Eats by Anna

Al Brown’s second title  is all about the glory of cooking outdoors – preferably over wood or charcoal, though most of the recipes can be attempted indoors, too – albeit detracting somewhat from the romance. I like the chunky and practical design – the recipe names are all bold caps, the ingredients easy readable down the left column, symbols for appropriate cooking methods, and ‘steps’ in the method to break it up into major processes. All this makes for easy to follow recipes. Kieran Scott’s photography is, as always, magnificent: how he manages to make some guy in a polar-fleece jumper in front of an old garage door, or a white plastic tub labelled ‘salt’ sitting on a shelf look arty I don’t know, but he has a knack for it.

There’s a community feel to parts of Stoked. Brown visits a Kiwi-Chinese family to watch them cook a whole pig inside a burning hot pipe, collects edible seaweed with a couple near their isolated bach on the Wairarapa Coast, cooks in a home-made tandoor oven with a Cuba St grocer, and enjoys a hangi looking down on the Whanganui River. It’s full of useful advice and tips – how to light a fire outdoors, tie up cuts of meat, build a wood-fired oven (oh lordy how I want one). Stoked is for the most part full of pretty approachable recipes for the home cook, and ones which might get us using less-favoured cuts of meat, preparing a charcoal or wood fire to cook over, or even get us out foraging for greens, seaweed and mushrooms – knowing that the end result will be a flavour and texture revelation.

Stoked: Cooking with Fire, by Al Brown

Random House, October 2011, RRP $70

The New Zealand Cook’s Bible: Classic Recipes & Step-by-Step Techniques, by Lesley Christensen-Yule & Hamish McRae

This comprehensive overview of how to work a kitchen is a must-have on your bookshelf, and will, I promise you, become one of your most-used and trusted companions. It has a reassuring text-book tone which makes you feel you’re in good hands, and you are, since both Christensen-Yule and McRae teach professional cookery and the book was born from a gap in the market for a cookbook that would provide more than recipes and pretty pictures.

I like that it covers all the basics. Many in my generation (myself included), and today’s youngsters, are learning to cook in a somewhat haphazard manner, without ever acquiring the time-honoured foundations of traditional cookery. That’s not always a bad thing, because it means don’t feel constrained by rules and principals when cooking. But basic knowledge of cooking methods can only be of benefit, no matter how you use it, and there is so much informative material in this book to be soaked up by anyone eager to get a better handle on how to be in charge of taking food and turning it into cuisine. It is, indeed, a manual for kitchen use, and as such, I’d bet there a many copies around the country (and abroad) gradually collecting soup splatters, dog ears and the fond gaze of a grateful owner.

I’m not huge on cooking from recipes – or at least, following recipes to the tee. Not intentionally, mind, it’s just that I’m a bit impatient like that. Even with baking – I’m guilty of measuring haphazardly. Yes, they say when baking you should never do such a thing, but I do it all the time and it’s never killed anyone, and so far most things have emerged from my oven looking, smelling and tasting just about right. That isn’t to say you can’t trust the recipes I post on here, because when I write them down, I pay a careful mind to amounts and methods and all that jazz.

So when it comes to poring over cookbooks, I’m often in it more for inspiration than actual recipes, as are many of you, too, I’m sure. ‘m not on any distributors’ lists for review copies (yet?) but I do love sharing a good book when I find one, so thought I’d add a cookbook (or food-related book, really) category to my blog. I’m calling it Read it and Eat. So every now and then I’ll blog about a new book I’ve discovered, or, more likely, favourite books from my collection, or others’ collections I’ve plundered.