Taste launches Top 100 Summer Fresh cookbook
Celebrity chefs may dominate our TV screens, but this duo provides the recipes that Australians are actually making. And their next project is a new cookbook that’s the first of its kind.
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They are the most-loved Aussie cooks you’ve never heard of — and between them they own dinner time.
Celebrity chefs may dominate our TV screens, but Michelle Southan and Katrina Woodman are the almost unknown internet duo who provide the recipes Australians are actually cooking, by heading the powerhouse team at the nation’s number one food website: Taste.com.au.
Their next project is a first of its kind, as they step away from the internet and on to the printed page with Australia’s first cookbook created by popular demand.
Top 100 Summer Fresh is an eye-catching collection of 100 recipes for the season, selected according to the dishes users are searching for most online. It is kicking off Taste’s new book range — and is in such hot demand ahead of launch that it is already in the Booktopia cookbook top ten, based on pre-orders alone.
GET YOUR COPY: Pre-order Taste Top 100 Summer Fresh here
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New figures show that every day there are 65,000 recipe searches on Taste.com.au — an average of 2 million per month or 24 million a year — with traffic spiking as dinnertime approaches.
That means if the chefs in your household use online recipes (and most Australians do), you’ve almost certainly eaten a meal devised, or commissioned, by food director Michelle, her deputy Katrina, or their team.
The modest pair, who today share their top tips for warm-weather cooking (below), put Taste’s success down to the fact that the recipes are achievable, reliable and trusted.
“They taste as good as they look and work every time,” said Michelle.
But they are far from dull — Michelle famously “broke the internet” with her gluten-free Nutella mug cake, which topped 1.9 million in views on social media with 736,535 hits in just 24 hours.
The busy mum has personally influenced more than over 20,000 recipes, or around 50 per cent of the total, on Taste.com.au.
Taste users print out around 10,000 recipes per day from the site, which shows they like having a paper version
Excited about her move to bookstores, Michelle said of Summer Fresh: “The book has so many layers, it’s so fresh and fun.”
“It’s packed full of our most loved and most cooked recipes for summer and Christmas, plus so much more, including reviews from people who have cooked the dishes, nutritional information on every recipe, key guides for specific dietary needs and beautiful produce guides and snack ideas using summer’s amazing bounty of fresh produce.”
Top 100 Summer Fresh, published by HarperCollins Australia, will be released on November 18. Pre-order your copy at Booktopia
MICHELLE’S TOP TIPS FOR SUMMER COOKING
1. Keep it simple. It’s too hot to be in the kitchen for too long. Look for recipes with only a few steps or under 30 minutes.
2. Use fresh summer produce. We have such an abundance of wonderful seasonal produce in summer and best of all it’s in season so it helps the budget. It’s a time of the year when I love to add fresh fruit to salads.
3. Take the cooking outside and turn on the barbecue. Keeping your kitchen cool keeps your house cool.
4. If you have a sweet tooth, try no-bake desserts, like cheesecake or slices, or use the freezer for ice-cream style cakes.