With planting time looming and the prospect of lush harvests from the vegetable garden, Stephanie's Kitchen Garden Companion (Lantern, hbk, $140), the latest of Stephanie Alexander's comprehensive cookbooks, provides inspiration for both cooks and gardeners.
The Australian chef and food writer has spent much of the past decade developing vegetable gardens and cooking programmes in schools. The story of the garden and kitchen of one inner-city Melbourne school is told in detail in her Kitchen Garden Cooking with Kids (2006).
Her books and work in recent years are born of the belief that despite the increasing interest in restaurants and fancy food we were raising children and young adults with little understanding of what to do with fresh food in their daily lives.
In this fat tome she addresses that issue with enthusiasm and common sense. It is in the format of her award-winning The Cook's Companion (1996/2004), which has become one of the most used cookbooks in my kitchen.
The main part is arranged alphabetically by vegetable or fruit, and each section includes information on gardening, including how many to plant for a family of four, when it can be harvested, whether it can be grown in containers, and information about how to prepare and use it, as well as recipes.
Alexander, as usual, is exhaustively informative, down-to-earth and her recipes simple and interesting - from things like one-pot silverbeet, potato and sausage comforter or chickpea salad with broccoli and goat's cheese, to strawberries on a crisp almond filo base or plum cake.
Aimed at Australians, the book includes general information on gardening in tropical, temperate and cool climates - the last suits our part of the country - as well as how to grow vegetables in pots for apartment-dwellers.
She includes unusual vegetables such as amaranth, warrigal greens (New Zealand spinach), and sorrel, as well as recipes for everyday vegetables and fruit like carrots, broccoli, garlic, lemons, apples, peaches and berries.
It is aimed at families and teachers, and each section has hints on how to use the produce in ways that appeal to kids, things to discuss about it, taste and compare. It's a book to help adults get children, grandchildren or school classes into the garden and kitchen and enjoy themselves as well as learn to cook and appreciate food.
It will also be appreciated by young people leaving home and having to cook for themselves. This is obviously also going to be much used in my kitchen - and garden too.
