blight

At the library I tend to gravitate to the new glossy cookbooks on display. Call me shallow but this kind of window shopping means I can actually take the product home for a limited time with no buyers remorse if it turns out to be all front and no back, so to speak.

Cook: A Year in the Kitchen with Britain's Favourite Chefs put out by The Observer is something way too meaty to consider purchasing but was happy to take it home for a ride purely due to the name "Ottolenghi" on the cover.

Over a rather delicious late lunch, I sat outside and began flicking through the pictures.

Then I came to this.

Would you eat such a manky looking avocado?

Would you include a photo of such a poor specimen in your blog, unless it was a post on manky fruit porn or to accompany a post like this?

Just as a blighted wedge of avocado can turn me off my breakfast, such poor styling can let down a cookbook.

Or am I just shallow?

solstice experiment update

Thanks everyone who visited Fishpond and helped me raise money for my favourite Australian charities.

Now a little over a year since I started this experiment the final amount raised through affiliate sales is $293.67. (Though it’d have been more if Fishpond didn’t halve their affiliation payment percentage halfway through!)

I’ve thrown in some of my own money to round the numbers up with a total of $400 donated as following:

$200 to the Smith Family’s Learning for Life program. I’ve long been a fan of what the Smith Family does in my own neighbourhood to break the poverty cycle.

$200 to Ian Thorpe ‘s Fountain of Youth. The Thorpedo is more than a pretty face; take a look at what he’s doing to empower learning in indigenous communities.

It’s probably no surprise that the most popular cookbook that you’ve clicked through and bought is Feel Good Food by Tony Chiodo.



But in the last couple of months there's been a surge in popularity of The Edmonds (Sure To Rise) Cookbook.



Can anyone explain this?

Being able to shop, cook and blog about good food is such a privilege. I hope I never loose sight of that fact. Thanks again for your contribution.


Previous update.

vegging in after popping out

I've been across the Tasman for a while. My mother was moved recently to a nursing home after a fall. Do you know how difficult it is, in a small city, to get care for someone with dementia who is not mobile? The good news is she's walking again, shuffling and sometimes falling but hopefully that means she can stay where she is. Anyway, long story short, I've not been cooking much of late. So excuse this little cheat, a post I've made elsewhere on the net, tweaked a little for you reading pleasure.



For many years my favourite part of waking up on a Monday was listening to Flip Shelton talk about food on RRR. I miss her vibrant recipes and triathalon updates. I loved her first cookbook Green (now sadly out of print) and have been waiting eagerly for her next publication.

Veg In: Simple Vegetarian Dishes from Around the World is a nifty book of easy to prepare “takeaways” made cheaply and healthily at home. She promises the recipes will save you money, calories and even time. From Greek dolmades to Japanese tempura, Flip sets out simple ways to recreate your favourite vegetarian dishes, as well as innovative baked potato and pizza toppings.

Veg In is a simple but effective cookbook. The recipes are uncomplicated, perfect for novices and under confident cooks. The recipes aren’t rocket science and won’t take all day to prepare. Being written by a Melburnian is an added bonus as all the ingredients are easy to source locally.

This cookbook is ideal for someone who’d like to extend their vegetarian repertoire, omnivores wanting to diversify their diet (or choosing to practice Meatless Mondays) and those newly “converted” to vegetarianism. The majority of dishes are vegan-friendly and many are also gluten-free.

My only criticism of the book is that it has no index, so you can't hunt by recipe or ingredient. I found this rather frustrating and hope if the book gets a second print run that this problem will be remedied. Veg In is probably not for the gourmet cook, for those more accomplished in the kitchen wanting to expand their vegetarian range my pick would be Feel Good Food

Veg In: Simple Vegetarian Dishes from Around the World by Flip Shelton (Wakefield Press, RRP $29.95)

See Lucy's review of Veg In and one of Flip's recipes.

I'm excited - Feel Good Food

A few weeks ago I shared a few cookbooks healthy enough to get the Food Nazi stamp of approval. I'm excited to add a new one fresh off the press. Unlike many other foodbloggers I don’t actually buy many recipe books, to hand over my hard earned cash these days I have to be sure that I’ll actually cook from it, rather than just be seduced by the pretty pictures.

Tony Chiodo has had a mention on this site before, I did one of his wholefoods cooking courses years ago that began with learning how to sharpen our knives and ended with making a yummy fruit kanten. Readers living further a field from Melbourne may not of heard of him but a potted history includes being apprenticed under local French chef Jacques Reymond, then studying and working in Italy before swapping animal fats for tofu at the Kushi Institute where he trained in Macrobiotics. I met Tony long after I'd become a fan of his cooking at Wild Rice Cafe (back in the days when you could find healthy food to eat in St Kilda) and Cafe Angelica in Kew, so I can say with a clear conscience that it really is his culinary skills that hooked me before I was subjected to his Italian charm.

While his first book Eating Well: Tony Chiodo's Food for Health and Happiness, based on his Epicure column in The Age, didn’t give me the same tingle (nice but not as wholesome as his workshops) Feel Good Food is everything I’d hoped a Chiodo cookbook would be – a wonderful marriage of European lushness with Asian inspired health affirming food. For example, there’s a baked silken chocolate tart with a picture that looks so good I want to lick it off the page. The crust is made from spelt flour, ground almonds and coconut oil and the ‘silken’ filling is based on tofu, cocoa and rice syrup. I love his idea of adding cardamom to a sweet quinoa dish too. As you’d expect from a macrobiotic influenced cookbook the savoury dishes use a variety of grains, beans and soy. There are also a handful of seafood and chicken dishes but overall the book is about 80% vegan (including the cakes and how to make tofu sour cream).

I was happy to see some old favourites from his cooking classes included in the book, like the millet and cauliflower mash (that tastes more exciting than it sounds), variations on his pilafs and the aforementioned kanten (a jelly made with agar agar).

His recipes are accessibly written but may include ingredients unfamiliar to a novice. However it includes clear instructions on how to use or cook them, such as recipes for steaming millet or quinoa. There are also some commonsense guidelines on how to cook and eat well, including seasonal eating and incorporating colour, texture and flavour. Like the recipes, the information is conveyed with a sense of fun and exploration without being preached at.

Feel Good Food manages to deliver a very challenging brief, it presents food that looks and tastes so great that your guests or family won’t know they are being fed “health food”.



Feel Good Food

Feel Good Food is well worth the $45 I paid for it, though if I'd followed my own Fishpond link I could have got it for a few bucks cheaper!