This was published 2 years ago
Eat their words: Good Weekend’s culinary reading guide
Put your napkin on and dig into this scrumptious selection of food-focused tomes, from cookbooks to memoirs.
By Nicole Abadee
Whether you want to cook to impress or just feed yourself, there’s no end of books available to sate your appetite. Credit: Stocksy
No self-respecting Australian cook would be without a copy of Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion, so any new cookbook by her is cause for celebration. Home, her latest, contains 200 recipes collected over the years, curated to showcase her cooking passions and to reflect the people and places that have influenced her – chiefly her mother, Elizabeth David and France. Whether you want to impress your guests with some fancy French cuisine or whip up a zucchini frittata for two, you’ll find much to delight in here.
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A House Party in Tuscany by Amber Guinness is a beautifully produced tribute to the Italian food Guinness grew up with while living with her parents in Arniano, an 18th-century farmhouse in the photogenic Montalcino region of Tuscany. Imbued with her parents’ passion for cooking and entertaining, Guinness, who now lives in Florence, runs the Arniano Painting School with an artist friend, William Roper-Curzon, who teaches painting while she cooks for the guests. A self-taught cook, she’s entertained people from all over the world with her take on traditional, seasonal Italian food. Stunning photos, an engaging story and fabulous recipes.
On a similar theme of food and art, Around the Kitchen Table by mother-and-daughter team – respectively, Annie Herron (artist and teacher) and Sophie Hansen (cook) – features seasonal recipes for comfort food such as apple and blackberry pie and slow-cooked beans with ham hock. It also has tips on artistic projects to enjoy with family or friends, such as painting, drawing and wreath-making. Hansen writes from the heart and her recipes are easily achievable for the home cook. Herron adds creative flair with simple, practical tips that will encourage you to channel your inner artist.
There are plenty of baking books out there, but most focus on sweet temptations. All Day Baking: Savoury, Not Sweet by Michelin-trained Michael James and his wife Pippa, co-founders of Melbourne’s renowned Tivoli Road Bakery (since sold), is about the other kind of baking – think sausage rolls, quiches, savoury pies and tarts. It contains invaluable tips (including for that lockdown staple, the sourdough starter), how to make the basic pastries – puff, shortcrust and choux (with photos of each step) – and mouth-watering recipes for vegetarians and carnivores alike.
Have you ever wondered what top chefs cook at home? Home Made, put together by Broadsheet, features recipes by 70 of Melbourne’s finest foodies in response to the question, “What do you cook when you’re cooking for the people you love?” With Japanese, French, Chinese, Spanish, Lebanese, Indian and Sri Lankan dishes, the diversity of ingredients and recipes is one of the book’s best features. That, plus the tips from renowned chefs such as Andrew McConnell and Shane Delia on how to whip up their favourite dishes.
Christine Manfield’s 30-year love affair with India and its food shines on every page of her Indian Cooking Class. With a focus on the home cook, Manfield encourages us to master the art of Indian cooking with everyday dishes she’s either created or adapted. It features tempting recipes for delights such as samosas, chicken mulligatawny and spinach koftas, and also provides dairy-free and gluten-free options. Many of the more involved dishes also have helpful step-by-step photographs and instructions.
In Lanka Food, her first cookbook, O Tama Carey draws on her rich
Sri Lankan heritage and experience at Lankan Filling Station, her popular restaurant in Sydney’s Darlinghurst. She sets out to demystify the cuisine and provide greater insight into the country’s culture, history and politics. It includes detailed notes on spices and curry powders and a diverse range of recipes for street food, breads, curries and sweet things.
Finally, a couple of fabulous food memoirs. In Cassoulet Confessions, New York-based writer Sylvie Bigar charts her journey to understanding and conquering cassoulet, “the slow-cooked carnivorous orgy of pork, lamb, duck, beans and herbs”. Her journey takes her to Carcassonne in France, where she interviews the master of cassoulet, chef Eric Garcia of Domaine Balthazar. Captivated, she returns two years later so that he can teach her how to make it. Bigar intersperses this story with an account of growing up in Geneva in the 1970s and her parents’ dysfunctional marriage. This is a wonderful read that includes three classic recipes for the hallowed cassoulet at the end. “Fat is flavour. Fat is pleasure,” one chef tells her. Hard to argue with that.
If ever there was a book to make you want to pack up your urban life and move to the country to pursue a more sustainable existence, Recipe for a Kinder Life by Annie Smithers is it. Smithers, who made the move from Melbourne to regional Victoria many years ago, sets out how she’s tried to reduce her carbon footprint both at work and on the property she owns with her wife Susan. This book includes all manner of useful information on gardening, climate, fencing and animal husbandry as well as many of the recipes she’s famous for, including Cornish pasties, scones with jam, and pear tart with salted caramel sauce. There’s also a great selection of vegetarian dishes.
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