Cookbooks

Michael van de Elzen of The Food Truck television series was staggered to learn New Zealanders eat 65 million pies a year and spend $1.3 billion on fast food, much of it fatty. It shows in our health and increasing obesity, so he set out to show that fast food needn't be unhealthy.

The New Zealand-born chef and his wife Belinda own Molten, an award-winning restaurant in Mount Eden, Auckland, and last year published The Molten Cookbook.

However, in his television show he takes traditional Kiwi fast food and turns out healthy versions using fresh produce, and many of these recipes are in his new book, The Food Truck Cookbook (Random House).

There are recipes for pies of various types, with healthier than usual pastry and potato toppings, thin-crust pizzas - venison with mushrooms, onion jam and rocket salsa verde, a vegetarian version with lentils, spinach, goats' cheese and pomegranate seeds, numerous burgers of wholemeal buns stuffed with veges, as well as meat patties, variations on fish (baked, cooked in a parcel) and chips (baked), crispy baked chicken, curries, ice creams, sushi and lots of "essentials" such as sauces, spice mixes, chutneys, pickles and even naan bread.

The food may be "fast" if all the preparation is done ahead and you just have to assemble it, as no doubt he does in his food truck, but be warned, these are not recipes you start cooking at 5.30pm and serve at 6 or 6.30. However, they do look delicious and they are healthy - he even gives nutritional information about each one.

 

---

Full of flavour: Create ... how to think like a chef by Maria Elia (Kyle Books), takes the unusual approach of explaining how she goes about combining flavours to create a dish. With a memory bank of flavours in her head, the British chef starts with a main ingredient - chicken, eggplant, grains, greens, root vegetables, white fish or whatever - and thinks of the ingredients that will go with it, how the flavours will work together, how to balance sweet and savoary, acidity and freshness, and also keep textures and colours in mind.

Her dishes are inspirational - I was particularly drawn to fish, orange and olive tagine, orange and sumac-scented quinoa, and roast butternut filled with caramelised Puy lentils and feta sprinkled with bright red pomegranate seeds.