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.
So exciting to see the final product that is The Foodies’ Guide to Sydney, which I co-wrote with other fabulous food writers.
Discover the city’s best kept food secrets with The Foodies’ Guide to Sydney. Food lovers know that when you want to enjoy a delicious meal at home, you need the best ingredients and the freshest produce. This is the one book that shows you where to find these essentials and much more, with reviews of Sydney’s best bakeries, cheese specialists, boutique wine merchants, butchers, fishmongers, chocolate stores and coffee roasters. Source seasonal vegetables for a healthy family meal. Get to know your local butcher. Find the most authentic Lebanese pastries to take home for dinner. Or discover which delicatessens stock the best range of French cheeses. The Foodies’ Guide to Sydney is for everyone who enjoys shopping for good food. More than just a guide to your local shops, it is a celebration of the wonderful food stores that keep the city well fed and happy. This year’s guide features a brand new team of writers, headed by respected Sydney food writer Simon Thomsen. It will also be printed in full colour for the first time and has a fresh new design.
1. Italian Easy: a fabulous cookbook filled with easy to handle pasta- and other recipes. 2. This “La Cruse” skirt is framed loveliness. Yellow and grey stripes with a little white T tucked in is planned summer wear. 3. Rent a Crowd: Wall art from Elly Nelly. 4. Eplica font from My Fonts. 5. Royal treatment of jelly using these moulds from Bompas & Parr. 6. Travel bag from Jack Spade: Tarpaulin Dry Dopp Kit $95.
I have a little slip dress. It’s black with a pearly trim detail at the top, and the straps are barely there. Nor is the dress really, and I have to either be wearing too much underwear, that won’t show any lines, or virtually none at all, that won’t show any lines. But I have to think about who I might see when I wear it, what gusts of winds might come my way, and whether it’s appropriate to be wearing such a tiny piece of cloth in public. It’s Fleur Wood. So really I can wear it whenever the hell I like because frankly it’s darling. And in fact I’m going to get it out now, it goes well with my new book. I wish my life went with my new book.
Oh well, I might just spend the weekend eating coconut ice and sitting under a bare naked tree adorned with bouquets of bright balloons. If I want. No, Food Fashion Friends is not real life. It is not real life at all. It is not even the fashion industry’s real world, reality just isn’t this pretty. But oh so pretty this fabricated world is, and I might spend much of my reality delving in to it, pouring over pages where models eat sugar and cream-turned-into-cakes. It would take several days to prepare such an extravagant diabetes-ridden feast as presented here. But this is not reality. And Fleur Wood knows this. She’s telling us to just pose, and see that this beautiful, original and make believe world – or elements of it – can be recreated in our real lives. I like it. I like the offering of fantasy and the imaginary. It’s the rabbit hole and the fashion world, but with pictures of cakes and with recipes. This is the grown-up-girl’s latest release Barbie House, but better.
Fleur Wood, and she’s an Australian fashion designer don’t you know, has included style guides for perfect dinner parties. She shows us how to go all out, with cottonwool-made clouds hanging above a table and silver stars painted on to the walls, for example, or how to tone it down while keeping it fabulous. There is the extreme fantasy in the book, and there is extreme elegance.
My father made a very amusing comment about the book, while acknowledging it was incredible: “You shouldn’t have to agent orange a tree and cover it with balloons in order to have a picnic.” Having said that, Fleur Wood also offers simple ways make remarkable things – I love her idea of Ricotta Panna Cotta with Espresso Caramel, or a heart-shaped Salmon Mousse with Croutons.
Recipes include Crab Burgers; Aioli; Peach and Ginger Punch; Lemon Thyme Mushrooms, Ham Croquettes; Baked Eggs; tiny individual Marble Cakes and Iced Chocolate Cookies. Fleur Wood sets Menus for certain occasions, such as the aforementioned High Tea. Citrus Tea; Coconut Ice (yes really!), Prosecco with Watermelon Sorbet; Lobster Sandwiches. I love it all. I love the romance and the attitude and the idea of cutting pate sandwiches into the shape of butterflies. This world is dreamy, and I’m going to borrow it as my own.
Food Fashion Friends, by Fleur Wood, is published by Penguin ($59.95).
A fun touch for a cookbook or any book collection. Use the pig silhouette to divide your books on terrines from your vegetarian cookbooks! Slip them in between books for organisation or just as a whimsical accent. You can buy these little dudes online.
With “real, wit and truth” in her bag, as Mario Batali described her, the New York Times journalist Kim Severson has released a new book on how eight cooks saved her life. A former alcoholic, Severson has written Spoon Fed (which I’ve just ordered from the Book Depository) as a sort of run-down on her culinary mentors, dishing out life lessons and recipes as well.
“Whether hiding chicken nuggets from slow-food guru Alice Waters or obsessing about Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl ‘in a Single White Female kind of way,’ NY Times food writer has certainly been under the influence of cooking’s grand dames. Luckily for us, she got past her Lucy Ricardo moments—and plenty that weren’t so funny—to produce this delightful memoir, a combo platter of life lessons, dishy profiles of her mentors and gustatory edification (with recipes!).” - (Ellen Shapiro, People Magazine, 17 May, 2010)
My dear friend Kristin Hove has just released her first cookbook. Just 200 copies are being printed, so be quick if you want to get one. The book is full of recipes from her friends, who contributed from all over the world. Her stunning photography is inspiring, and the food is simple, elegant and worth picking up a copy for. You can buy it here.. Kristin and I are now working on a book of our own! Will keep you posted!
Right, as much as I love this dear blog, I am getting one of these as a kind of on-hand serviette for recipes I think up at odd hours. Today someone was telling me about bacon-fat popcorn. It’s for recipes like that. I might do a drawing of a popping pig to make it pretty. Also, the vid is very cool. Don’t you think?
Serves 1
Sure, you can just grab an apple on the run. Or you can turn it into a more substantial and interesting breakfast bowl worthy of sitting down to.1 applea squeeze of lemon juice1 tablespoon chopped nuts, or LSA1 tablespoon honey2/3 tablespoons natural yoghurt
extra sliced fruits in season (berries, peaches, pears), to serve
Coarsely grate the unpeeled apple and stir through lemon juice, nuts, honey and yoghurt. Top with sliced fruit (optional). I’ve topped with blueberries and more apple, julienned, here.
>> LSA is a ground mixture made from linseed, sunflower seeds and almonds. You can make your own in a food processor or coffee grinder, but it’s also available from good grocers and food markets.
And here I have some recommended music for said speedy apple breakfast – gorgeous positive music to start the day with…
Christine Manfield of Universal fame last night created an incredible menu in her restaurant pulled from and inspired by my book The Thrifty Kitchen. Meatloaf at Universal? Yes! Check out the menu below.. Thank you Chris, what an incredible evening. Absolutely humbling.
The meatloaf with green beans was nothing like they dreamed up in the ’50s. The meatloaf’s curry flavours, served with crisp beans in a wasabi dressing made this simple dish truly modern. As Chris herself said last night – she’s never served meatloaf at Universal before, she’d be more likely to play Meatloaf. Thanks too to my mumsie, who let me, encouraged me, to write this book with her. x
The Thrifty Kitchen, my cookbook with Penguin, is now on the shelves (horray!). Written with my mother Suzanne Gibbs, the book is an offering to those who want to be more economical in the kitchen, but still eat supremely well.
Much done since I last wrote. A book, The Thrifty Kitchen, was published and has been on the shelves for two weeks. Exciting and wonderful, and strange to see in the actual shops. I was in the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne, today and saw it there, stacked up and surrounded by the likes of [...]
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 experience >> 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 Sunday Life in The Sun Herald called The Perfect... She is a regular contributor to the SMH on food and travel. She writes food features for The Wall Street Journal.
Kate writes for The Foodies Guide to Sydney, The SMH Good Cafe Guide and SMH Everyday Eats. Kate has 11 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 by Penguin in 2009. Kate's grandmother Margaret Fulton is 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.
Serves 1
