CANVAS MAGAZINE - NEW ZEALAND HERALD

Canvas magazine is the first part of the New Zealand Herald I read every Saturday. This is because it is where the NZ Herald publish their weekly book reviews under the guidance of their books editor Linda Herrick, pic left.

Canvas this past Saturday was a real bonus for book lovers as it included ten pages from the NZ Herald book reviewing team featuring their picks along with mini-reviews of the best books of 2009, those they suggest for Christmas gifts. It was a terrfici selection covering all ages and tastes.

Editor Linda Herrick selected books in the food category and has kindly agreed to me reproducing her mini-reviews on the blog.

Kitchen Garden Companion
by Stephanie Alexander (Lantern/Penguin $140)

The perfect time to get stuck into the fruit and veg garden, inspired by the great Australian cook who has turned her energies into a state-by-state programme on how to create sustainable school kitchen gardens. In this massive, supremely practical book she outlines how to get started in your own garden, what to plant and when. The bulk of the book is an A (amaranth, a leafy veg) to Z (zucchini) of plants, accompanied by delectable recipes. This would
be a most impressive gift for anyone who loves gardening and cooking. Its sheer bulk might also prompt a weeding-out of unused recipe books that take up more room than they earn.

The Aunt Daisy Cookbook
edited by Barbara Basham (Hodder Moa $29.99)
I thought this "heritage collection" of recipes honouring the doyenne of radio from the 1930s-60s might be outdated and it certainly has some curiosities. The savoury dishes section involves ingredients like brains and suet and a thing called Inky Pinky Fish Pie; the poultry section toys with the slow cooking of pukeko and swan; a salad dressing recipe recommends golden syrup. But the biscuits and cakes sections are crammed with classics, and the chutneys,
pickles, sauces, jams and jellies recipes are worth the price of the book alone, the proceeds of which go to the Barbara Basham Medical Charitable Trust. Basham was Aunt Daisy's daughter, and the compiler of this collection.

New Zealand Food and Cookery
by David Burton (David Bateman $59.99)
A revised, larger fourth edition of Burton's 1982 classic, saluting our culinary heritage. It opens with an interesting section on Maori food and cookery, before the arrival of the "strange new food of the Pakeha", including pigs and potatoes. Burton's chapter on the early settlers is a lesson in food shortages, then we move on to what we ate during the wars and the Depression (see recipe for "Hard-Times Stew"). Post WWII, the impact of immigration, fine dining,
restaurant culture (great anecdotes here), takeaway foods, celebrity chefs (Graham Kerr) and on to today. That's the first 100 pages, then we have 200 more of recipes which are the essence of New Zealand. And another pukeko recipe.

Seasons
by Donna Hay (Fourth Estate $54.99)
A book with too many pointless photos which may nevertheless set the stomach rumbling. Divided into the four seasons, each section extensively covers "savoury" and "sweet" recipes which look within the skill range of anyone reasonably competent looking for new ideas. Her summer section starts with barbecued bacon, tomato and scrambled egg sandwich and ends with a crushed raspberry tart. This should have the lucky recipient marching off to the
kitchen immediately.

Simple Cooking
by Antonio Carluccio (Quadrille Publishing $59.99)
The Italian self-taught cook introduces us to 50 years of his "secrets", which he started gathering as a student in Vienna. "All my ideas came from a solid foundation: the years I had spent absorbing food facts, techniques, textures and tastes from my mother," he writes in the introduction. The secret with Italian food, he adds, is "that it is always very simple and always uses the best ingredients possible". Many of the recipes involve vegetables, the meat section
is relatively small and he advocates free-range poultry. The Italian way.

My thanks to Linda Herrick for the above reviews, and to her and her team for all their excellent reviews throughout this past year in Canvas every Saturday.
And if you would like to read/view the whole feature from Saturday's Canvas then link here to the Herald online.