Book Reviews
Stay in and stay warm with a good (cook) book
Little Dish Favourites Cookbook
You may know Little Dish as the company that makes fresh, healthy food for kids using only natural ingredients, an idea which has no doubt been of endless help to busy mums and dads everywhere. Well, they have now released their first collection of recipes, the 'Little Dish Favourites Cookbook'.
A delicious way to earn a living
The late Michael Bateman, a prolific writer and food enthusiast, was probably the father of modern food journalism. When he started out in the 50s, it was considered a topic of little worth, but a topic he nevertheless continued to champion throughout his life.
What's for dinner? - Romilla Arber
“What's for dinner?” That's a question asked approximately two minutes after the confirmation of lunch on the table in my house. The answer to that question isn't a light one. At least not for Romilla Arber who tried to address it with her 656 page début, 'what's for dinner'.
Pasta by Theo Randall
The Pasta cookbook by Theo Randall is a great guide to cooking pasta at home and is full of recipes with different levels of difficulty for you to have a go at.
Geetie's Cookbook - Recipes from the Duke of Cambridge Organic Pub
Packed full of eco friendly organic recipes and cheerfully free of ego, this cookbook brings the taste of this pioneering Gastro Pub to those of us unlucky enough not to live near to it. Seasonally laid out, it delivers plenty of food for thought.
The Garlic Farm Cookbook Offers Garlic Recipes Galore
The award winning Garlic Farm release the Garlic Farm Cookbook, packed full of everything you need to know about garlic plus a plethora of unusual recipes.
The Art of Pho Julian Hanshaw
Pho – as you cosmopolitan lot might know – is a beefy, noodly, minty broth – much loved in Vietnam and in the screechy badlands of London’s Dalston. The Art of Pho, as fewer of you might know, is a surreal, original and quirky graphic novel inspired by Vietnam’s food, set in Ho Chi Minh City.
Alice’s Cook Book – Alice Hart
A tone of encouragement and enthusiasm permeates the whole collection; when Alice isn’t comparing root vegetables to characters from Doctor Who, she is sharing stories of her coriander-hater brother, Ian, or cheekily catching the reader out, when she acknowledges that they probably didn’t bother reading the recipe introduction.
My Kitchen - Real food from near and far - Stevie Parle
As opposed to fake food perhaps? No we know what Stevie means, he’s talking about food that is not restaurant style, not prettified, petrified, emulsified and self-satisfied. Well it’s hard to argue with that
Hix Oyster and Chop House - Mark Hix
A new recipe book from Mark Hix, he of all the restaurants strewn around London bearing his name and the chef most beloved by ‘blokes’. Not for Mark the pansy hand of fusion, the effete mannerisms of molecular gastronomy. He’s the prop-forward of seasonal cuisine, always ready for a ruck, a maul and a singsong with the critics in the showers afterwards, while trying to stitch his ear back on.
Jelly - Sam Bompas and Harry Parr
Step forward Sam Bompas and Harry Parr, creators of jelly airports, cocktail lakes, gin clouds and scratch and sniff cinema, whose first book, ‘Jelly’ is published this month...
Cook – Richard Bertinet
Hailing originally from Breton, Richard Bertinet is a chef, baker and food writer, who also runs a range of courses at his kitchen in Bath. It is the latter which has provided the inspiration for his latest book, Cook, as a lot of the content has been inspired by questions from his customers.
My Grill - Pete Evans
It's against the flow of female chefs that My Grill (subtitled Food for the Barbecue) from Pete Evans makes its debut. Evans is well-known in his native Australia, where he has owned restaurants, and appears regularly on the Australian version of MasterChef - cooking doesn't get taffer than that! - as Greg Wallace might say.
Cuisinier Gascon - Pascal Aussignac
With a foreword from Grand Master Pierre Koffman, this is a real celebration of real food – it can look pretty but it never sacrifices visual appeal for visceral satisfaction. Get greased up with some duck fat and dive into this unique collection of taste and terroir.
The Book of Tapas- Simone and Ines Ortega
Simone and Ines Ortega are the chef/authors and names to drop whenever talk turns to tapas. Their book, 1080 Recipes is a fixture in just about every Spanish home kitchen and they are a trusted authority. Their Book of Tapas has the tone of voice of people who know what they're doing and if you pay attention you will too.
Great British Food
All of GB’s best and unique ingredients are used here, venison, ham hocks, beetroots, John Dory, rare pork breeds, Somerset cider Cromer crabs – the list goes on and on reading as a roll call of all the things we can be proud to call British. Preferably raising a pint of warm beer into the air as we do so while litter flaps around our ankles in a bracing seaside breeze.
Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume Two - Julia Child with Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck
The reissued volume 2 of Julia Child's seminal work Mastering the Art of French Cooking is now out and shows yet again how a cookbook should be written. A work of luminous writing, compassion, pedagogy and superb classic recipes made possible for any cook who wants to learn and knows how to read.
‘Malaysian Food’ – Norman Musa
Rarely does a book make me salivate so quickly, so that’s always a good sign. Inspired by his mother Norman Musa has put together a collection of recipes from his Malaysian homeland evoking personal memories as well as anecdotes from his childhood.
Gourmet food for a fiver - Jason Atherton
As the shock of Jason Atherton’s resignation from the Ramsay Empire begins to die down, here is his new cookbook to console us until he pops up elsewhere, as he surely must. And far from being a Maze cookbook, delicious dishes beyond the reach of most of us, it’s a book that promises us that we can cook well and for under a fiver a head.
Michel Roux: Pastry - Savoury and Sweet
Michel Roux has spent his life up to his elbows in flour and butter. He is one of the few world-famous chefs who is perhaps known for his patisserie skills above all else. He began, as he explains, at the age of 14 with 4 a.m. starts six days a week as a tourier - the person who prepares, rolls and shapes the dough for the day’s work amid a morning mist of airborne flour particles.
