Excellent cookbooks to add to your collection

From actual cooking, to zero waste food tips and an intro to the wonderful world of fermenting.

Dear Reader,

We talk about books a lot in this newsletter – sometimes to the point where I think: ‘should I have named this What’s Booking with Celine?’ Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, however.

So, I thought it was about time I walked you through some of my favourites for cooking. A beautiful melding of themes, right here.

In the Internet Age, which I guess is what we currently live in, it feels like you can find recipes just about everywhere. On blogs, via apps, social media, online magazines and news sources. Deciding what to eat for the week has never been easier, or perhaps never been as overwhelming.

However. There is something very pleasant about cooking your way through a selection of recipes, that have been grouped together along a common theme, or developed by the same chef.

Sitting down, cracking open the spine of a new cookbook, flipping through it at your leisure. Making notes, writing a grocery list, inevitably splattering that first bit of food against its cover when you begin preparing a meal. It’s all part of the process. It’s one of life’s little pleasures.

I have a lot of cookbooks in my collection. Some are so nice, I don’t actually cook from them (yet), treating them more like coffee table books (such as my beautiful copies of Dishoom's From Bombay With Love and Africola).

Others I find myself returning to weekly, for inspiration. And some I’ve used so often, that they’ve outlived their usefulness in a way, with their recipes seared permanently into my brain.

Here’s a round up of some of my favourites, currently taking pride of place on the kitchen shelf.

COOK - Karen Martini

Karen Martini claims that COOK is ‘the only book you need in the kitchen’. Bold, but you know what? She ain’t wrong. COOK is basically the cookbook to end all cookbooks. Organised by meat/seafood/vegetable, it offers extensive recipes on just about every edible item imaginable – from chicken, to shellfish, risotto, corn, fig, avocado. You name it, it’s in there, often alongside information regarding what it’s best paired with. There are even breakdowns on sauces and detailed guides to what you should put in homemade stock, depending on what you’re cooking. Basically, this is a hard copy of all of the knowledge in Martini’s brain, rammed into a giant cookbook. I have the limited edition pink one, which is very pretty.

Notable recipes: A full-proof guide to perfectly roasted pork belly, a very cosy chicken, leek and mushroom pie, and a particularly delicious roasted cauliflower and tumeric soup that I cannot wait to revisit once the weather cools again.

The Little Swedish Kitchen - Rachel Khoo

I’ve long been a fan of Khoo’s particularly twee way of approaching cooking, ever since I first happened upon her telly show while living in the UK. If you’re looking to get into seasonal cooking, The Little Swedish Kitchen is a great place to start. While the recipes she shares are obviously Swedish, they’re divided into the four European seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. She leans heavily into ritual in this book – and well, the kitchen is a great place to start if you’re looking to embed more rituals in your life.

You may have to do some creative substituting (such as swapping lingonberries for say, cranberries), but it’s pretty easy to cook your way through most recipes in this book, even from the opposite end of the world.

Notable recipes: a great one for ‘carrot ketchup’. I find carrots tend to languish in my veg crisper, so I’m all ears whenever anyone has some suggestions for how to use them. There’s also an excellent recipe for a roast, where celeriac is star of the show. Speaking of carrots, allow me to dangle one, as we’ll be diving further into this later on this year.

Low Tox Life Food by Alexx Stuart

Alexx Stuart is the person behind Low Tox Life – a zero waste podcast, website and general guide to, well, a certain kind of life. I’ve been interested in this movement for ten years and thoroughly enjoyed Stuart’s first very practical book. So, when I saw she’d written a whole book dedicated to food in Low Tox Life Food, I pounced on it.

This book provides an overview of our broken food system; why it is the way it is, and what we as individuals can do to change it. And hey – that change can begin in the kitchen, as you consider where you’re getting your food, what you’re putting in your body and how you’re cooking it.

The last third of the cookbook contains practical recipes, such as ‘adaptable’ dishes, consisting of fritters, pies, soups, stir-frys and more, which you can throw many kinds of leftovers into. There are also entire themed low-tox ‘feasts’, designed to use up every last scrap.

Notable recipes: a whole section on zero waste dressings and marinades, for those wishing to go next level with their cooking (raises hand).

Ferment for Good - Sharon Flynn

Sharon Flynn is a fermenting expert and advocate of slow food. Ferment for Good is the culmination of years of knowledge; a great guide for anyone wanting to enter the world of fermenting. There are guides to making your own milk kefir, kombucha, kimchi and kraut. I have a few SCOBYs lingering in my pantry, the mother of which hails direct from her business, The Fermentary. Sharon has since published a second book, Wild Drinks, which I’d love to dive into one day (but you know, so many books, so little time and all that).

There’s something truly addictive about fermenting. It’s fascinating having a food item you have to keep an eye on and gently coax into being. I treat my ferments rather like they’re another member of the family, albeit one you end up eating. I suppose much like the garden snails who lived in my house for five weeks, before finding a permanent home in my belly. You can start fairly small too, no SCOBY or cultures needed. All that’s required to make apple cider vinegar for example, is a couple of jars, water, sugar and not very surprisingly, a few apples.

Notable recipes: A particularly delicious beet red kraut, which is excellent for using up spare red cabbage and tastes like heaven when applied to a freshly toasted slice of sourdough bread, on top of goat cheese. Yummy, yum, yum.

Vegan With Bite - Shannon Martinez

I’ve talked about Vegan With Bite before. It’s an excellent cookbook for its variety and simplicity, something that’s lacking a bit in Martinez’s former cookbooks. These dishes are influenced by cultures from around the world, and range from easy to cook stir-frys, to an intricate ‘meatloaf’ made up of beetroot and carrot (I made it once, it’s delicious, I do not currently have the time nor patience to make it again).

What I like about this book, as someone who describes themselves as ‘flexitarian’, is that the recipes are not so much strictly vegan. You can substitute suggestions of vegan cheese and vegan ‘beef’ stocks for the real thing, without compromising on flavour.

Notable recipes: I am very much addicted to her tteokbokki, which is the ultimate comfort food (containing hotdogs and copious amounts of cheese, alongside kimchi. Damn it’s good) and a fresh and flavourful stir-fry, with crunchy tofu, chilli and the world’s greatest herb, Thai basil.

On the subject of veganism, Fiona Beckett of Eat This, Drink That, Live Well shared an excellent post recently, exploring whether vegans are ruining restaurants for vegetarians. Spicy! I certainly found this very interesting, living in a city that prides itself on its vegan offerings.

Warndu Mai (Good Food) - Damien Coulthard and Rebecca Sullivan

If like me, you live in Australia and despair over the lack of native and indigenous ingredients in your cooking, then Warndu Mai may be a great investment for your cookbook collection.

Written by power couple Damien Coulthard and Rebecca Sullivan, it’s a collection of Australian-inspired recipes. Crack open the pages to discover dishes containing green ants, magpie goose, crocodile, strawberry gum, finger lime… the list goes on. There is a problem in regards to sourcing some of these foods, as aggravatingly, they are not widely available in the very land from which they live and grown on. Warndu sell various herbs and spices in their online store and there are suggestions in the book for where you can ethically obtain some of the other food items.

Notable recipes: The wattleseed damper is a firm favourite in my household, along with a slow-cooked dish containing two Australian icons (sorry) – kangaroo and Vegemite.

Some recommendations

Read: After I finished Anna Funder’s recent release Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life, I realised that due to her being an excellent writer, I’d now have to read her entire back catalogue. Fine. Stasiland was the first pick. There are so many books about the events leading up to and through WWII, but I’ve personally always been interested in the aftermath. Funder, who lived in post-reunification Berlin for quite some years, interviews people from the former German Democratic Republic, alongside ex-Stasi, to paint a picture of life behind the wall. While based in history, Funder’s books have an element of the personal to them, which makes you feel like you’re right there in the room with her. History to me, is purely subjective, but I enjoyed this insight into life behind the wall – a so very recent part of the human story.

Listen: I loved Tyson’s first book Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World and after listening to him speak about inviolable lore on the For the Wild Podcast, immediately downloaded his newest book, Right Story, Wrong Story to ‘read’. Still listening away, so will report back on this soon. (I’ve not linked to this as this seems to be an Audible Exclusive. Read about why this sucks, via Libro.fm. Or, find a copy in your local indie bookstore.)

Eat: It’s not quite autumn yet, at least in Melbourne, with 35+ degree weather schedule for the weekend. Yikes. I’m continuing to keep cool by drinking many, many smoothies. At the moment I’m enjoying this lemon & pear combo, alongside an old favourite: blend 1/4 cup of cacao powder, peanut butter, two bananas (frozen for texture if you wish) and a cup of your milk of choice. You can also add 1/4 of protein powder if you want to be ripped, or something – that’s what it does, right?

Thanks for reading and see you in a fortnight for our next bumper-edition. Paying subscribers get front row seats to this.

‘Til then, stay well and well-fed.

-Celine

If you liked this post, please give it a big old like, or leave a comment. Plus, you may also enjoy:

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