Bibliofemme Bookclub An Irish Bookclub

It’s not often that chefs can manage to simplify techniques so that they are both intelligible and useful to those of us who confine our cooking to the home kitchen but Auckland-based Genevieve McGough has managed it in Brilliant but Basic. In this slim publication she deals with a total of 19 different techniques, teaching formulas for useful

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Summer is the perfect time to kick off a healthy salad regime with Blazing Salads. The good news is, it’s not all salads. Blazing Salads contains delicious recipes for soups, stews, tasty dips and deserts.

I usually enjoy salad at least four times a week. I have a few favourites and I don’t tend to stray too far from these. Blazing Salads

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Mark McDonough is the owner of leading Auckland deli and café Zarbo so, in a way, this cookbook is like a shop window for his own store. But, to McDonough’s credit, there’s little direct plugging of Zarbo merchandise although the logo does appear occasionally in the moody black and white pictures scattered throughout the book.

Sometimes

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While I was still in Ireland when The Restaurant programme started, the lack of a television set precluded me from actually seeing the stars in action but the recently published book of the series gives a good picture of how it worked. Each week The Restaurant played host to a celebrity chef who planned the menu, chose the wine and, together with

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My first introduction to Ursula Ferrigno was through a book called Bread (Dorling Kindersley) that she co-wrote with Eric Treuille, the owner of London shop/haven Books For Cooks. It’s an eminently useful publication with, as is the Dorling Kindersley way, plenty – almost too many – illustrations. This has become a much-used publication

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West Cork is a place apart. This book is very much a product of the region, presenting recipes that will both delight the senses and guide the user to the natural qualities and flavours innate to West Cork. Chef Rory Morahan brings a modern twist and style to all of his dishes. Traditional recipes like brown soda bread and stuffed pigs' trotters

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In a world full of cookbooks, Sybil Kapoor’s Taste: A New Way to Cook is truly an innovation. Kapoor writes from a more scientific perspective than most food writers, explaining in great detail about the elementary tastes of sour, salt, umani (savoury), bitter and sweet. She helps the reader to understand basic taste combinations and how these

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