Diverse magical books about food…………..

Food and wine are my favourite non-fiction book subjects and this week the food & wine books have been arriving almost faster than I can read them. Here then is a look at a selection of them:
NEW ZEALAND CHILLI HANDBOOK
Gary Somerveille – David Bateman - $24.99

Gary Somerville has been described as the man who created NZ’s answer to Tabasco Sauce – Kaitaia Fire – which is now internationally renowned. Now in this new kitchen garden handbook he provides all we need to know about getting started with chillies. The book is packed with information on the best varieties, how to grow, harvest and store them along with a selection of chilli recipes including guidance of how to handle them when cooking.
This is a great little book, beautifully illustrated in full colour throughout.
Check out Gary’s website – http://www.kaitaiafire.com/

Those folk who live in or near Auckland have a chance to talk to Gary and get your book signed as he will be at Milly’s of Ponsonby, 273 Ponsonby Road between 11,00am and noon this coming Saturday, October 18.

FRENCH COOKING IN NEW ZEALAND
Jeanne-Marie Cantereau-Feran - $19.95

Sub-titled French Recipes Using New Zealand Products – Light, Simple & Affordable this charming book with its gorgeous watercolour illustrations is both illustrated and published by the author who lives on the Coromandel having arrived in New Zealand six years ago. She is passionate about food and has developed a practical and economic way to enjoy modern French cooking in New Zealand.
Her two talents, cooking and art, have come together beautifully in this gorgeous little book.
To puchase contact the author at french.cooking@hotmail.com
Illustrations copyright the author.


CUISINE DU MOI
Gavin Canardeaux – Allen & Unwin - $35

Canardeaux describes himself as Australian-born, English-educated, French-trained, Thai-massaged and American-based. He is not known for his modesty.
This is how his book, which is largely I guess a memoir but also part life philosophy and part cookbook, begins:
“I am the world’s leading uber icon chef. My restaurants, my food, my signature dishes and my approach to food in general have all fundamentally changed how we now eat. My name is a by-word for cooking, for eating, for family. For easy and stunningly and aspirationally gorgeous fabulousness……….”
He claims that his icon restaurants “ have set standards in cuisine couture previously thought impossible”.
For the record those restaurants are Cuisine du Moi in New York, Lad Gav in London, Le Auxerre de Gavoir in Napa, and Ricky’s Sportsbar and Steakhouse Hamburger Grill and Bar in Sydney.

ONE POT FRENCH
More than 100 easy, authentic recipes
Jean-Pierre Challet with Jennifer Decorte
Allen & Unwin/Madison Press – NZ$40

Author Challet was born in Lyon but is now executive chef at top Toronto restaurant, Cuisine at the Fifth, and in this attractive publication with full colour photographs throughout he presents the culinary delights of the French provinces in an appetising collection of authentic French recipes.
The recipes have been developed for home cooking and make use of only one pot, saucepan, frying pan or bowl. Most appealing.


HOW TO BE A BETTER FOODIE
Sudi Pigott – Quadrille –

I must be honest and say straight off that I only bought this book because of its price ! NZ$13.00, a steal. I guess at that price it means the book has been remaindered. When I got it home and spent an hour browsing through it I could understand this cruel fate. The book, crammed as it is with a huge assortment of foodie information, and great quotes, doesn’t seem to know its purpose and it seems to me to be trying too hard to please too many people and in the end probably doesn’t please many at all.
Good book to put in the loo or next to the bed in your guest room because it is ideal 2-3 minute browsing.

A FOOD LOVER’S TREASURY
Julie Rugg & Lynda Murphy
Frances Lincoln – NZ$31.99 – Hardback

This Treasury is indeed a little treasure. It is not what you might think at first glance. It is in fact a book about food, but particularly the food that is in books. The extracts, some a mere few lines, others running to several pages, are taken from a huge variety of books mainly fiction and divided into chapters with headings like – Food Philosophy, Taste, Local delicacies, Shopping and cooking, Mood and Places to eat. And the authors are a diverse bunch covering a great range of time. They include Boswell, Thackeray, Trollope, Tolstoy, P.J.Orourke, Kenneth Grahame, Virginia Woolf, Harold Nicolson, Thomas hary, AA Milne, Monica Ali, John Cheever, Anne Tyler, Martin Amis, Iris Murdoch, Paul Theroux, Marilyn French and hundreds of others too numerous to list.
This is not a book of quotes, but rather a book of excerpts and it is great fun. Literary trivia at its very best.
And two separate indices – a food index and an author index. Bravo.

And then in one parcel from Harper Collins two biographies being published in November of two remarkable women in the world of wine, albeit living centuries apart:

THE WIDOW CLICQUOT
The Story of a Champagne Empire & the Woman who Ruled it.
Tilar J. Mazzeo – Collins - $34.99 –
and

JANE HUNTER
Growing a Legacy
Tessa Anderson – Harper Collins - $49.99

Jane Hunter is something of a legend in the New Zealand wine industry. Widowed after only three years of marriage to the effusive and popular Irishman Ernie Hunter, she battled on with their fledgling vineyard and in the 20 years since has turned Hunter’s Wines into one of New Zealand’s most respected and admired wineries. (The Bookman is especially fond of their excellent Chardonnay!).
A readable and inspiring story which provides a great insight into the life of one of our major wine industry figures as well as an inside look into the joys and perils of growing grapes and making wine.