Tis the Season for Celebrations & Cooking

Celebrate summer in the kitchen

It’s the season for celebrations, and above all else that means: cooking up a storm. Fortunately, two of our best-known champions of local and homemade foods have released brand new cookbooks this year that will help you make every summer meal a celebration.

1. 1000 recipes for the home kitchen

If you can’t find the perfect recipe for your next summer gathering inside Karen Martini’s bible, Cook, it doesn’t exist. The vast 912-page behemoth includes traditional ‘winning dishes’, like shepherd’s pie or braised lamb shoulder, as well as less well-known specialities like coconut butter pandan cake. These are Martini’s favourite recipes, inspired by her experiences of cooking with family members, and by her Tunisian-French heritage.

Covering all the basics of sauces and baking methods, as well fabulous dishes with easy suggestions to alter and customise them to your own tastes, it has something for everyone. It was a five-year project to write, but it clearly reflects decades of dedication to the Australian food landscape. A beautiful gift, and a must-have manual for all your food-centred gatherings this summer.

2. First ingredients

Too many Australians still don’t know a thing about Indigenous ingredients. And far too many still haven’t eaten any, let alone incorporated them into their own cooking. That can change immediately with this definitive guide to Indigenous ingredients and recipes, the First Nations Food Companion by Damien Coulthard and Rebecca Sullivan.

As a long-awaited guide to the first foods of this continent, the book explores each of the ingredients with an Indigenous cultural lens, and provides supremely delicious and innovative ways to use them inside our own homes. A must-try? Macadamia butter, quandong and Davidson’s plum iced vovos. Say no more.

For all your summer reading and cooking inspiration, see the teams at Dymocks at Collins234. Plus check out our new zesty prawns recipe, perfect for summer gatherings.

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