Me. I'm excited about Christmas, not only because everyone else is excited - but this is the time of year, when all the celebrity chefs decide they need some extra cash, and publish their latest cookbooks! So, for me it's all about the Cookbooks LOL!
This year I received 5 cookbooks at Christmas, I also bought myself a cookbook, and ended up with a seventh cookbook on account that I had lost a cookbook which I had bought for someone else, had to re-purchase it, and then of course found the cookbook later on (queue evil laugh!).
So here is my round-up of the latest cookbooks:
1 Donna Hay - The New Easy
Super excited about this one. My friend Mel got this for me for Christmas - and it is a signed copy! I have looked through it about three or four times already. I think I have all of the Donna Hay cookbooks published in the last four-five years now. The only one I have been disappointed with was "Fresh and Light", only from the viewpoint that every page seemed to have a Quinoa or Kale recipe on it - there's only so much Quinoa one can eat! So she has redeemed herself with this cookbook. It is a lovely hard bound cookbook, with the Donna Hay trademark blue cover and beautiful food photography.
The book is broken up into five sections -
- Weeknights - so lots of quick one dish recipes in this section. I can see myself cooking almost every recipe in this section. You could even use this section to prep some entrees for a fancier dinner. For example - the Goat's Cheese, Pear and Pancetta Tart recipe would be ideal as a starter, as would the Zucchini and Feta Pancakes.
- Weekends - for when you have a little more time for cooking, so these recipes require more preparation time or more cooking time. I picture using this section for when I have larger groups of people around. I'm looking forward to trying the Smoky Pulled Pork recipe.
- Salads and Sides - a selection of recipes you can prepare as sides to either the Weeknight or Weekend recipes. In a lot of cases she has simple side suggestions included with the Weeknight and Weekend recipes anyway, but this section would be handy for feeding larger groups of people. Some recipes in this section could also form most of a meal - For example, the Rustic Vegetable and Pancetta Gratin and the Baked Lemon, Parmesan and Basil Risotto.
- Baking - I love her baking recipes from the viewpoint, that a lot of the time I can just whiz up the ingredients in my food processor. These recipes don't take a lot of prep time. I have my eye on the Chocolate Chunk Share Cookie, and I might even make the Salted Caramel Chocolate Brownie recipe for Dave one day!
- Desserts - more often than not, if I prepare a dessert, it's normally a Donna Hay dessert. She has a knack for creating simple yet delicious, and easy to prepare desserts. I have already made the Mango and Coconut Icecream from this section. She uses a lot of fruits in her dessert recipes - either tropical, stone fruits or berries, my favourites.
So the other interesting thing about this cookbook is that every so often a recipe takes up a double page spread - nice picture on the left, recipe on the right, with an additional two ways to restyle or reuse the recipe. For example, the Mango and Coconut Icecream recipe can be restyled as a Chic dinner dessert recipe served in glasses, or as a frozen pop where the recipe is frozen in paper cups with Popsicle sticks in them.
I have also cooked the Dukkah Crusted Schnitzel and Radish and Fennel Salad from the Weeknights section. I served these with a Rocket, Lettuce, Tomato and Basil Salad as well.
2 Delicious - Love to Eat
An ABC book - once again in Valli Little's trademark style, with some fabulous food photography. This book is broken up into ten country sections - Italian, Spanish, Australian, Indian, American, Asian, Latin American, French, British and Middle Eastern. Each secton is 28 pages long - with one recipe per double page spread. A back section also provides some suggested menus, where the dishes are mixed and matched. There is also a couple of double-pages on basic recipes eg. pastries and so forth.
I can see myself using the Spanish section for some Tapas style dinner parties. The French section has some really lovely recipes for dinner parties. The Australian Section has some great recipes for informal al-fresco style dining (eg. Barbecued chicken salad with passionfruit dressing, Barbecued Sausage rolls with Beer Braised Onions, Barramundi baked in paperbark with chilli ginger dressing to name a couple of the recipes). I'll have to try the Cola Cakes in the American section for Dave.
The Asian section has one of my favourite current recipes in it (which I have cooked multiple times before from the Delicious magazine) - Baked Ocean Trout with Smashed Cucumber Salad. It can really be served with any salad, and I also cook this one with a whole Salmon fillet rather than the Ocean Trout. We even had it Christmas Eve as well as Christmas day:
I cooked the following gems this week from this cookbook.
Scallops with Peas and Pancetta recipe, which was from the Italian section:
This Salmon en Papillote with Honey Mustard Sauce was from the French section of the book:
3 Local is Lovely
My friend Michelle from Sydney has this cookbook, and I thought it was so Lovely that I ordered myself a copy. The book is split into four sections - one for each season. The whole premise of the book is to cook using local seasonal produce in your cooking, and each section has information about several NSW-based producers. The recipes are simple, and not weighed down by a list of fifty ingredients, the recipes focus on the fresh produce. The Summer section has quite a few berry and stone fruit recipes, which is where I have started. This week I made the delicious little Blueberry and white chocolate tarts. I also have the Brioche and Berry Pudding, Bacon and Nectarine Salad, as well as the Peach Crumble cake on my list to make before the end of summer.
I visited the EPIC Farmers Markets in Canberra for the first time before Christmas, and am inspired to go regularly once we get back from our holidays. There are about 150 stall holders that come to the markets (maybe all not at the same time), but there was a wonderful variety when I went - fruit, vegetables, honey, wine makers, vinegars and oils, meat, plants and herbs, bakeries and more. I'm also inspired to do the Eat Local Challenge which my friend Michelle pointed me to, on the cityhippyfarmgirl.com blog. The idea is to be more aware about the local food that is available and to prepare an entire meal with local produce. You start by defining how local you want to be - eg. all Australian products, products from your state, products within a certain kilometre radius of your home and so forth. I might start off wide and then get narrower and narrower. So next year 2015, I will do the challenge once a month (starting in February), and then try to get narrower and narrower during the year. The idea, is to know where all the produce came from.
4 Matt Preston Cook Book
This is Matt Preston's latest addition to his cookbook efforts. It's very much along the same lines as his first cookbook, and contains 187 recipes that are broken down into what I call the standard chapters of a cookbook - Breakfasts, Soups, Salads, Snacks, Pasta, Seafood etc etc. It's very much a home cooks cookbook, with lots of family shared plates in the cook book, and it will be very useful for cooking for large groups of people as well. There are quite a few hints and tips spread throughout the book, and it's got a fold-out section in the middle - with the ingredients that should be illegal. He has come up with a handful of recipes for said ingredients - for example, Deb is one such ingredient.
So far I have cooked Leiza's Greek Pasticcio made by An Asian (sorry - forgot to take a photo), and even though I halved the ingredients - there was enough for two meals serving 5-6 people each time!
One thing that made me laugh as I looked through the cook book was the fact that some recipe titles took up half the page - eg. Warm Middle Eastern Herb Salad with Zucchini, Pepitas, Crispy Chickpeas and a Lemon Tzatziki Dressing (what a mouthful). Not sure I will be giving the family the full name when they come and ask me what's for dinner!
5 Jamie's Comfort Food
This cookbook was my secret Santa present from the Aussie girls I have dinner with once a month. I still do not know who got me the book, but it was definitely on my list of cookbooks to get. Like Donna Hay, I think I have most of Jamie Oliver's cookbooks.
This one is a hard copy volume, and you certainly would not want to drop it on your foot or on your face if you happen to be reading it in bed (yes, I take my cookbooks to bed and read them like a novel LOL)!
It is full of Jamie's favourite comfort food recipes. There are lots of full-page photographs of the recipes, lots of one pot shared dishes, and each recipe has a calorie count per serve for the dishes, which is handy when I am looking for dinners to cook on Dave's fasting days. This will certainly be the go-to cookbook during Winter, when some comfort food will be in order.
Having sourced some frozen Vongole from Costco a couple of weeks ago, the first recipe I'll cook from this cookbook is the Blushing Spaghetti Vongole.
6 Julie Goodwin's 20/20 Meals
This cookbook is all about feeding your family for $20 in 20 minutes. There's nothing original about the recipes - they are Julie Goodwin's versions of standard recipes eg. Minestrone, Pasta Boscaiola, Pad Thai and so forth. The focus in this cookbook is budget meals prepared quickly - so everyday weekday cooking. This cookbook will be my go-to cookbook on nights when we get home later, and we still want a home cooked meal eg. Wednesday swimming nights when we don't get home til 8pm.
There are five sections in the book - Faster than Pasta, Race the Rice, On a Roll, In a Flash and What's in Season. As you can see, half the book is heavily focused on Carb-based foods, probably because carbs represent value for money - fill you up for less $$$$. There are a few re-works of family favourites in here which I will have to cook eg. Pork Larb, and there are also a few recipes with Dave's favourite ingredients in them - Haloumi and Chorizo. So the book will get a good work-out. Haven't had time to cook anything from it as yet!
7 Family Food - Pete Evan's
This book follows on from Pete Evan's last cookbook which started his push with the Paleo Diet. Just when I thought I know all the new "trendy" ingredients, he manages to introduce a few more that I haven't noticed in the shops as yet. I bought this book for my sister, as it is chock full of Gluten-free and Dairy-free recipes, so has to be good for her tummy. This is the book I bought and then promptly lost, so had to buy another copy, only to find the original. So I got to keep the original.
There looks to be some great recipes in the Kids' lunches section, which I would probably cook as dinners including Pad Thai, Chicken Nuggets, Chicken San Choy Bau and Meatzza (yes a pizza made with a meat base). There is also lots of Paleo friendly versions of dishes such as Butter Chicken (served with Cauliflower rice), burgers using large mushrooms for the bun components, Lamb Korma (once again with Cauliflower rice), and so forth.
When I got his last cookbook, I went out and purchased coconut oil and coconut flour, cacao powder, almond meal, buckwheat and other paleo friendly ingredients. These are all heavily used in this cookbook as well, and to the list of strange new ingredients that I haven't seen before, the following has been added: yacon syrup, coconut sugar, dulse flakes, jamaica, licorice root powder, maca powder, spirulina and tallow. I will have to go and see if I can locate these ingredients in the supermarket or the health food store, before cooking any recipes that require them! I have also noticed that Pomegranate Molasses is starting to pop up in more and more recipes - not just in this cookbook, so I'll have to see if this is readily available as well.
One thing I learnt from the last Pete Evan's cookbook is that it's not cheap to eat the Paleo way. The coconut flour was pretty expensive in the supermarket and the health food shop, but it was less than half the price at Costco, so worth checking them out for some of these coconut based ingredients.
Well - that completes my round-up of the latest cookbooks, well the ones I have anyway. There are a stack more out there. I'm thinking that I need to clean my cookbook shelves up again to make room for this new Christmas cookbook haul!
Happy Cooking
Di :-)
There looks to be some great recipes in the Kids' lunches section, which I would probably cook as dinners including Pad Thai, Chicken Nuggets, Chicken San Choy Bau and Meatzza (yes a pizza made with a meat base). There is also lots of Paleo friendly versions of dishes such as Butter Chicken (served with Cauliflower rice), burgers using large mushrooms for the bun components, Lamb Korma (once again with Cauliflower rice), and so forth.
When I got his last cookbook, I went out and purchased coconut oil and coconut flour, cacao powder, almond meal, buckwheat and other paleo friendly ingredients. These are all heavily used in this cookbook as well, and to the list of strange new ingredients that I haven't seen before, the following has been added: yacon syrup, coconut sugar, dulse flakes, jamaica, licorice root powder, maca powder, spirulina and tallow. I will have to go and see if I can locate these ingredients in the supermarket or the health food store, before cooking any recipes that require them! I have also noticed that Pomegranate Molasses is starting to pop up in more and more recipes - not just in this cookbook, so I'll have to see if this is readily available as well.
One thing I learnt from the last Pete Evan's cookbook is that it's not cheap to eat the Paleo way. The coconut flour was pretty expensive in the supermarket and the health food shop, but it was less than half the price at Costco, so worth checking them out for some of these coconut based ingredients.
Well - that completes my round-up of the latest cookbooks, well the ones I have anyway. There are a stack more out there. I'm thinking that I need to clean my cookbook shelves up again to make room for this new Christmas cookbook haul!
Happy Cooking
Di :-)
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