Jun 11

Cookbook 181: Nat’s What I Reckon: Death to Jar Sauce

Nat’s What I Reckon was one of the bright spots in the pandemic. His (very sweary) videos on cooking tasty food with love were incredibly uplifting and brilliant. There was a point during the early days of the pandemic when each new video filled me with joy, and I’d make time in my day to see what was on the menu. Of course he was pressured into writing a cookbook, and my lovely friends Nadia and Ameel bought it for me. Nat’s What I Reckon: Death to Jar Sauce is an amazing cookbook. Click through on that link and see the gorgeous artwork that graces the pages, because this isn’t a traditional cookbook, this is a cookbook in illustrated form. Tri-colour comic (pink, black and white) demonstrating the steps of the recipe, including the swearing and other commentary that Nat usually makes.

I’ve made two recipes out of this book, and I’ve made them twice because they really are that good. I’ll provide links to Nat’s videos where I can find them, so you can see the steps if my translation of the words to page, without the beautiful graphics, doesn’t make as much sense as you’d hope. Overall 5 out of 5 stars.

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Apr 30

Cookbook 180: Florentine

I saw Florentine by Emiko Davies while killing time in a bookshop a long while ago, and I flipped through it, partly because I love Florence and partly because I really liked the look of the cover. I loved the recipes inside, the photos of food and Florence, and the fact that there were vegetarian recipes inside as well, so I put it on my wishlist to buy. And then I eventually bought it.

I cooked two pasta dishes from the book, though the gnocchi and the sugo di pomodoro are separate recipes. I even got out my pasta maker and bought duck for the pappardelle all’Anatra, which was absolutely amazing. Highly recommend this book, 5 out of 5 stars.

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Apr 14

Cookbook 179 – To Asia with Love

After hearing many people rave about Hetty McKinnon and her cookbooks, I bought To Asia with Love hoping it would be a great addition to my collection. It is an interesting cookbook, with some things I want to still try and one recipe that I don’t think I’ll ever eat again, though Nigel wants to make it himself as he loved it.

The instructions are clear, the ideas solid, and the book is entirely vegetarian, so an easy one to cook from in my household which has one vegetarian. Overall 3 out of 5 stars.

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Apr 07

Cookbook 178: Chocolate

So I bought this Chocolate by Olga Jones from the amazing Karen Wyld who had closed her bookshop and was selling all her remaining stock. It’s a very pretty book and on one of my favourite topics, so of course I bought it. The two recipes I made were perfect, and the double choc biscuits are incredibly simple and amazingly delicious. Can’t recommend this book highly enough, I’m looking forward to trying more recipes when the weather is more suitable for baking. 5 out of 5 stars.

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Feb 23

Photos broken

Sorry for a lot of the photos being broken. I had to delete most of my photos off Flickr because the price for Flickr has become prohibitive, and I moved all my photos to Google Photos. This means I now need to go back and update all the photos in the broken posts, and I will do that when I am up to date with my blogging AND I have capacity.

So please imagine beautiful food in the interim, and over time these will be fixed.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Sep 19

Cookbook 177: Asian After Work

I love Adam Liaw, he has such a beautiful voice, is so passionate about food and the cultures of food, about making food accessible, and sharing in the joy of food. I’d been deciding what book of his to buy for a while, and settled on Asian After Work as something that would be accessible, easy to cook from, and could add some dishes to my repertoire.

This is a good book, particularly if you are not a vegetarian. If you are a vegetarian don’t bother with this book, there are insufficient vegetarian recipes to make it worth your while. I struggled to find recipes that I could make for my vegetarian house mate who is also allergic to capsicum, but we got two in the end.

Overall, I’d give this book 3.5 stars out of 5. The instructions are good, the recipe ideas are not too complicated, and the way the book is broken up into proposed meal plans is a nice touch, for example dishes to cook on Sunday when you might have more time to cook, dishes to cook on a Tuesday when you may not.

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Aug 08

Cookbook 176: The Violet Bakery Cookbook

The Violet Bakery Cookbook by Claire Ptak was one of those books that I lost the photos of cooking from a couple of years ago, and a gift from my sister. I remember cooking ginger snap biscuits and corn and chilli muffins from the first time I baked, with the biscuits turning out great and the corn and chilli muffins being both the driest and oiliest muffins I’d ever eaten – flavour good, texture bad.

This time I decided to bake some other recipes and it was ok, but nothing amazing. None of the recipes were better than the recipes for similar things in other cookbooks, and this won’t be one I keep. Overall I give this book 3 out of 5 stars.

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Aug 02

Cookbook 175: Simple Italian – The Essentials of Italian Home Cooking

When I heard that Silvia Colloca’s Simple Italian – The Essentials of Italian Home Cooking was available, and I had a credit on my Booktopia account, I bought this immediately. I absolutely adored her Made in Italy and I wanted to have more of that magic and discovery. Goodness I was disappointed. And those are words that I don’t want to have to write. I think that Silvia Colloca is a fantastic cook, she’s great at communicating her love of cooking food, she has great rapport with people that she works with on screen, and the way she talks about Italy and her family is lovely.

This book isn’t good though. I cooked 4 dishes from it, over two months, because I thought that the first time that maybe I’d selected poor recipes, or that I had made a mistake, and then the second two were also not great, and I did make a mistake for one, but the other I followed the instructions carefully and it was still a disaster. Notes will follow after each of the recipes as normal, so you can see what went wrong/wasn’t good about the dish. Overall, 1 out of 5 stars, don’t recommend.

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Jun 27

Cookbook 174: Carpathia – Food from the heart of Romania

I bought Carpathia: Food from the heart of Romania by Irina Georgescu because I’d never specifically eaten Romanian food, and because the book itself is stunning. Just check out the cover, how beautiful (no honestly, click on the link I can wait). The book has a some vegetarian recipes in it, which is good, and a lot of tasty stuff. The instructions were good, the photos in the book are stunning, and the vignettes of life in Romania makes me want to visit when international travel is a thing again (if that ever happens).

I do want to make the recipes I cooked again, and to try out some of the other recipes in the book. So right now I’m giving this 4.5 stars out of 5, and will revisit this for the fun of it sometime later.

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May 30

Cookbook 173: The Real Food of China

So I bought this book on sale somewhere, some when, because it is a big hefty hard cover and it was full of recipes that I wanted to try out. The Real Food of China by Leanne Kitchen and Antony Suvalko acknowledges the vast heritage of Chinese cuisines as well as the fact that the authors are limited in access to ingredients outside of China and just space in truly representing the true scale of Chinese food. That said, the book is 431 pages (including the index), full of beautiful photos of food, people and places, and easy to follow recipes.

This cookbook had one recipe I heard a lot about last year, and to my knowledge is the only cookbook I own with this recipe included – scrambled egg with tomato. Everyone seemed to be talking about this dish last year and it was only recently that I tried to make it for myself and that was thanks to this cookbook. It really is as good as everyone was saying. I was really happy with all the dishes from this cookbook and want to try some others from here as well. Overall I give it 4.5 stars out of 5.

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