If cooking with fire is going to be the big thing in 2012, and I have no doubt it will, then Al Brown’s book Stoked is going to be the hot cookbook of the year.
Labelling the barbecue an icon of Kiwi life, the book explores a vast range of cooking outdoors techniques, from grills to smoking, spits, outdoor ovens including tandoor and pizza, and how-tos on smoking and firing up the best barbecued meat. He forages for mushrooms and does whole pigs in underground spits, he does smoked duck. The book is a veritable (smoke)house of new cooking, or old cooking styles brought back in vogue.
There are more than 100 recipes, there’s an emphasis on fast and tasty, and there are recipes for bruschetta, burgers, pizza, fritters, chargrilled seafood, beef, lamb and chicken, ribs, plus slow roasted meats. There’s game including venison, duck and goat, plus salads and classic cake tin slices. How very New Zealand.
My father’s mother, a New Zealander (like my dad), used to make the most gorgeous slices, coconut and jam things I used to adore as a child. And I remember sitting as a toddler on the beach in Auckland, before it was the developed and upmarket place it is now. We’d pick pippies from the sand with our toes, then cook them on an open fire – me wrapped in terry towelling nappies and draped in (New Zealand) wool blankets on the beach, the billowing smoke curling around me. Having my happy sandy-footed family around me, and sucking pippies from shells, is one of my enduring childhood memories. I’m going to bring back family tradition with this book and start cooking open fire again.
There’s a gorgeous video to go with the release of the book, it’s enough to inspire you to hand in your Australian passport and cross over the Tasman for a simpler life. I’d do just about anything to traipse over there right now and do a day’s foraging and food exploring with this guy. My favourite part of the video is the last scene, a gorgeous labrador flop in three parts (sitting, elegant lie-down, and … flop), resigning to the atmosphere, an open fire, and no doubt exhaustion from a day’s outdoor exploring.
The book features stunning photography by Kieran Scott, shot in NZ’s amazing scenery, including the high country above the Wakatipu Basin in Central Otago; the rugged south Wairarapa coastline; hunting and fly fishing at the 8000-acre Ngamatea Station in the Central North Island; wild porcini mushroom gathering in Canterbury; an outdoor tandoor oven with Indian friends in Wellington, and a hangi up the Whanganui River. Buy the book, Bro.
A pretty collection of books for food lovers has been released by Penguin Books, giving makeovers to some of the world’s top food lit.
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig and Other Essays by Charles Lamb and Claudia Roden’s A Middle Eastern Feast can fill in the gaps of your foodie library. I’ve been told only certain types of women read cookbooks in bed, so I’ve taken to reading these instead. Agnes Jekyll’s A Little Dinner Before the Play extols the merits of a cheerful breakfast tray, and conjures up a winter picnic of figs and mulled wine. Frankly it’s divine.
I open, randomly, the chapter Meatless Meals:
“Here is a breakfast or high-tea notion for a busy worker on a long winter’s day, when time and thoughts race too quickly for more deliberate nourishment: A crumpet with lots of butter and salt; on it an egg, or maybe two, perfectly fried, the pepper-mill just going out of action, and all served piping hot in a warmed muffin dish. This is moderate cost, simple in preparation, nourishing and nice.”
To any dietary cookbook author, I plead you take this route instead of the joyous and manic “isn’t exercise fun” one. In her chapter For the Too Fat, Jekyll writes this.
“We are reminded in Scripture that ‘All flesh is grass,’ but, as a great artist once added reassuringly, ‘We cannot be sufficiently thankful that all grass is not flesh.’ No one likes to be fat; it is unbecoming, fatiguing, and impairs efficiency. And although the condition is often the result of defective metabolism than of undue or indiscriminate appetite, still the experience of the war years, with their scarcity of the flesh-making foods, shows that weight can be reduced by a diminished consumption of dairy produce, sugar, and starchy foods. Unfortunately, all the nicer things are on a weights and measures black list, and the annual advice of an eminent financial authority to ‘spend less’ must be paraphrased into a diminished consumption of all nourishment for those who would grow thinner…
“If that insidious enemy, soup, be held indispensable at dinner, at least avoid the vegetable purees and bisques made with cream, butter, root vegetables, and rich fish, also the savoury potage in which milk and flour figure.”
Penguin has made a large part of the collection available in Australia, and at the top of the pile on my bedside now is Buffalo Cake and Indian Pudding by Dr A.W.Chase. The author, a travelling physician, salesman, author and self-made man, traipsed around America in the late nineteenth Century collecting recipes and domestic tips from people along the way. There’s a recipe for Kansas Puffs and for Love Knots for Tea, which are little cakes folded over in the shape of “love knots”, to have with tea.
Elizabeth David is there too, of course, in A Taste of the Sun. These words you don’t realise you’re reading, but instead you travel with her and pour over a Lasagne Verdi, “large strips of pasta coloured green with spinach”. It’s enough to send a food writer’s heart aflutter.
Taken as a bite of one book or a whole feast of food writing, this is a collection of delicious writing.
Just love the light, airy, nordic style of photographer Ditte Isager, who hails from Copenhagen, Denmark. Inspiration comes from the Dutch Masters, storytelling, and the effects from motion pictures. The photographer shows that overhead food photography can be completely wonderful, and the use of soft linens and minimalist style is rich with texture.
I found the wonderful Ditte Isager via my friend, photographer Kristin Hove, whose Norway-based blog is a constant inspiration.
An old recording of when Snoop Dog visited the Martha Stewart show, and they both made brownies. In an amusing turn, Snoop does a rap about making brownies, while Martha, hip hop as she is, joins in to the awkward rap.
Snoop: “Trying to make some brownies, but we’re missing the most important part of the brownies.”
Martha: “Which is, which is, which is …”
Snoop: “No sticks no seeds no stems.”
Martha: “You want green brownies.”
Snoop: “Yes.”
Martha: “He wants green brownies. Brownish green brownies.”
Snoop: “The greener the better!”
The Barbican in London has recently launched the Food Hall and Book Bank. Market stalls, a deli and sweet counter contained in this extensive arts centre, which has more than 18 different stores and nooks. There’s also a Book Bank – a bring-and-take-away bookstall stocked by Pan Macmillan. The formal restaurant upstairs boasts a macaroon mixologist – truly. It’s a man who matches macaroons to cocktails, of course.
.PSLAB collaborated with architects and designers SHH to create a site-specific treatment for the project. Light fixtures were conceived to suit the rough style of the building fabric and also to abide by the restrictions of the listed building. The ground floor is spatially divided into multiple seating areas via low ceiling levels; due to the duct system and various seating layouts. Floor-to -ceiling shelving structures hold multiple glass jars holding energy-saving light bulbs. The result if a twinkling gorgeous place, where a lacquered steel metal structure complements the rustic space.
The jar-shelving structures were then adapted into ceiling suspended modules to provide functional light. And then smaller modules of these shelves are repeated into wall-mounted fixtures over the seating booths. Pretty lovely.
Sweet little kicky retro Friday video reminding us that summer will return. And then we can all just jump about on lawns with pastel coloured trinkets, macarons and best friends.
Anthony Bourdain, who I met last night for dinner (thank goodness for this incredible job of mine), chats about food writers and food critics. Insights into food reviewing, the current cooking and celebrity chef craze, his views on AA Gill, and the Sydney Writers Festival.
Loved interviewing six women – Yumi Stynes, Sandra Sully, Margaret Pomeranz, Fleur Wood, Margaret Fulton and Nicole Trunfio – for the Sunday Lifecover story on the weekend.
Having fun in your 20s, rearing a family in your 30s or getting wise in your 60s – at what age do women feel most fulfilled? Kate Gibbs talks to Yumi Stynes and others about the best years of their lives.
Yumi Stynes, 35, refuses to dye her hair. She confesses she’s lied about her age in the past, “partly a female thing and partly a vanity thing”, but will not budge on the tell-tale long grey streak running through her almost black hair. “This shows I am a warrior! This is an indication of the life I have lived, of the scars I have acquired. Why would I deny myself those symbols? I am proud of who I am and what I have done.”
Bit of a professional crush on Brendan Maclean, who can sing and is funny. What’s not to like. He wrote on Twitter recently.. “@macleanbrendan If you watch 127 Hours backwards it’s an uplifting story about a disabled man finding an arm in the desert #moviesbackwards”
Beautiful things by Arian Behzadi. Trying to figure out where I can buy these images to hang on bare walls. Love the newspaper clippy montage thing he has going on.
Just love this photo documentary by Jennifer Causey, who’s The Makers project involves photographing people who make things. She says of her undertaking “I soon realised I was also photographing people who make things happen”. As the project evolves, so does the adventure and pleasure of documenting the people behind the products, she says: to learn [...]
Oh spare us the unrelenting, delicious cool. This gorgeous line of vintage products is designed for the rugged, yet sophisticated gentleman. “If Steve McQueen carried a beat-up leather duffle bag on the back of his motorcycle; what would be in it and how would the products look?” Well, like this.
The Kitchen Inc. blog is written and edited by Kate Gibbs - a journalist, author and cook.
Food, travel, design >> How, when entwined together, these things inspire our daily culinary experiences >> The Kitchen Inc. covers food, kitchen-based inspiration, and workable design as it impacts our dining, eating, cooking lives.
Kate Gibbs writes a weekly column for Good Living in The Sydney Morning Herald on cooking with kids: Kitchen Cadets. She is the restaurant reviewer for Sunday Life magazine in the Sun Herald. She is a regular contributor to the SMH on food and travel.
Kate is a co-author of The Foodies Guide to Sydney 2011 and 2012 and is a contributor to SMH Everyday Eats 2011 and 2012 and Good Cafe Guide 2012. Kate has 10 years' journalism experience and has written for Russh, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Frankie and others. The interest in journalism began at London's The Evening Standard newspaper. Her first cookbook, The Thrifty Kitchen, was published in 2009. Kate's mother Suzanne Gibbs and grandmother Margaret Fulton are also in the food business.
In The Kitchen Inc, Kate writes restaurant, bar and cafe reviews, and shows the most interesting and inspiring places to eat and gastro-explore. Kate reviews new food-relevant design and books, she writes about new trends in cooking, how different ingredients are being used by our top chefs and cooks, and how to use these ideas at home.
