ROBYN MARTIN'S BEST RECIPES FOR CROCKPOTS & SLOW COOKERS
Chanel & Stylus $29.95
I haven't owned a crockpot in years but judging by the huge sales of this book, publisher Cliff Joseph tells me he has just ordered a reprint of 20,000 copies, I must be one of the few who is not cooking regularly by this method.
Author Robyn Martin opens her introduction with these remarks:
If I had to give one small kitchen appliance a medal for versatility and being my kitchen god, my crockpot or slow cooker would get gold.
She goes on to suggest that for her money slow cookers are for people who are time poor or have other things they would rather be doing than worrying about what's for dinner later. And as they are for busy people she has done away with as many unecessary cooking processes as possible without compromising on flavour and she doesn't see the point of using the slow cooker unless the food can be cooked directly in it.
Martin is something of a celebrity chef with many books to her credit and is published widely on both sides of the Tasman. Her books have sold over 4 million internationally.
Her friendly, practical approach to making great tasting food with minimum
effort has made her cookbooks a success in New Zealand, Australia,
England, Portugal, South Africa, Italy, Brazil and South East Asia. Her work has
also been serialised in the Daily Mail.
Robyn lives with her husband on a 4 hectare pinot noir vineyard in
Blenheim where they offer luxury accommodation. Her website is
www.maisongrange.co.nz
Her friendly, practical approach to making great tasting food with minimum
effort has made her cookbooks a success in New Zealand, Australia,
England, Portugal, South Africa, Italy, Brazil and South East Asia. Her work has
also been serialised in the Daily Mail.
Robyn lives with her husband on a 4 hectare pinot noir vineyard in
Blenheim where they offer luxury accommodation. Her website is
www.maisongrange.co.nz
Clearly she has spent many happy hours experimenting with her favourite kitchen appliance and the results here look marvellous. I'll include some pics from dishes within the book.
Pic left is Penang chicken curry.
There are more than 22 chicken recipes included in the section on chicken. Other sections include soups, meat, mince & sausages, one-pot meals, vegetarian, and desserts.
There is also a good introduction to the basics of using a crockpot and the book is well indexed.
Pic right from the dessert section shows slow cooked orange-macerated dates and bananas.
Looks like I'm going to have to buy a crockpot!
3 comments:
If you get a slow cooker here's a tip - just use a small amount of onion (about a quarter of what you'd normally use), otherwise everything tastes the same no matter what. Not sure if Robyn Martin covers that in her book, but tis important! Once I'd discovered that I grew to love my slow cooker. Haven't used it to make cakes or puddings or anything adventurous, but if I use it to make a meal before going out for the day, I could kiss the blessed thing when I walk in the door.
Robyn also claims that it is not neccesary to brown onions and meat first, but in fact she does say to do so in several recipes. So in my opinion you really need to do it. The one time I tried a recipe (not from her book) that did not cook the onion, the onion was still raw at the end of the slow cooking.
I cooked the cranberry chicken casserole from her book today (but went against instructions and browned the meat and cooked the onions, garlic and bacon) and it was delicious.
I've been making a lot of soup in it - tried out three of the soup recipes (with another about to go in for tonight). My favourite is the Pumpkin Soup but I've had really inconsistent results with the split peas - sometimes they're firmish, sometimes they're nice and squishy-soft. Through repeated experiments I have come up with the following - prepare the chicken stock and peas and leave them sitting in the slowcooker (turned off) whilst you prepare the pumpkin, then turn everything on and leave it for the full 8 hours at least. I've made the bread three times, without great success. It's quite dense and doughy, more like damper.
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