EDMONDS COOKERY BOOK
100 YEAR EDITION 1908 - 2008
Greatly enjoyed myself this morning at the launch of the 100th birthday special hardcover edition of this greatly loved Kiwi cookbook.
Sales are estimated to have exceeded four million copies and it remains without question NZ's most popular cookbook.
The story started almost 130 years ago when Thomas Edmonds opened a small grocery store in Lyttelton. Thirrty years later Edmonds published the first edition of the Edmonds Cookery Book to give to his customers to thank them for their support. At that time young couples were also given a copy on announcement of their engagement.
The 100 invited guests at today's launch were entertained by Katrina Hobbs and Te Radar who became celebrity chefs for the day. Using recipes from THE book Katrina made scones while Te Radar whipped up a batch of pikelets.
T
e Radar is one of New Zealand's funniest people and he had us in stitches with his patter about growing up on a farm, his Mum's baking, boarding school, the Matakana Market, John Key, sustainability and much more.
e Radar is one of New Zealand's funniest people and he had us in stitches with his patter about growing up on a farm, his Mum's baking, boarding school, the Matakana Market, John Key, sustainability and much more. He went on to talk about all the glossy cookbooks around, suggested they might be called recipe pornography but said he thought of the Edmonds Cookery Book as the Kama Sutra of cookbooks, more interested in imparting tried and true techniques than providing illustrations.
Great fun and a wonderful way to mark a piece of book publishing history.
I love my c1998 Edmonds cookbook. I hope that someone has gone through the latest versions in order to provide a bit of internal consistency though. I'm currently working my way through the whole book (a la 'Julie and Julia : 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen') and there are different descriptions for the same technique sometimes. I imagine that it wouldn't matter if you're dipping in and out of the recipes because you wouldn't notice those tiny things but it annoys me!
ReplyDeleteBest recipe from the 1998 version - the banana cake.