What's Cooking?
What’s Cooking?
This year many people have rediscovered the comfort of a good homemade meal.
In this guide, we’ve curated some of the very best cookbooks on offer, the perfect way to upgrade your skills in the kitchen!
Bookseller tip: Due to COVID-19, stock levels of colour printed books like these may be a little hard to predict. We recommend you get Christmas orders in early so you don’t miss out!
NEW AUSTRALIAN
Australian Food by Bill Granger
It’s been a long wait for a new cookbook from the king of relaxed Australian cafe style food.
In the 20 years since Bill Granger published his first book of recipes, Sydney Food, the world has fallen in love with the joyfully casual Australian way of eating. As a self-taught cook, straight out of art school, Bill furnished his first street-corner eatery in minimalist style, serving a small but perfectly formed menu of domestic dishes around a central communal table. He set an exciting new standard for cafe dining.
Since then, Bill has been crowned the 'egg master of Sydney' (New York Times 2002), the 'king of breakfast' (The Telegraph Magazine, 2016), the 'creator of avocado toast' (Washington Post 2016) and 'the restaurateur most responsible for the Australian cafe's global reach' (The New Yorker 2018).
Nowadays, from Sydney to Tokyo, and London to Seoul, queues form to enjoy ricotta hotcakes ('Sydney's most iconic dish' Good Food 2019), fluffy scrambled eggs, lively salads and punchy curries. It is a bright picture of Australian food that has travelled across the globe, packed with fresh flavours and local produce, healthy but never preachy, whose main ingredient seems to be sunshine itself. The plates at any of Bill's restaurants are more sophisticated today, reflecting decades of global experience and culinary creativity - but the warmth of atmosphere and joy of eating remain the same.
More New Australian Cookbooks:
Always Add Lemon by Danielle Alvarez
Brunch in Melbourne by OnePlate
Everyday Fresh by Donna Hay
New Classics edited by GoodFood
A Year of Simple Family Food by Julia Busuttil Nishimura
BIG NAMES
Flavour by Yotam Ottolenghi and Ixta Belfridge
From the king of veg comes another wonderful instant cookbook classic that should be on everyone’s shelf.
Flavour-forward, vegetable-based recipes are at the heart of Yotam Ottolenghi's food. In this stunning new cookbook Yotam and co-writer Ixta Belfrage break down the three factors that create flavour and offer innovative vegetable dishes that deliver brand-new ingredient combinations to excite and inspire. There’s simple recipes for weeknights, low effort-high impact dishes and standout meals for the relaxed cook. Packed with signature colourful photography, Flavour not only inspires us with what to cook, but how flavour is dialled up and why it works.
The book is broken down into three parts, which reveal how to tap into the potential of ordinary vegetables to impactful, next-level approach to vegetable cooking that Ottolenghi fans and vegetable lovers everywhere have been craving.
More Big Name Cookbooks:
7 Ways by Jamie Oliver
Bella: My Life in Food by Annabel Langbein
Cook, Eat, Repeat by Nigella Lawson
Falastin by Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley
Home Style Cookery by Matty Matheson
AWARD WINNERS
The Whole Fish Cookbook by Josh Niland
2020 Book of the Year - James Beard Awards
2020 Restaurant and Professional Award - James Beard Awards
2020 Illustrated Book of the Year - Australian Book Industry Awards
2019 Food Award - André Simon Awards
This year Josh Niland became the first Australian to win the prestigious James Beard Award for Book of the Year. Quite the coup, the book has also won accolades from Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Rick Stein and Rene Redzepi.
In The Whole Fish Cookbook, Australia's groundbreaking seafood chef Josh Niland reveals a completely new way to think about all aspects of fish cookery. From sourcing and butchering to dry ageing and curing, it challenges everything we thought we knew about the subject and invites readers to see fish for what it really is—an amazing, complex source of protein that can and should be treated with exactly the same nose-to-tail reverence as meat. The Whole Fish Cookbook will soon have readers seeing that there is so much more to a fish than just the fillet and that it is indeed true what they say about there being more than just a handful of fish in the sea.
More Award-Winning Cookbooks:
Pasta Grannies by Vicki Benninson
Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish
The Turkish Cookbook by Musa Dağdeviren
Where Cooking Begins by Carla Lalli Music
Whole Food Cooking by Amy Chaplin
DEBUTS
La Buvette by Camille Fourmont and Kate Leahy
In Paris’s 11 Arrondissement sits a stylish, intimate and tiny wine shop that doubles as a bar and cafe. La Buvette is an institution.
In this guide to wine, food, and the Parisian lifestyle, La Buvette’s owner Camille Fourmont unlocks the secrets to achieving that coveted je ne sais quoi style of entertaining, along with revealing the best of the City of Light. She also introduces some of Paris's best wine and food makers in intimate portraits.
Included are fifty recipes for easy and delicious snacks and full meals perfect for impromptu grazing-style entertaining (with plenty of wine!). With tips on selecting wine and sourcing antique kitchenware, recreating the charm and ease of Parisian-style entertaining has never been so enjoyable. Whether you are traveling to Paris or bringing a piece of the City of Light into your home, you'll learn how to drink, eat, and shop like a true Parisian.
More Debut Cookbooks:
Bitter Honey: Recipes and Stories from Sardinia by Letitia Clarke
Coconut & Sambal by Lara Lee
Comida Mexicana by Rosa Cienfuegos
Parwana: Recipes and Stories from an Afghan Kitchen by Durkhanai Ayubi
This is a Book About Dumplings by Brendan Pang
DRINK UP
Noble Rot: Wine from Another Galaxy by Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew
Choosing wine in a restaurant or shop can seem an unfathomable business. But, according to Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew, the duo behind London's award-winning restaurant and wine bar Noble Rot, it needn't be that way. In Wine from Another Galaxy they'll help you to understand how it is made, where to buy it, what to look for when you drink it, and how to talk about it. And once you've mastered the basics, they'll take you on a journey through the best of European wine culture, meeting the people and places behind their favourite bottles. Indeed, Dan and Mark have spent years visiting growers that you probably haven't heard of, from the original thinkers of the natural wine movement to the iconic estates of Burgundy and Bordeaux. This is the alternative, accessible, no-holds-barred guide to wine, where the usual cliches and rules don't apply.
More Wine and Beverage Books:
2021 Halliday Wine Companion by James Halliday
Cocktails and Canapes by Kathy Kordalis
Intoxicating: 10 Drinks that Shaped Australia by Max Allen
The Ultimate Book of Cocktails by Dan Jones
The Wine Game by Zeren Wilson
BAKING
Beatrix Bakes by Natalie Paull
For Natalie Paull, owner of Melbourne’s beloved cake shop Beatrix, baking is a gift. It’s also a powerful elixir of pleasure, connection, generosity and joy.
In Beatrix Bakes, Natalie indulges in baking’s sweetest moments with more than seventy recipes inspiring bakers of all kinds to mix and match to make recipes their own—whether it’s a Lemon curd cream crepe cake or Pecan maple cinnamon scrolls.
Sparkling with Natalie's distinct voice, and packaged with full-colour photography, illustrations and rock-solid tips for a perfect bake, Beatrix Bakes also includes 'Adaptrix' suggestions (offering ways readers might do things differently, including short cuts) and is peppered with infographics to help them follow their baking heart.
While Natalie's creations are inspired by classics the world over, they are irreverent too, and in Beatrix Bakes she delights in showing readers that the truest magic will come from a willingness to play (with the insurance of her many clever ideas and back-up plans in their apron pocket!). This bestselling book will guide anyone who loves the adventure of baking to perfect their skills and break the baking mould.
More Baking Cookbooks:
Children’s Birthday Cookbook by The Australian Women’s Weekly
How to Raise a Loaf by Roly Allen
Living Bread by Daniel Leader
Peanut Butter by Tim Lannan & James Annabel
Pie for Everyone by Petra Paredez
VEGAN & VEGETARIAN
To Asia, With Love by Hetty McKinnon
'To Asia, With Love is my homecoming, a joyous return to the humble, yet deeply nurturing flavours and meals of my childhood as a Chinese girl born in Australia. It is also a celebration of the exciting and delicious possibilities of modern Asian cooking.'
In To Asia, With Love, Hetty McKinnon (author of cookbook favourites Community and Neighbourhood) shows home cooks how to create big-flavoured vegetarian (and often vegan) Asian dishes using the simplest of everyday ingredients. Recipes range from the traditional - salt and pepper eggplant, red curry laksa, congee, a perfectly simple egg, pea and ginger fried rice - to Hetty's uniquely modern interpretations, such as buttery miso vegemite noodles, stir-fried salt and vinegar potatoes, cacio e pepe udon noodles and grilled wombok caesar salad with wonton crackers. All share an emphasis on seasonal vegetables and creating irresistible Asian(ish) flavours using pantry staples. Whether it's a banh mi turned into a salad, a soy-sauce-powered chocolate brownie or a rainbow guide to eating dumplings by the season, this is Asian home cooking unlike anything you've experienced before.
More Vegan and Vegetarian Cookbooks:
Speedy Bosh! by Henry Firth and Ian Theasby
There’s a Vegan in the House by DK Books
Vegan with Bite by Shannon Martinez
Vegan JapanEasy by Tim Anderson
Vegan Junk Food by Zacchary Bird
HEALTHY & EASY EATS
In Praise of Veg by Alice Zaslavsky
In Australia, only 5% of children get their daily veg. At 7%, adults fare only slightly better.
In this joyous must-have vegetable companion for the vegetarian or simply veg-forward, food writer and presenter Alice Zaslavsky profiles 50 favourite vegetable varieties, offering 150+ recipes reflective of both tradition and modernity, just as all good cooking should be.
Uniquely organised by colour and filled with countless tips on flavour combinations, rule-of-thumb buying/storing/cooking methods, shortcuts, and veg wisdom from over 50 of the world's top chefs, In Praise of Veg will help beginners and avid cooks alike turn a bag of yawns or a produce-box surprise into a knock-out meal.
You can read our interview with the fabulous Alice Zaslavsky here.
More Healthy & Easy Cookbooks:
Barbecue This! by Luke Hines
The Commonsense Cook by Colin Fassnidge
Ikaria by Meni Valle
Kids Can Cook by Esther Coombes
Use It All: The Cornersmith Guide to a More Sustainable Kitchen by Alex Elliot-Howery & Jaimee Edwards
Need some ideas? Give us a call on 03 9699 2292 for personalised suggestions!