The recipes are designed to feed a family for less than $2.50 per serve, and includes information about healthy eating, simple pantry and fridge basics, and lots of suggestions, as well as recipes.
Old favourites are here - Bolognese meat sauce, cottage pie, smoked fish and potato cakes, chicken drumstick in home-made tomato sauce, egg fried rice, baked crustless quiche, pumpkin and potato soup and boil-up.
It is available from branches of the Heart Foundation and Family Budgeting Services and can be uploaded for free from www.heartfoundation.org.nz/uploads/CheapEats
When her friends came back from Venice and she found they had not eaten baccala mantecato, sardines in saor, seppie al nero, bigoliin cassopipa and other classic Venetian dishes, Laura Zavan decided to write Venice: Cult recipes (Murdoch Books) so people would know what to look for and be able to cook them when they got home.
Italian food in general might be famous, but local variations are not necessarily well known.
Venetian cuisine, based on fish and vegetables from the lagoon and Venice's islands, is light and healthy.
The book is organised by type of dish, nibbles, appetisers, pasta, ravioli, gnocchi, risotto and soup, fish, meat and side dishes, desserts cakes and biscuits, with a page or two on wine, ingredients, restaurants, bakeries and specialist food shops that feature honest local products.
There are also several suggested walks through some of the less frequented spots with places to eat, drink, nibble, and of course visit, on the way. Zavan grew up in the region but now lives in Paris.
If you have been to India and loved the many snacks available at street stalls and holes in the wall, Bombay Lunchbox (Frances Lincoln), by Carolyn and Chris Caldicott, will tempt you to try them at home.
This little hard-cover book also has a section of Anglo-Indian dishes such as mulligatawny soup, egg curry, railway lamb curry, kedgeree and Major Grey's mango chutney.
Among the tiffin snacks you will find chana masala, cucumber sandwiches spiked with spicy mint and coriander chutney, cardamom scones, bhel puri, banana lassi and spiced south Indian coffee.
An attractive little book to enliven your tastebuds.
UK chef Hussien Dekmak's The Lebanese Cookbook, first published to acclaim in 2006, has been revised and updated (Kyle Books).
Although he is a restaurateur, his recipes are for traditional home-style cooking.
Recipes are for soups, salads of many kinds, stuffed vegetables, little pastries, breads with various toppings, various rice, meat and vegetable dishes aromatic with spices and lemon, kebabs and other barbecued meats, and various sweets.
Recommended for those who love exploring the flavours of this region.
