portable ovens holding the lamb. One thousand still raw lamb chops had to be sautéed on inadequate little burners.
Carmellini came to the end of his sautéing session and beelined for the bar. “To this day I do not know if dessert ever got to the table.”
More true stories, equally entertaining, are told then Carmellini gets out the pots and pans and shares a hundred of his recipes, all tested in his apartment kitchen “so that I could be sure you could make them work in your kitchen”. The chapters are antipasti, primi, secondi, contorni, dolci and bases. There are helpful comments and observations throughout on various ingredients such as anchovies, cheese, as well as on techniques. Carmellini's wife, Gwen Hyman, writes about the food and culture
Carmellini is the 2004 winner of the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef: New York City award. After stints at Lespinasse and Café Boulud – and a year living and cooking in Italy – he opened A Voce which quickly became one of New York’s best-loved and best-reviewed restaurants. I hope he ventures into print again with more tales of professional kitchen life in and out of the weeds.
Not many cookbooks are published these days without photographs. We’ve grown used to bright shiny books, lavishly illustrated with glossy pictures alongside the recipes. Homecooked Feasts is an exception to the rule. No foodporn here, just a simple collection of favourite recipes from home kitchens around Australia.
The collection has been provided by listeners who responded to a call by the ABC’s local radio stations for people's favourite celebratory recipes for special occasions. The recipes flooded in, leaving Maggie Beer and Valli Little the unenviable task of choosing 150 of them for the book.
True to the spirit of radio, the reader must imagine what the finished recipe might look like.
The chapters cover familiar celebrations – Christmas, Australia Day, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, birthdays and anniversaries, weddings and homecomings.
Each recipe tells a story. There’s the Cool Yule Christmas Pudding Margaret has been making for 31 years – in a 70s green Tupperware container. There’s Mandatory Sauce that Jeanette’s cousin named one Christmas 30 years ago, and which Jeanette has made to go with ham, prawns, turkey or chicken every year since. Some contributors credit their recipes to a beloved Nana or Mum. Others have cadged them off workmates and made them their own. Others have brought them to Australia from homelands far away.
Many of the recipes have become family traditions like Nanna Hourigan’s No Fail Sponge. Contributor Kerry says, “This is my mum’s recipe. She had 11 children and was widowed when 8 of them were still quite young. There was never much luxury growing up in our house, but you would always know that Mum would make the effort to make you this beautiful sponge for your birthday. I now continue that tradition with my own children, and have taught my own teenage boys how to make it.”
Evrim shares a recipe for the red lentil balls made by his mum back home in Turkey. A watermelon and cucumber glut in the garden spurred Bronwyn to invent her salad. Paula’s grandmother who cooked on a station in Victoria in the late 1890s was introduced to a spicy tomato sauce and four generations of the family have made it every summer since.
Kids returning home after long absences are often quick to plead with Mum to make their old favourites.
This book is brimming with nostalgia and family love and as Ian “Macca” McNamara says in his foreword, it’s the love people like his mother put into cooking food that gave it a special flavour.
Pasta, ISBN 978-1741961676 and Barbecue, ISBN 978-1741961706, RRP $34.95, are the newest volumes in Murdoch Books Homestyle series, following on from Stir-Fry and Vegetarian, which were published in September.
Barbecue, ISBN 978-1741961706, RRP $34.95, are the newest volumes in Murdoch Books Homestyle series, following on from Stir-Fry and Vegetarian, which were published in September.
These single-topic books are a good choice for young cooks wanting to build up an everyday library of cookbooks that will provide interesting food while building up knowledge and experience of the various cooking techniques.
The main recipe photos are supplemented by step-by-step pictures which illustrate how to execute some of the tasks along the way like preparing baby octopus, showing how to slash chicken breasts, thickening a sauce, filling various pasta shapes.
These are good bench-top books with easily read type and the dishes are attractively presented so even the novice can imitate and achieve a good result.
These aren't kids' book, yet, with the Pasta title in particular, the budding family chef could master the recipes and add some fairly impressive dishes to their repertoire, ensuring survival when they leave the nest.
If you’ve got a sweet tooth and go for the chocolaty and the gooey, this is your book. There are more than 220 pages of sin, guilt, calories and absolute pleasure.
It begins gently with cakes, biscuits and slices, teeters on the brink with puddings, pies and tarts, plunges headlong into sweet surrender then tops it all off with a collection of sauces.
The favourites are there: sticky date pud with caramel sauce, self-saucing puddings, truffles, lamingtons, chocolate éclairs, ganache torte, Black Forest gateau.
A large serving of classic naughtiness and something for a sweet someone’s Christmas stocking.
This is a companion volume to the previous book and runs the gamut from aioli to zabaglione. By the time you work your way through 200-odd recipes, you’ll be an expert on emulsion and other sauces sweet and savoury.
This is the place to go if your main course needs a bit of tarting up or your dessert is crying out for something extra.
These single theme books make searching for the right recipe a lot easier than working your way along a shelf of cookbooks.
Salads, ISBN 978-1741961140 Bbq, ISBN 978-1741961133
These two are the most recent titles in the Reliable Recipes from the Murdoch Books Test Kitchen series.
Salads needn’t be just the bowl of greens on the side. They can be the star of a meal. A clever marriage of ingredients produces such satisfying fare as Spicy lamb and noodle salad, Grilled haloumi and roast vegetable salad, Greek pepper lamb salad.
Salads includes classic salads, starters, mains and sides. Many of them would be ideal to pack in a plastic container and take to work for lunch.
If sausages, hamburgers and steak are beginning to pall, Bbq should inspire you to produce something more exciting to poke with the tongs. There are ways with beef, lamb, pork, chicken and seafood that will brighten up dinner outdoors. The vegetarian section should also tempt dedicated carnivores to try some of the skewered combinations.
These 200-page books are reasonably priced at $24.95 RRP.
Faking it Valli Little, ISBN 978-0-7333-2427-7, ABC Books, RRP $39.95
Valli Little has been creating up to 60 recipes a month for the ABC’s delicious magazine since 2001 and her previous book, 5 Nights a Week (reviewed here) was a finalist in the 2007 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.
The idea behind this volume is, according to the sub title “how to cook delicious food without really trying”. Well, I think Little has achieved her aim. The food looks stunning, is relatively easy to prepare and is loaded with good flavours.
She makes the most of helpful items such as quality pasta sauces, curry pastes, and store-bought roasted or chargrilled vegetables. These, along with a little planning and a few fresh ingredients, make it easy to produce an impressive dish, she says. “It’s just about taking a few clever shortcuts.
Valli gathers ideas from here and there. Many of the meals can be confidently produced for guests at the end of a busy day at work. Indeed, some of the salsas, accompaniments and sauces can be made the previous night.
Here’s a random sample of the fare:
Spanish pork with orange and poppyseed salad
Quick Italian-style roast pork
Dukka-crusted lamb with radish tzatziki
Rosemary lamb kebabs with lemon and olive relish
Asian-marinated baked salmon
Sesame salmon roulades with green papaya salad
Vegetable terrine with tarragon and basil
Pumpkin, goat’s cheese and onion marmalade jalousie
Mulled-wine pears and goat’s cheese salad
There are also pasta dishes, soups, cakes, fruit desserts and the whole lovely collection, deliciously photographed by Brett Stevens, looks like the genuine article.
Lucio's Ligurian Kitchen Lucio Galletto and David Dale, ISBN 978-1-74175-077-5, Allen & Unwin, RRP $65.00
Galletto and Dale teamed up to write Soffritto: A Delicious Ligurian Memoir a story of Galletto’s family and his personal journey. This time they return with a beautiful cookbook featuring 180 recipes from the Ligurian region.
They set out to discover how the cuisine had changed and evolved since Galletto left 25 years earlier. They found a new breed of chefs, farmers and fishermen adapting traditions within the framework of 21st century concerns for the environment.
This is a beautiful book, made more so by Paul Green’s photographs of both the food and the people and places of Liguria.
As with other regions in Italy, the food is dictated by what is available and best locally and Galletto has gathered some real winners for his book. Many, like a delicious broad bean custard - would be perfectly at home in an upmarket restaurant. Others have a very homely feel.
We’re introduced to a delightful collection of Ligurian pies – potato, asparagus, olive and octopus to mention but three. Anyone suffering pasta burnout will soon be reinvigorated by the ravioli, pansotti, tortellini and other offerings.
As to be expected, there’s a fine range of seafood dishes. Because the region is mostly mountains and seashore, food animals tend to be small – chicken, rabbits, game birds with the occasional pig or sheep. Carnivore’s corner is, therefore, very interesting with some imaginative veal dishes included.
There’s plenty of inspiration for the home cook in the vegetable and salad chapter and everything ends on a very sweet note with dolci.
The cover flap says: “Liguria is another country. They do things differently there, particularly when it comes to food.” Lucio’s Ligurian Kitchen has really caught the spirit.
Hot on the heels of Piri Piri Starfish, Tessa Kiros has moved closer to her own home in Tuscany with Venezia. Born in London to a Finnish mother and a Greek Cypriot father, she has the knack of combining travel with food and extracting the essence of local cuisine.
While Venice remains on my wish list, at least I can visit through the eyes of Kiros as she travels through this city of classic beauty and rich food traditions.
A meal there, she explains, could begin with a glass of prosecco. Antipasto might include fresh seafood in a bollito misto. Then comes primo with its soup, gnocchi, asta or rice – of course there is a Ventian way of making risotto. Secondo invariably includes fish of incredible quality and freshness. And there are the contorni or side of seasonal vegetables from the surrounding lagoon islands. Dolci or sweets are many and varied, she says. Or the choice might be a few biscuits typical of the region with a glass of recioto, fragolino or grappa.
The recipes are interspersed with her little travel notes. She takes us through vaporetto etiquette on the way to the risotto chapter. Even a cold, grey, wet day is nothing as we are comforted by delicious meat and fish dishes.
This is a book to savour in a large, well-stuffed armchair – to examine the intriguing photos of Venetian life (by Manos Chatzikonstantis), to salivate over the dishes, then make a shopping list and recreate a taste of Venice at home.
“As many times as I went out was as many times as I got lost. But I was never lost. I was always somewhere in Venice,” writes Kiros.
Thank goodness she found her way home and brought us Venezia.
What do chefs cook and eat at home? Baked beans on toast, or rack of flounder with a kaffir lime-infused reduction?
I want to sit at Pete Evans’ table because this book reveals what he serves at home to family and friends, and the food is very tantalising.
He loves presenting food on platters to share and this increasingly popular approach certainly helps guests relax and enjoy. This is non-prissy fresh fare, bursting with flavour.
The restaurateur, chef and TV presenter draws his inspiration from many quarters. It could be smoked trout on betel leaves with nam jim dressing; Lebanese prawn and fish salad; Turkish-style gozleme of lamb, mint, feta and spinach with lemon; chicken larb; harissa lamb leg with roasted pumpkin, feta and pomegranate salad; Moroccan tagine of spatchcock with preserved lemon and herb couscous; or gnocchi with cotechino sausage. He’s a big fan of his Mum’s spaghetti bolognaise and that’s included, too.
The chapters are simple – morning, lunch to dinner, desserts (only five, but good ones) and a small selection of drinks. Whether it’s a picnic on the beach, summer dinner on the terrace or a winter comfort session, these are very accessible recipes that will soon become favourites with home cooks. And they're given great treatment by photographer Anson Smart.
This is stress-free entertaining at its best, allowing the host or hostess to join in the fun.
If you’re planning to do a lot of entertaining over the festive season, ask Santa for this book - and request an early delivery.
Click here to see Pete Evans talk about his new book.
When we go out for a meal we hope it will be an enjoyable experience. We don’t want to return home disgruntled, underfed, disappointed – or fleeced. However, if we do our research before we go, we can generally come home happy.
That’s where restaurant guides are handy. These days, respected reviewers keep restaurants on their toes. As a consequence, standards go up and consumers have certain expectations.
Because Queensland is such a tourist destination, particularly for domestic travellers in the winter months, many diners lack local knowledge and so a book such as this is invaluable for holidayers looking for good places to eat, as well as a must for Queensland residents.
Queensland is a food basket for larger Australia with its local specialties and tropical produce. It’s good to be able to tap into local knowledge and find the must-visit places at each destination.
The book features more than 500 venues, traversing restaurants, cafes, cheap eats, bars and provedores. These are organised by region – Brisbane, Gold Coast, Stradbroke, Northern NSW, Sundshine Coast, southeast , central and northern Queensland - and some farther afield in other states where travellers may visit.
The reviews follow the usual formula, giving an idea of the food style, ambience, signature dishes, service, wine lists and price range, along with a rating. And for those who want to dine in, there are good guides to finding the best local produce.
As the editors note: “If it’s not a place we’d be happy to send our friends to, its details won’t appear here.”
Ripailles Stéphane Reynaud, ISBN 978-1741962345, Murdoch Books, RRP $79.95
Sometimes I wonder if chefs get more hours in their day that the rest of us. Hot on the heels (or should I say “trotters”?) of Pork and Sons and Terrine, Stephane Reynaud has just produced the heavyweight Ripailles.
The title roughly translates as “feasts” and there’s little disputing that. I met Reynaud in Melbourne last year when he was promoting the Egnlish version of Pork and Sons and clearly he is a man who enjoys a good feast now and then.
There’s a lovely photo of him in this new book sitting at a table with a casserole dish in front of him and armed with a carving knife and fork. Clearly he means business.
On the next page he reminisces on the Sunday lunches of his youth. “Once everyone was seated around the table, we seemed to put down roots so that the moment became eternal. Everything seemed to stop, benevolence reigned. We needed solid constitutions to withstand the advancing tide of entrees, brave the bountiful hordes of meats with all their trimmings, find a residue of appetite when faced with the quasi-national cheese board and finally lay low our hunger with creams and cakes. The meals lingered on … there was a lot to be eaten.”
This, then, isn’t a book for the faint-hearted, the dieter, the delicate constitution. This is chacuteries, innards, eggs, vegetables, moo, baa and oink, poultry, game, seafood, cheese, sweets, songs and wine. Chef Reynaud turns the pages of French cuisine and produces almost 300 very do-able recipes. The food is presented with the right mix of sophistication and rustic charm that makes you want to pull up a chair at the Sunday lunch table and settle in for a session:
“A little slice of the foie gras terrine, thanks.”
“Marrow bones? Great!”
“Sweetbreads and baby vegetables, mmmm please.”
“And pea puree with mint.”
“The creamed leeks are great with the veal eye fillet.”
“Oh, rabbit with riesling!”
“Lovely trout with almonds.”
“Yes, I’ve room for cheese – just a little to finish my bread.”
“Mmmm. Clafoutis…”
"Macaroons!!"
Along the way we meet chacuterie queen Colette Sibilia, Bernadette who raises ducks, Mr and Mrs Cheese, Olivier the sexy boulanger, and many other like-minded characters whose passion is food.
José Reis de Matos, who enchanted us with his piggy portraits in Pork and Sons is back sketching for this book, comical little portraits of everything from the petanque players to the hunter’s array of tools to cigar profiles.
Ripailles is a hugely entertaining book with a great sense of humour. The fact that it is packed with so many delicious recipes, temptingly photographed by Marie-Pierre Morel, makes it quite one of the best books I have picked up this year. And weighing in at almost 2.5 kg, it’s a challenge to pick up!
This is real food for real people and it’s just the sort of book to cook from for a good old-fashioned Sunday lunch party where friends get together and each contribute to the meal.
There’s even the sheet music for some songs reproduced for a little sing-along after dessert.
Guide to Fish Hilary McNevin ISBN 978-1-921190-98-8, Fairfax Books, RRP $29.95
A couple of good things have happened on the Australian fish front this year. Firstly, fish names have been standardised and now Hilary McNevin’s excellent new Guide to Fish has been released.
We are constantly reminded that fish should be a regular component in our diet. But if this is to continue far into the future, it’s important to ensure that fish stocks aren’t threatened by over-fishing. McNevin’s guide makes it easier to make the right choices at the fish counter by listing which wild species are sustainable and which ones we should think twice about before buying too often.
While the author is no card-carrying environmentalist, she’s concerned about the state of our oceans and fish species to continue to be available for future generations.
The beauty of this book lies in its simplicity. Fish considered sustainable enough to buy regularly are indicated by a green fish symbol, while those that are safe to buy perhaps once every couple of weeks have an amber fish symbol.
It won’t take the reader long to memorise the best choices. About two dozen are listed in all. Each is profiled showing when it is in season, what the fresh fish should look like, the texture of the fish once it is cooked, the flavour and which cooking method suits that particular type of fish. Sustainable suggestions from the wider species are listed, eg under bream there are black bream, frypan brem, pikey bream, tarwhine and yellowfin bream.
And in case you come across your fish before the filleting knife strikes, there’s a photograph to show what it looks like fresh out of the water. I enjoyed the humour in the descriptions. The yellowfin tuna is “a tight machine, sleeking his way through the waters like a sleazy guy in a nightclub.” The pink ling “has such a cute name it’s hard to imagine her being anything other than sweet and easy to cook. And she is.”
Speaking of cooking, there’s an excellent collection of recipes - one is featured here - that demonstrate ideal ways to cook each species, sauces, salads and marinades to match, plus a helpful list of bedfellows – vegetables that are in season at the same time. For those who like to wash down a meal with beer or wine, good matches are suggested.
The Artist's Lunch Alice McCormick and Sarah Rhodes, ISBN 978-1921259517, Murdoch Books, RRP $59.95
Photographer Rhodes and writer McCormick visited the homes of a range of Australia’s distinguished artists. They saw them at lunch and at work as the artists talked about their art, their work processes and philosophies. The result is a veritable feast.
As Margaret Olley notes in her forward, each chapter provides a delightful day trip into the intimate realm of some of Australia’s favourite artists. “A voyeuristic treat for art lovers, a sensual delight for foodies.”
And it’s a beautiful book. It features the artists, their works, their food, their thoughts, their sometimes delightfully chaotic surroundings.
“I think if you did a survey of what artists really eat for lunch you’d often find it’s sliced tomato on toast,” says Wendy Sharpe. Sometimes she might add a few basil leaves from the garden “but that’s about as fancy as it gets.”
If Salvatore Zofrea paints scenes where people are eating, “the food I place on the canvas is always food I have cooked and enjoyed myself.”
Laotian born Savanhdary Vongpoothorn regards cooking and eating as an art. “The tactile quality of preparing food, cutting it up, and mixing ingredients together is an art because you are striving for balance.”
Michael Zavros, whose stunning work White Onagadori is reproduced on the jacket (which folds out into a poster) likes to have a picture of a recipe “so I can get a proper likeness, It has to look like the picture and if it’s not quite red enough, I think: I mustn’t have enough tomatoes, and I add more.”
Artist Nell’s diet is very fruity and she buys fruit by the box. “You never have to stop work to eat if you have plenty of bananas and apples at hand.”
People and their body language interest Fred Cress “and the stories I hear during meals generate images in my mind.”
Mirka Mora says lying in bed reading cookbooks is a favourite pastime. “Even now when I’m hungry, I read through a recipe to fill myself. I taste it, then I go to sleep.”
Dorothy Napangardi is famed for her prowess as a hunter. She loves cooking food around a campfire with her friends and family.
Each of the 18 artists’ approach to food is as individual as his or her own artistic style and this is an immensely absorbing book, a nicely tuned balance of words, photographs and art. There’s even a collection of recipes at the back.
The Foodies’ Diary Allan Campion and Michele Curtis, ISBN 978-1-74066-636-7, Hardie Grant Books, RRP $29.95
The Seasonal Produce Diary has been renamed The Foodies’ Diary and the latest edition has found a welcome place on my desk. As well as keeping track of appointments, social events and deadlines, the diary will be invaluable in alerting me to seasonal produce, food and wine festivals and farmers’ markets. The diary, with its wipe-clean cover also includes a collection of seasonal recipes with wine matches.
There is a week to an opening and the diary has a useful elastic band incorporated in the cover so the current week can be marked. If there’s a dedicated foodie in your life, this Australian-focused diary will make a welcome Christmas gift.
Party Time Jane Price ISBN 978-1921259111, Murdoch Books, RRP $34.95
Party time – words that conjure up a fun night out or a “What on earth will I give them to eat?” chill.
This latest title from the Kitchen Classics series will go a long way to help. It covers a range of scenarios, from cocktail hour, the barbecue buffet, simply Japanese through to tapas and meze with some sweet dessert ideas to finish.
The cocktail hour chapter has a good mix of hot and cold titbits, although quite a few require last minute cooking, so some kitchen help would be in order.
A range of inventive make-ahead salads (citrus walnut, baby zucchini, wild and brown rice or nachos salad) make for an easy barbecue buffet and many of the recipes for the grill can be prepared ahead and refrigerated until it’s time for the tong-wielder to snap into action.
The simply Japanese offerings include a variety of sushi and sashimi, steamed and grilled items, tempura and other oriental delights.
Tapas and meze are becoming increasingly popular and this chapter includes both finger foods and dishes to be served on plates – more suited to a sit-down meal.
The desserts are attractive and include a beautiful Charlotte Malakoff that would make a stunning centrepiece.
One-pot cooking is great for busy people. One-pot French cooking is even better. Challet has paired classic French cuisine with the appeal of using only one pot, saucepan, frying pan or bowl and come up with a winning collection of more than 100 dishes.
The French-born author is executive chef at one of Toronto’s top restaurants, Cuisine at the Fifth and also an instructor at the George Brown Chef School.
He takes formerly complex French dishes and makes them accessible with easy-to-follow directions. Anecdotes and notes round out each dish and the teacher in Challet comes out in recipes like the one for a cheese soufflé where all the important steps are clearly explained in order to avoid mistakes.
The recipes run the gamut of daily meals from appetisers, through soups, salads, sandwiches, eggs and cheese, potatoes, main courses and desserts. There’s something there for grazers, for snackers and for people wanting a plate of good hearty fare. Particularly welcome is the chapter on potato dishes from Gratin Dauphinois to potato slices cooked in duck fat. While not all the cheese varieties mentioned in the egg and cheese chapter may be readily available Down Under, it won’t be difficult to find suitable substitutes.
This is real food that won’t leave you with a bench full of dishes to wash up afterward
So who is Gavin Canardeaux? A “famous” chef I’ve never heard of? If you haven’t heard of him either, don’t worry. He is wine writer Ben Canaider’s alter ego and in this book he takes a humorous swipe at all that is pretentious about celebrity chefery.
Canardeaux is modest about his own achievements – “My name is a by-word for cooking, for eating, for feeding, for family, for easy and for stunningly and aspirationally gorgeous fabulousness.“ What’s more, his food “is food you can so easily photograph, which is what so many home cooks are doing today.”
He is famous for his deconstructed wagyu burger with its 20g of house-minced wagyu, house-made mayonnaise, household tomato ketchup, house-bought Dijon mustard and thin horizontal slice of organic tinned beetroot, gherkin, fried onion ring (“pre-packaged rings are fine”) and a lavish 100g fresh white truffle.
Consomme Alphabetique might well be described as his signature dish with its stunningly simple arrangement of five pasta shapes (G, A, V, I and N) in Bird of Paradise broth. He bags Gordon Ramsay for trying to pass it off as his own Zuppa de Alphabetica – “The only letters in it were G, O, R, D and N. He even put in double the O’s. Gordon is not even an Italian name!” Ironically, Canardeaux has taken a leaf out of Ramsay’s book, peppering his own with the F word.
He is a huge fan of big white plates. Cornflour is at the top of his ingredients list. An infusion is simply achieved by placing anything you find in your refrigerator in a pot and pouring boiling water over it, letting it stand then straining it through muslin. Lots of chefs use froth as a mainstay or key.
He reveals the two things that can make or break a main course: verticality and foamosity. “Pile little bits of fish, piece by piece, as high as you can on a plate, then add some foamed vegie on the side, and you’ll win food guide awards like there’s no tomorrow.”
Such glimpses of the man, his penetrating observations, and his kitchen secrets season the pages.
To satisfy those with a penchant for food porn, there are photos of some of his artfully styled dishes. The photographer is not acknowledged though I see in the fine print one “A. Armstrong-Jones” took the cover picture. Canardeaux is clearly a man with contacts…
For anyone who is heartily sick of watching celebrity chefs on TV, this book will provide a pleasant escape. Canardeaux also shares some of his recipes for you to try at home. Just ducky.
With the holiday season fast approaching, this book will be a handy addition to the home mixologist’s bar library. A mouth-watering little number itself, the 256-page volume contains a collection of 200 party drinks, more than enough to display one's prowess with the cocktail shaker.
For those keen to shake, stir, blend and muddle their way through the night, there are the classics as well as cocktails with a modern twist. Some, like the Moscow mule, deliver quite a kick. But designated drivers can still enjoy a delicious draught from the imaginative range of mocktails.
There’s a good section on bar essentials, glassware and cocktail techniques, otherwise known as the tricks of the trade. For those wanting to add a special touch there are directions for making sugar syrup, fruit purees and infusing your own spirits.
Martinis, bellinis, flirtinis, oldies but goodies, champagne cocktails, shots, punches, spritzers – there’s enough to keep everyone happy. There’s even a Corpse Reviver for the person who’s still not having fun yet.
The index doubles as a drink finder with the cocktails sorted by main ingredient or category. These include various spirits like bourbon, brandy and vodka, digestifs, coladas, daiquiris, margaritas, sours, mocktails.For a taste of what this excellent little book holds, check these three recipes from the beautifully illustrated collection.
And, as the book says, while many cocktails may taste innocent, they can be highly intoxicating. Plenty of food and non-alcoholic refreshments are a must – particularly for the mixologist. I recall one office bash where the colleague who volunteered to man the bar eagerly tasted nearly every cocktail he produced, rapidly fading into incoherent confusion.
Two more titles have been released in Murdoch Books' The Providore series and the Homestyle series.
Dairy produce has been part of the human diet since sheep and goats were first domesticated about 10,000 years ago in the area that is now Iran and Afghanistan. By about 7000BC cows were being herded in Turkey.
Today’s consumer has a huge range of milk-based products available. Many of these were devised as a way of preserving fresh milk and the advent of refrigeration has enabled the product lines to expand.
The Dairy begins its guided tour by explaining how cheese is made, the classes available and how to buy cheese.
The recipe chapters cover milk, cream and butter, cultured milk, soft and fresh cheeses, blue and surface-ripened cheeses, semi-soft, goat’s milk and sheep’s milk cheese and semi-har and hard cheeses.
There are plenty of enticing dishes that demonstrate how versatile dairy products can be - from savoury to desserts, old favourites like moussaka, and modern twists on old themes.
Anyone attempting to put more calcium in their diet will find this a very useful book, as will the home cook keen to establish a core kitchen library.
Fruit and vegetables are food heroes. They contribute many vitamins and minerals to our diet and add interest and flavour to countless dishes. Many can be eaten with virtually no preparation apart from a quick rinse or a peel. This latest book from The Providore series, starts with the basic utensils needed for their cooking – the chargrill pan, cherry pitter, chopping board, colander, corer and so on.
Then come the vegetable basics like carrots, onions, garlic, parsnips, potatoes and other root vegetables, cornerstones of many a meal. Many of these are good keepers that have historically sustained people through long hard moths when little else was available. An interesting array of recipes will help through those days when there appears to be “nothing to eat” – Tunisian carrot salad, carrot and pumpkin risotto, onion tart, apple and potato bake.
For less hardy produce, the crisper bin has helped slow the deterioration process that begins at harvesting, The next chapter covers beans, brassicas, salad vegetables.
The fruit bowl,seasonal treats and herbs and leaves follow – again each chapter deals with selection and storage and includes a range of recipes.
This is good everyday fare but The Greengrocer also covers some of the less familiar produce likely to be encountered at farmers’ markets.
Leanne Kitchen is no stranger to this territory, having previously produced Grower’s Market.
Once the thought of a vegetarian arriving at the dinner table was enough to give the home cook a sleepless night. These days there are lots more vegetarians out there and we’re all becoming more adept at keeping everyone at the dinner table well fed with interesting dishes. In fact many of us enjoy meatless meals at least once a week.
This new title from Murdoch Books Homestyle series starts with breakfast and goes through the usual manu categories with fresh, interesting and attractive dishes. Here’s a sample – corn and polenta pancakes with tomato and broad bean salsa, tempura vegetables with wasabi mayonnaise, roasted balsamic onions, lentil and spinach soup, cheese ’n’ tattie pie, pumpkin rigatoni, Mexicana salad, gado gado, potato noodles with vegetables, Thai tempeh, grilled polenta with wild muchrooms, vegetable curry with spiced noodles, Mediterranean vegetable hotpot. Nothing there to remind us of the 60s hippie era when vegetarian so often meant soggy, heavy hunza pie.
Helpful step-by-step photos will reassure newer cooks.
It’s amazing what can be achieved in the kitchen with a wok and a handful of ingredients.
I can see this book being very useful for young people out flatting for the first time and having limited kitchen utensils and resources. The beauty of a stirfry is that once the prepping of the individual ingredients is complete, dishes little time to cook. It’s the next best thing to fast food and is infinitely better for the diner.
The book embraces a variety of stirfries – beef, pork, lamb, poultry, seafood, tofu anf tempeh and vegetables as well as assorted sauces and flavouring.
Most dishes have an Asian flavour and many make good use of fresh seasonal vegetables.
As with others in the Homestyle series, this book is attractively illustrated, easy to follow and shows two or three steps in preparing each dish.
This is a contemporary look at traditional Spanish cuisine that will strike a chord with those who have taken hungrily to the delights of Spanish food at the little tapas bars springing up Down Under.
The recipes have that abundant flavour we’ve come to appreciate and this is a collection of dishes that will have the home cook rolling up the sleeves, ready to dive in.
There’s tapas bar fare, lovely snacky delights to mull over with a glass of sherry, or to make a meal of with a glass of wine. Then there are the more substantial dishes from the Spanish kitchen. For those who have room for dessert, there’s an interesting range of contemporary temptations.
Jane Lawson is commissioning editor of food titles at Murdoch Books and her own books are always a delight to pick up and cook from. This one, inspired by a gastronomic tour of Spain run by Tony Tan, certainly tempts the tastebuds.
Father’s Day is just around the corner and here’s a book that will have any Dad snuggling into his chair by the fire and dreaming of things to come once the weather warms up.
Men have made barbecues their own summer sport and that’s certainly not a bad thing – as long as they clean the grill after they’ve cooked their masterpieces.
Ross Dobson is gently coaxing his fellow barbie boys to expand their repertoire with this collection of recipes. While there are the usual suspects - the burgers and steaks and the chicken with a beer can up its cavity – there are some pretty couth dishes in there too.
The chapters cover bird, beast and fish, along with several servings of sides.
Fortunately Dobson has no intention of emulating his North American counterparts who like slow cooking and large cuts of meat. Not for him the unidentifiable piece of meat that will just end up shredded in a sandwich. He likes the Australian way where simplicity rules. And for him, it’s not about the barbecue sauce but about the barbecue.
I, for one, can’t wait for summer and I’ve already marked some recipes for the resident tong waver to try.
Pizza Modo Mio John Lanzafame, ISBN 978-1741962031, Murdoch Books, RRP $34.95
We all have our own concept of the perfect pizza. Some like it thin and crispy, others prefer a thick bready base. I lean towards crispy so I was pleased to open this book by Lanzafame and discover his “pizza my style” followed my favoured thin crispy credo.
Lanzafame was executive chef of Hugo’s Lounge and Hugo’s Bar Pizza in Sydney and proprietor of Lanzafame in Sydney. He is the current World Pizza Champion and represented Australia in the World Culinary Olympics this year in Germany. I think he has the credentials to fan the flames of my passion for pizza - I recently won a small pizza oven, so the arrival of his book was very timely. Lead on, John.
My first pick might be the salmon carpaccio pizza. The base is cooked crisply first then the thinly sliced salmon is spread over the top and garnished with mascarpone, avruga caviar and watercress. Imagine eating that outside on a warm summer’s evening.
Lanzafame does traditional toppings, inventive ones, mini pizzas for kids, calzone, There’s a foot-long quail confit and roasted fig pizza, a sautéed cauliflower calzone. There’s even dessert pizzas – blueberry, coconut and chocolate, for instance.
At the heart of every pizza is a good dough so the author deals with the basics first. There’s even a gluten-free dough so no one needs to feel excluded from the fun.
If you’re into pizza and out of inspiration, this book will remedy that.
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This book is the result of what happens when a great chef has to live like the rest of us.
