We don’t see much innovation in cookbooks nowadays but The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria is as you’d expect from one of the world’s most innovative chefs. What most people don’t realise is that most book publishers don’t test their recipes properly. Yes, the chefs and celebrities that write them actually cook the dishes sometimes even in their home kitchens. But a recipe tester using crappy basic cookers and bog standard equipment aren’t used. It keeps the price […]
Books
Inside Modernist cuisine
Check out on Youtube how the cutaways were made. Finally, $484.60 9including postage) and after a three month wait Modernist Cuisine has arrived. I’ve bought it so you don’t have to but also to add to my collection of books by Peter Barham, Herve This and Harold McGee that examine the science of cooking, as I mentioned in May. Out of all of them McGee’s On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (which you can buy […]
Modernist Cuisine and how to buy cookbooks
There are plenty of reasons to buy Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. The trouble is that all Australian retailers rip us off so I would, when it becomes available, buy it online If you are unfamiliar with the book, it is the brainchild of former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold who holed himself up in a 1670 sq m warehouse with assorted chefs, geeks, scientists, cheffy geeks and food journalists to create the definitive six volume […]
Stuff white people like: the very special food and beverage edition
Admit it, these apply to you too. The other week Christian Lander the author of the blog and now best selling bookStuff White People Like was in town. Basically Stuff White People Like is a bit like Top Trumps for White People. I’ll trump you some Murray River Salt and an Ortiz anchovy over your iodised salt and a pilchard. The same goes for my imported Arneis ($75) over yours from the King Valley ($20). Bearing in mind the readership […]
Tell me your most useful and useless kitchen gadgets
Spot the crap stuff (and pic) in my status symbol kitchen.What kind of swamp do I inhabit? No, I don’t live in Elwood which is now merely stinking canals and is vulnerable to subsidence.I’m talking about the stinking, sticky slimy loathsome depths of depravity that my mind has sunk to meaning that I can’t even take a simple email on face value.My curt reply to his enquiries on the local food blogging scene no doubt left Michael Ruhlman, an opinionated […]
The future of food and fascism
The future of cooking: In the kitchen at Interlude A couple of weeks ago I spent the afternoon in the kitchen of Robin Wickens and his chefs at Interlude. He was developing a new lamb dish which involved spraying coffee in the air while eating it (you may recall later that night I sucked on the glass straw). This weekend my account of that afternoon and subsequent meal was published in The Australian. Local chef George Biron points me towards […]
I’m not bitter, just delicate
There’s probably more than a few hangovers in Canberra today as the Prime Minister John Howard – a great friend of George Dubya) yesterday celebrated ten years in office. If we believe the PR, he was Australia’s great white hope (don’t mention multiculturalism) rescuing us from Labor, high interest rates, unemployment and almost certain doom. I’m not one of the big man’s cheerleaders. But I am feeling a tad delicate myself. Pat over at Gourmet Traveller reminded me of Fergus […]
My first blog book: Julie & Julia
Until she died, I’d never taken too much notice of Julia Childs. And I’d cerainly never heard of Julie Powell even though I had more than a healthy interest in food and blogging. That was until I tripped over Julie & Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, I tiny apartment kitchen. What surprised me was how much I enjoyed this book. Julie, 30, embarks on the challenging of cooking every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. […]
Italian Food by Elizabeth David
Illustration by Renato Guttuso from Italian Food Work is the enemy of blogging. I started by cookbook idea and haven’t touched my keyboard on the subject for weeks. Worse, two key books were left out of my original posts. First is Elizabeth David. For the uninitiated she was the Julia Child (or Margaret Fulton) of the UK (the second will follow tomorrow) While we Brits (I live in Australia now), were tucking into to meat and two veg she was […]