Food books
RIPE RECIPES: A THIRD HELPING
by Angela Redfern (Beatnik Publishing, $60) This third instalment from Grey Lynn’s Ripe Deli team includes recipes from friends and family. Alison, for example, is a chef-turned-scientist. Not to wish away summer but feijoa season — and Alison’s feijoa lime coconut loaf (with the bonus food chemistry fizz part way through the mixing process) — can’t come soon enough. A healthy mix of sweet and savoury dishes are organised by season. There are many, many salads but (even better) many, many salad dressings. Anyone can chuck some vege in a bowl; it’s what happens next that makes the magic — think fig and cider, maple lime, herby verde and roast olive. Tags like “cleansing” on a chicken, leek and silverbeet soup pander to the worried well but 67 items under the index heading “vegan” prove Ripe is not just paying lip service to new dietary trends.
YUMMY, EASY, QUICK: AROUND THE WORLD
by Matt Preston (Macmillan, $40) The author is a judge on a reality television cooking show that once made contestants recreate a 91-step pudding. MasterChef Australia’s Matt Preston is not, however, a monster. Here he promises “most meals prepped faster than a takeaway”. That beef daube is still going to take three hours to cook but the tuna nicoise will be done in 20 minutes — possibly because it’s missing olives, beans and potatoes. Preston claims they’re interlopers that were never in the original but don’t try this at home unless you’ve got access to real tomatoes with actual flavour. Conversely, I suspect no one would judge you for microwaving the marmalade pudding on page 162. Brown bread icecream? You can probably guess the rest. There are shortcuts and tips for faking it across various cuisines (including Greek, Mexican, Chinese and Indian). The banter is blokey but even the “bogan larb” starts with instructions for toasting and grinding rice. A book for cooks who think they can’t.
MEAT: THE ULTIMATE COMPANION
by Anthony Puharich and Libby Travers (Murdoch Books, $95) Fourteen species provide 90 per cent of the meat we eat. Digest that before you get to a single recipe in this monster tome. Anthony Puharich is a legendary Australian butcher. The foreword is by the late, legendary Anthony Bourdain. It might be going against the, um, grain to celebrate blood, bones and viscera but if you’re going to eat animals you might as well do it in the company of experts. The recipes are, actually, great, but the real joy of this book comes from the learning. It covers the history of every major meat source raised for human consumption (cuts, countries of origins, farming techniques and more). It will make you a trivia star (the cushion that the speaker sits on in England’s House of Lords is stuffed with wool from all over the Commonwealth). And it will make you think harder about how you eat — and buy — meat. Did you know chicken skin shows the bird’s age? Consider that next time you sling a pack of plump, shiny, skinless thighs in your shopping trolley.
FRANCESCA’S ITALIAN KITCHEN
by Francesca Voza and James Stapley (Penguin, $50) Can we call time on pasta’s time out? The best food in the world has been stewing on the naughty step for a while now but I defy you to resist prawn paccheri. I could have licked the bisque-soaked page, except that would have left no room for broccoli and broad bean gnocchi. Voza’s dad is Italian and she grew up in the family restaurants (all 14 of them), but this is the Mediterranean via Wanaka and an English business partner who has held head chef roles Canterbury’s Pegasus Bay Winery and Saggio di Vino. Yes, that is brussels sprouts and chestnuts with the orecchiette. The pair run Francesca’s Italian Kitchen in Wanaka — the restaurant made possible by a mobile woodfired pizza oven business. If you’re struggling with your own outdoor oven, the cookbook includes full instructions. Or you could just go direct to the tiramisu (first, make your own mascarpone — instructions on page 212).