Kim McCosker and Rachael Bermingham, the four-ingredients
women, have now put out a new book to appeal to children,
4
Ingredients Kids (Random House).
Children (or adults, of course) can make the recipes and they
range from relatively healthy mains and snacks, to party
treats. Four-ingredients fans will want this one.
Food Heroes: Celebrating New Zealand's artisan producers
and growers by Simon Farrell-Green (Penguin) selects 22
producers and growers around the country, from pig and sheep
farmers, to cheese makers, fishers, fruit and vegetable
growers, olive oil and honey producers and preserve makers,
to profile and photograph.
Farrell-Green is an Aucklander, so it's not surprising
there's an emphasis on the North, but down here he profiles
Goodies in the Gorge near Cromwell, Cardrona Merino, which is
available at the Otago Farmers Market, and Southern Clams,
which are harvested from Blueskin Bay or Otago Harbour. It's
only a tiny selection of food heroes he could have chosen, but
they all share a love of what they are doing and a passion to
produce things in old-fashioned, sustainable ways without using
masses of chemicals. Many of them have similar stories that
spurred them to market their own products - despair at seeing
their carefully raised produce getting lost in generic brands
or being squeezed on price by supermarkets so they would be
forced to compromise on quality, and of course there are
stories of people wanting to leave cities or corporate life. A
few recipes are included as well.
Londoners Rosie French and Ellie Grace started
experimenting with food, sharing their experiences with the
world on their Salad Club blog, which won the
Observer
Food Monthly award for best food blog; ran an underground
restaurant in one of their flats; took to the road with a
street stall; and opened a cafe in Brixton. Now their first
cookbook,
Kitchen & Co.: Colourful home cooking through
the seasons (Kyle Books), has been published. Their recipes
are simple but enticing, sometimes improvised from using what's
in the fridge or pantry, sometimes born of trying to reproduce
something they have eaten on their travels. It's seasonal
(although the lamb kebabs cooked with cherries is in the autumn
section), and many are designed as small plates to share.
There's an emphasis on the sharing of food. Instead of
luscious close-ups of a dish, many of the photographs are of
tables partway through a meal, evoking the enjoyment of
eating together.
Australian restaurateur Bill Granger is a prolific writer
with 10 cookbooks to his name, of which
Easy
(HarperCollins) is the most recent. Unlike many chefs,
Granger's food is simple and contemporary rather than
complicated, perhaps because he's self-taught. He worked in
restaurants while studying art, but his interest strayed from
art to food and he now has several restaurants not only in
Australia but also in Japan and the United Kingdom.
His recipes range from dishes like merguez sausages with
lentils and cavolo nero, chickpea, tomato and spinach cottage
pie, slow-roasted leg of lamb with chili relish and paprika
and coriander roasted chicken, to apple and vanilla
turnovers.
Nicholas Brockelbank, a 10-year old with muscular
dystrophy, has written
Nic's Cookbook: Tasty recipes for
kids who love to cook (Scholastic). This little book, a
fundraiser for muscular dystrophy, is attractively and clearly
laid out with instructions and photographs for recipes like
apple and carrot salad, salmon sushi, couscous kedgeree,
Spanish omelette, chocolate slice and raspberry lamingtons. A
good book for aspiring young cooks.
Annie Bell, a British food writer who has gained a
reputation for reliable, simple recipes, has published
Annie
Bell's Baking Bible (Kyle Cathie). It's a large collection
of classic recipes, focusing on the flavours rather than
decoration, although optional decoration suggestions are given.
She covers biscuits, slices, muffins and cupcakes, meringues,
sponge cakes, chocolate cakes, cheesecakes and fruit and ginger
cakes, celebration cakes, tarts, pies, easy breads and a few
French specialties. Enticing, but many are special treats only,
given the amount of butter they use.
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