Condiments is an intriguing and unusual concept for a book, bombarded as we are on every supermarket and deli shelf with condiments of seemingly endless variety. In her single page introduction, Caroline Dafgard Widnersson explains that making condiments is her own personal hobby, likening it to raising children, and her mission in bringing the hobby ... Read more »
Harumi Kurihara has published over 140 books and is a household name in Japan with an ever-expanding following in the West. Harumi’s Japanese Kitchen is her latest title, written specifically for non-Japanese cooks. The book, released in August 2020, promises to take readers back to the basics of Japanese cooking, a cuisine I love and ... Read more »
Marianna Leivatitaki, author of Aegean: Recipes from the Mountains to the Sea by Marianna Leivatitaki, spent her childhood steeped in the atmosphere of her family’s seafood taverna in Crete, immersed in ingredients, and the simplicity and purity of recipes she gathered in her notebook scribbles from the women cooking in Chania’s seafront restaurants. Her heritage is ... Read more »
It won’t come as any surprise that I have a strong affinity for cookery books that combine cuisine, culture and personal narrative. I love books that not only teach me how to make delicious food, but also learn more about the culture and cuisine of a place, as well as the author’s own story. Coconut ... Read more »
Bitter Honey, released in April 2020, shares recipes and stories from the island of Sardinia. Author Letitia Clark has a background working in the restaurant industry, and splits her time between London and rural Sardinia. Knowing little about Sardinian food (within the broader Italian cuisine we encounter in the UK), I am keen to learn ... Read more »
There’s a real disconnect between how complex many Brits perceive Japanese cooking to be, and how difficult it actually is. In reality, the majority of every day Japanese food is straightforward to make, especially if you have a clear, easy-to-follow recipe. That’s where Aya Nishimura’s Japanese Food Made Easy comes in, a cookbook to help ... Read more »
Meze: Snacks, Small Plates and Street Food from the Middle East is my first introduction to the work of Sally Butcher who has had a very successful career in food as a writer of many cookbooks such as Persia in Peckham, Veggiestan and Snackistan and also as the owner and chef of the iconic Peckham-based ... Read more »
The Botanical Kitchen is the debut cookbook of Elly McCausland, successful food blogger and Guild of Food Writers Food Blog award winner. The Botanical Kitchen is her first book and won the Jane Grigson Trust Award 2019. With these credentials, I was eager to dive into the book. The book opens with an introduction on ... Read more »
Romania was a complete mystery to me. The closest I’d come was giving a desperately homesick, mosquito-bitten Romanian waitress in a remote Greek village a bottle of my repellent spray. She responded with heartfelt thanks and an equally heartfelt description of the beauty, warmth and vibrancy of her homeland. The poignant depth of her desire ... Read more »
Regula Ysewijn has had a fascination with British food since she was a young child, which may not sound that unusual until you learn that she was born and grew up in Belgium. Baking is a particular passion of hers, which informed both her first book Pride and Pudding, and her latest title, Oats in ... Read more »
The Place of Onions, in old Lille. After last night’s rainstorm the intense sticky heat has broken and today is cool, breezy, fresh… I love it! A drop of… [more]
We went to Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire at The Void this morning, an amazing VR experience where we got to be Rebel Alliance members going undercover as… [more]