Now home again and I've had a chance to spend an hour browsing the book and I have to say it is a little cracker. It is now tucked into the glove box of our car so whenever I am buying wine it is there as a valuable guide.
I am a loyal and devoted Chardonnay drinker, "the greatest of all grapes for dry white wine", and I'm pleased to say that my most regularly purchased Chardonnays are all featured in Cooper's book.
The book is divided into White, Sweet, Sparkling and Red sections and then within each grouping the wines are listed alphabetically by vineyard. Personally I would have preferred them to be listed alphabetically within grape varieties.
Cooper is for my money our leading and most independent wine writer and with his new book he has created another most useful guide for the wine consumer's reference library. And I'm sure many a wine-loving visitor here for the Rugby World Cup will end up buying this book to guide them in their decision making.
Still in the area of taste and smell is Molly Birnbaum's Season to Taste - How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found My Way (Portobello Books - $36.99).At 22, Molly Birnbaum was hit by a car and left with a broken body. The aspiring chef was also left without a sense of smell. With a head full of recipes and a place at one of the country's most prestigious cookery schools, the loss of smell also took away her ability to taste, her desire to cook, and her dreams of working in a restaurant.
Season to Taste is the fascinating personal exploration of this most nebulous of senses, the role it plays in how we eat and the brave and uncertain mission Molly undertook to recover it. Writing with emotional honesty, intellectual curiosity, and a foodie's feel for descriptive precision, she explores the science behind olfaction, pheromones, and Proust's madeleine; she meets leading experts, including the writer Oliver Sacks, scientist Stuart Firestein, and perfumer Christophe Laudamiel; and she visits a pioneering flavour laboratory, eats at Grant Achatz's legendary Chicago restaurant Alinea, and enrols at a renowned perfume school in Grasse, all in an effort to understand and overcome her condition.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Molly Birnbaum is a recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship in Arts and Culture from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. Her work has appeared in the New York Times and ARTnews magazine, and writes the popular food blog Molly's Madeleine. This is her first book.
Still in the food area a couple of new NZ titles:
Kiwi Food Culture - Flavours From Around New Zealand
Adam Clancey - David Bateman - $34.99
Kiwis love many things but food has to be high on that list - catching, hunting or growing it; experimenting with it; cooking it and above all eating it!Documentary maker and food writer Adam Clancey knows much about this and his book based on his TV programme ‘New Zealand Food Culture’, reflects that love on every page.
With the help of other passionate foodies, Adam explores the evolving food culture of our country from classic Kiwi favourites to adventures with new cooking styles and foods. With chapters on everything from new ways with the hangi, wild pork and paua; our versions of Spag Bol, curries and wok cooking; to our passion for seafood of every description, as well as know-how with sausages and much, much more, there is something here for everyone.
Join Pio Terei and his wife Deb, Jon Gadsby, Michael Meredith of Meredith’s restaurant, Awen Guttenbeil and his dad Wally, Franco Viganoni, Eru Tutaki and many others and discover the flavours, old and new, that really whet our appetites.
About the author:
Adam Clancey runs a successful marketing and media company and produces, edits and presents several TV shows including ‘Fishing NZ’, ‘Angling Adventures’ and ‘New Zealand Food Culture’. He is also an accomplished photo-journalist who has numerous books and magazine articles to his name, most on topics dear to his heart - fishing, travel and food. His popular The Snapper Cookbook was published by Bateman in 2008. Adam lives with his wife Nikki, daughter Jessi and twin boys Raven and Bailey in Auckland
Joan Bishop's New Zealand Crockpot & Slow Cooker Cookbook
Random House NZ $34.00
Joan Bishop is New Zealand’s crockpot and slow cooker doyenne. The proof of that is the 120,000 plus copies of her crockpot and slow cooker book that have been sold to date. Her major 2010 revision of the bestselling book was extremely well received. Now she has revised it again. Why so soon? Because Joan has discovered something incredibly significant about the ‘new-generation’ slow cookers.
Slow cookers have become hotter and so their cooking times shorter, but no one told us! They don’t cook nearly as slowly, and so many slow cooker recipes will not work. Joan has gone back to the drawing board on every single recipe, changing cooking times and in some cases the amount of liquid.
Full of mouth-watering photos and over one hundred luscious recipes for soups, vegetable dishes, rice, light meals, beans and lentils, chicken, beef, lamb and pork dishes, desserts and interesting extras such as hot spiced cider and mulled wine, this book is the slow cooker Bible.
This book is full of healthy and fabulously tasty recipes designed for low-fat, low-cost meals. It is not just about hearty winter cooking — recipes include lighter summer recipes and desserts.
About the author.
Joan Bishop is an award-winning food writer. She is a former manager of Sunbeam Appliances, where her interest in crockpot recipes began, and she remains the expert on this popular appliance. She writes a popular food column for the Otago Daily Times and is the author of three cookbooks.
And after all that food and wine it is time for some armchair travel!
OX TRAVELS
Introduced by Michael Palin
Profile Books - $29.99
A great selection here - 36 travel writers have contributed stories of remarkable meetings - life-changing, Affecting, amusing. Published in support of Oxfam. Authors include Lloyd Jones, John Julius Norwich, Paul Theroux, Jan Morris, Colin Thubron and Tiffany Murray.
Back to food for a mo - I see while reading the latest issue of Cuisine (September) at lunchtime that Jamie Oliver is opening one of his eponymous Italian restaurants,(already 18 in UK and one in Dubai), in Pitt Street, Sydney in October. What about New Zealand Jamie?
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