reviews
The Natural Cook:
Eating the Season
from Root to Fruit
Tom Hunt
Quadrille Publishing • 978 1 8494 9418 2
The Natural Cook is an inspirational
book for the way we eat now. It puts
fresh, flavoursome, veg-focused
food centre-stage, and features
recipes that make use of every ounce
of an ingredient. Each of the 26
seasonal 'hero' ingredients featured
is represented first by three simple
cooking techniques that teach you
how to make a delicious simple dish.
These techniques are then followed
by three world-inspired recipes,
which make use of the prepared
ingredients as well as drawing in
other seasonal fruit and vegetables.
At the end of each recipe, the
'Cook's Notes' give clear tips and
ideas for turning uneaten extras into
other delicious meals, ensuring that
absolutely nothing is wasted. Hunt is
an acclaimed eco-chef, and author.
He founded the Forgotten Feast,
a campaign working on projects
throughout the UK, to revive British
cooking heritage and help reduce
food waste. He also owns Poco, an
award-winning restaurant in Bristol and
now in London. Hunt is an official chef
of Feeding the 5 000, a global event,
which aims to highlight food waste by
feeding more than 5 000 people with
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delicious food that would otherwise
have been wasted. He works closely
with various food charities. Keeping
true to his zero-waste ethos, he cooks
from 'nose to tail' or as he calls it 'root
to fruit', using every part of a fruit and
vegetable, foraged foods and gleaning
vegetables from the land. Visually, a
stunning book.
More Life's a Beach
Cottage
Neil Roake
Jacana Media • 978 1 4314 2256 2
More Life's a Beach Cottage is the
third cookery book in the series
featuring a collection of best holiday
feasting recipes. It is as beautiful
and quirky and set to follow in the
successful footsteps of the author's
previous publications. Roake explains:
'This third Life's a Beach Cottage
offering includes some tasty "OMG,
I can easily make that" recipes and
some "WTF, that looks hard" ones –
but there are no OTT airs and graces
(life's a just too short). Don't stress
about following every recipe to the
letter. This cookbook is just your
springboard for culinary creativity.
Many of the recipes were sourced
on my travels abroad and all are big
on flavour – there's nothing "shy"
here. Expect muscular curries, potent
cocktails, desserts that argue back
and deliciously robust salads.' So take
off your shoes, bring out the wine, put
on the music and let Roake take you
through More Life's a Beach Cottage.
The Banting Baker:
Low Carb High Fat
Treats
Catherine Speedie
Jacana Media • 978 1 4314 2266 1
The Low-Carb High-Fat diet, known
more colloquially as the Banting diet,
is not just about upturning the food
pyramid and thus the conventional
wisdom around food and nutrition
that has ruled for the last 40-odd
years. It's about waking us up to what
our bodies are naturally 'wired' for
in terms of optimal sustenance and
body weight. It's about realising that
along the trajectory of commercial
and industrial 'progress', we've lost
sight of our humanness – our basic
biology, if you will. That said, giving
up carrot cake is not so easy. Sweet
treats and baked goods are deeply
associated with comfort, time out and
good times, rewarding us after a day's
hard work. The good news is that we
don't have to deny ourselves these
little pleasures. This book will hopefully
show you that the low-carb highway
is not about deprivation but about
substitution. Once you've got your
head around it, stocked up your pantry
with the right ingredients and armed
yourself with a spirit of adventure,