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From dumplings to vanilla puffs – winter just took a turn for
the better. Check out our recipe
slideshow for a preview of our July issue, on sale now.
Plus, our review of Melbourne's Prix Fixe; our travel guide to Bavaria; how to grow your own carrots and make the best ever cheese on toast; and your chance to win two double passes for The Last Confession in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Happy eating, Anthea Loucas and the team at Gourmet Traveller |
Monday, June 30, 2014
From dumplings to vanilla puffs – winter just took a turn for the better
THE GREAT NEW ZEALAND COOKBOOK – THE FOOD WE LOVE FROM 80 OF OUR FINEST COOKS, CHEFS AND BAKERS
From the creators of The Great New Zealand Songbook comes The Great New Zealand Cookbook. Featuring 80 of New Zealand’s finest cooks, chefs and bakers, this sumptuous 190-recipe, 432-page book includes handwritten notes from each contributor alongside stunning photography shot entirely on location. This unique collaboration features the likes of Al Brown, Dame Alison Holst, Tui Flower, Peter Gordon, Jo Seagar, Fleur Sullivan, Shaun Clouston, Josh Emett, Julie Le Clerc, Simon Gault and many more, each contributing the recipes they make for the people they love.
Following the success of the Songbook, creators Murray Thom and Tim Harper felt that the incredible depth of talent in New Zealand’s culinary scene warranted equal attention and turned their focus to capturing New Zealand’s finest cooking talent up and down the country. Murray Thom says, “Travelling the length and breadth of New Zealand made us realise afresh just how privileged we are to live in such a beautiful country. We battled storms and road closures but any inconvenience was completely eclipsed by many serendipitous moments, such as the tranquility of whitebaiting at dawn or the solitude of hunting in the bush at sunset.”
Alongside photographer Lottie Hedley and videographer Hayley Thom, Thom and Harper travelled for nine months to capture the flavours of New Zealand. “It was an honour to meet such hard-working, dedicated people whose greatest joy is to share their food, prepared with passion and commitment and served with such love and care,” says Thom. “From oyster fishing in Bluff and deer hunting in Mourea to fish and chips on the wharf in Mangonui, everywhere we went we were met with huge generosity and warmth and we were welcomed onto boats and into restaurants, cafés and family homes.”
Once again legendary artist Dick Frizzell has been commissioned to create original artwork for the front and back cover of the book, bringing his distinctive perspective to the humble kiwi tea towel. The Great New Zealand Cookbook benefits kiwi charity KidsCan, which will receive a portion of the proceeds to fund a new initiative that will expand their ‘Food for Kids’ programme through the establishment of KidsCan Orchards in schools.
Published by PQ Blackwell, The Great New Zealand Cookbook is available where all good books are sold.
RRP$49.95
The Great New Zealand Cookbook launched in spectacular style
It seems appropriate that such a spectacular book should be launched in spectacular style
and that is exactly what happened last evening in Murray Thom's Parnell premises before an
audience of 500 guests..
The book features 80 of NZ's finest chefs, cooks and bakers some 60 of whom were present at
the launch.. The sumptuous 432 page hardback with 190 recipes is filled with the most
stunning photography featuring the 80 recipe contributors on their home patch, all shot
entirely on location.This is the cookbook of the year.
The Great New Zealand Cookbook
PQ Blackwell - $50.00
Chickpea, Lemon and Mint Salad
Posted: 29 June 2014 by David Lebovitz
I was reminded in Sicily
how good freshly dried chickpeas can be. Usually, I cook whatever I can get my
hands on, and add them to soups or make a batch of hummus.
But I don’t sit around eating them, as they are, unadorned. So when someone
asked me to taste a few from a batch of chickpeas dried by a local farm in
Sicily, that had just been cooked, I found myself dipping a spoon (yes, a clean
one each time…) back into the big bowl of chickpeas. And decided, when I get
home, to give chickpeas a more prominent place on my plate.
At the risk of sounding like the
annoying dinner guest who has lived in Europe (which I’m sure I will be, at
some point…if I’m not already), I dressed them with Sicilian olive oil and
juice squeezed from lemons that I picked myself. The organic chickpeas are from
the market in Gascony. I added hand-harvested French sea salt, and fresh mint
that I get from the Arab fellow at my market, who lets me rifle through all the
bunches at this stand to snag the best one.
Continue Reading Chickpea, Lemon
and Mint Salad...
Friday, June 27, 2014
EAT YOUR BOOKS
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Thursday, June 26, 2014
BOOK OF TRIPE - and more besides
Book of Tripe
By Stephane Reynaud
Murdoch Books - Hardcover - NZ$59.99
GIZZARDS, KIDNEYS, FEET, BRAINS, TAILS... These and
other cuts that we wouldn't usually cook, whether from lack of culinary
knowledge or from fear, make up the great family of offal. Offal is all around
us. It's there lurking on a friendly butcher's display, waiting patiently for
the chance to take centre stage on our plates and shout loud and clear: Tous a
table?!
What a treasure this is for those of us who like/love offal. Tripe and onions was a staple at home when I was a kid growing up.
A handsome, beautilfully illustrated hardback book.
Eight page cover story by NZ Listener for new NZ cookbook
Astonishing coverage in the NZ Listener dated July 5-11 2014 (on sale next Monday) with an eight page story from the Listener's food writer Lauraine Jacobs.
The Great New Zealand Cookbook - The food we love from 80 of your finest cooks, chefs and bakers
Murray Thom & Tim Harper
PQ Blackwell - $49.99
Publication Monday 30 June.
Footnote:
There is an embargo on this title for the rest of us until Monday so I will be writing more about it after that! But meantime let me say that it is an absolute stunner.
Capers in Pantelleria
Posted: 25 June 2014 by David Lebovitz
There were two things I heard
repeatedly about Pantelleria
before I got there. First: every person in Sicily told me I would love it;
second: I had to try the capers, which wasn’t difficult, considering they were
everywhere.
And I don’t mean in shops or on
restaurant menus. I mean, they’re growing everywhere on Pantelleria; on the
sides of roads, around stores and buildings, on craggy pathways, and next to
the stone walls that run up and down the hills of the island.
A long time ago, an uncle in New
England told me a pretty funny story. He was making a recipe that called for “pickled
capers.” But he decided that he’d improve the recipe by using fresh. He looked
in shops and grocers for fresh capers all over town, and couldn’t find any.
While capers grow in several
countries around the world, and there may indeed be a plant tucked away in some
greenhouse in Connecticut, I don’t think you’ll have much luck finding them
fresh, as you so easily can, in Pantelleria.
Continue Reading Capers in
Pantelleria...
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
The ‘Other’ Reds with Yvonne Lorkin
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EAT YOUR BOOKS
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| Featured Pinterest board | ||
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| Coming soon: Chickpea magazine | ||
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| Cookbook giveaways | ||||
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Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Monday, June 23, 2014
slow-cooked pork shoulder with plums or a slow-roasted lamb neck with rosemary salt-roasted potatoes,
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Some things just taste better given more time, and whether
it's a slow-cooked pork shoulder with plums or a slow-roasted lamb neck with
rosemary salt-roasted potatoes, we're sure you'll agree. Check out our slow-cooked
winter recipes slideshow.
Plus, our insider's guide to Canberra; our review of Fish Face Dining in Double Bay; Damien Pignolet's recipe for pot au feu; and your chance to win a trip to Tuscany thanks to British Airways and Mr & Mrs Smith in our Hotel Guide Readers' Choice Awards competition, and tickets to Strictly Ballroom The Musical! Happy eating, Anthea Loucas and the team at Gourmet Traveller |
Making Cassata alla Siciliana, in Sicily
Posted: 23 Jun 2014 - David Lebovitz
I didn’t want to cause a ruckus by
sharing pictures of such a spectacular cake without a recipe. But on the other
hand, it’s quite a chore to make a Cassata
alla Siciliana and although Fabrizia Lanza
sailed through it without breaking a sweat, between using the right pan, mixing
up your own almond paste, finding ricotta as good as the ricotta in Sicily, and
getting the candied fruit (including the squash, which is the translucent white
brick on the platter), it might be classified as one of those things that’s
better left to the Sicilians.
(Nevertheless, if you want to give
it a go, Saveur
printed her Cassata
recipe, and it’s also in her book, Coming Home to
Sicily. I linked to additional recipes at the end of the post.)
According to Italian food specialist
Clifford A.
Wright, the word Cassata
is derived from the Arabic word quas’at,
or qas’at, which
refers to a wide bowl. There is actually a special pan to make the cake; it’s a
mold with sloped sides and a groove around the bottom so that when Cassata mold
is lined with strips of almond paste, and overturned, there’s a rim to create a
neat guard against the icing from running down the sides.
Continue Reading Making Cassata
alla Siciliana, in Sicily...
Saturday, June 21, 2014
‘The Tastemakers’ and ‘The Third Plate’
To start a food trend from agriculture is “one of the riskiest” things an entrepreneur can do, David Sax writes in “The Tastemakers,” his entertaining new excursion into, as his subtitle has it, “Why We’re Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up With Fondue.” “Yet every day,” he adds, “there are countless farmers, scientists and gardening dreamers with a trowel in their hand, digging in the dirt and planting the seed that they hope will one day change the way we eat.”
Sax could well be describing Dan Barber, the nationally prominent chef whose Blue Hill restaurants, one in Greenwich Village and the other in Westchester County, have knit farming practices into daily menus in a way few other high-profile farm-to-table restaurants have been able to manage. In articles, TED talks and at conferences, Barber has established himself as one of the food world’s leading voices on how farm practices influence flavor. And now he establishes himself as one of the food world’s leading writers.
Konza Kiffi: Sicilian Agricultural Estate
David Lebovitz
Posted: 20 Jun 2014
Well, that was quite a day! After a
much-delayed plane ride to Pantelleria,
an island off the coast of Sicily (it’s technically Sicily, but — let’s hold
off on that discussion for another day…), I was told to be prepared to be
seduced by the place. But it didn’t hit me until day #4.
We’d spent yesterday morning
watching people harvest capers (…more on that in a later post), and tasting
wine. Then had a below-average lunch, which was barely mitigated by the
restaurant’s setting, just on the edge of the ocean. After a heaping plate of
wan pasta, all I wanted to do was head back at the home where I’m staying,
where there was a hammock waiting for me.
But my friend Giovanni said to me, “Daveed – it’s
going to be very special.” And when a Sicilian talks with such gravity it’s
best to listen.
So we found ourselves after lunch,
driving on a winding street, high above a spectacular blue lake with the ocean
in the background, with rows of grapes and oregano baking in the hot Sicilian
(or Pantellerian) sun.
The welcome we had from Giancarlo
and Cristian Lo Pinto, the two brothers who own the farm, was as warm as the
sun.
With the wind in our hair — well, in
one of my traveling companion’s
hair —
— we found ourselves in a field
surrounded by massive bunches of oregano, offering an aroma as strong as the
fields of za’atar in
Lebanon: a powerful, astringent scent that bordered on
medicinal. Although lots of oregano grows in Sicily, locals tend to use it
dried. And here was where the best of it came from.
Continue Reading Konza Kiffi:
Sicilian Agricultural Estate...
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