Great reads for foodie dads
TODAY I have three cookbook suggestions for Father’s Day on September 2.
These include one for dads who like the food from their own garden best (or aspire to a homegrown life); one for the father who would like to learn a few shortcuts without compromising on nourishment, and one that has the very attractive Rachel Khoo doing her very attractive thing with food — this time in Sweden.
In Milkwood (Murdoch Books, $45) you will find recipes for preserving green tomatoes in olive oil, a ginger seaweed salad, fermented mushrooms, but there also are recipes for seed-raising mix, seaweed fertiliser tea (for the garden) and a mushroom scroll (a sort of fungi seed bomb).
Authors Kirsten Bradley and Nick Ritar live in Victoria where they milk goats grow vegetables, tend fruit trees, cook and run courses covering all these subjects, a business also called Milkwood (www.milkwood.net)
Rather than try to cover everything in the permaculture compendium, they have taken five subjects to examine in depth. The how-to, rather than recipes, are the focus.
They tell you plenty (with pointers to further reading if you want to know more) about growing tomatoes, farming mushrooms, keeping bees, collecting seaweed and foraging for wild food — from feral apples and blackberries, to samphire and warrigal greens.
If it all seems daunting, they recommend you “start with one single, simple, doable thing”. Perhaps growing tomatoes on your windowsill or planting a bee-friendly garden.
For myself, now that I know what to look for and when, and when, I will be taking an informed interest in gathering seaweed — to eat or put on the garden.
Rosie Mansfield’s book Food Hacker (Penguin Random House, $29.99) is for anyone who has looked at a recipe book and said “get real!”. I think its “constructionist” ethic will appeal to men — the author calls herself a “food architect”.
The food is real — Mansfield is a nutritionist — but quick to put together with the minimum of equipment.
The recipes are mostly for one, and while they can be scaled up it would be a great gift for the dad who is perhaps suddenly living alone, and not accustomed to cooking. It is when we are cooking for just ourselves that it is most difficult to make the culinary effort.
The chapter headings are the equipment in which the food is made.
There is an omelette/ scrambled eggs microwaved in a mug, a spicy Asian tempeh in a zipped sandwich bag, a muffin tray of individual spanakopita, as well as food on trays, wrapped in foil, on skewers, cooked in one pan and made in a blender.
Rachel Khoo, who came to our attention cooking in The Little Paris Kitchen, and has also written a cookbook in Melbourne, is not just being a culinary tourist writing The Little Swedish Kitchen (Penguin, $49.99).
She is married to a Swedish man and lives in Stockholm, revelling in the pronounced seasons. Tasmanians will relate to the Swedish saying “there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes”.
Beautifully styled and photographed, it covers food that “makes you feel good even when the it’s dark and gloomy outside” to mid-sommer crayfish feasts.
Swedish classics are there, including crispbread — served with soft butter at every meal.
“Probably Sweden’s biggest culinary export” meatballs are there, as are bean balls (black and kidney) both served with the tradition sides of mash, creamy gravy, pickled cucumber and lingonberry.
She suggests those of use without recourse to a Swedish forest or Ikea store substitute cranberries for lingonberries.
And there are heaps of recipes for what I most associate with Swedish fare — yeasty buns. Khoo has versions for St Lucia saffron buns, apple and cheese spelt buns, a cardamom bun bombe to make with any leftover buns you may have about and a cream bun cake.
These recipes, and others with tricky construction, are illustrated with several instructional photos.