New Zealand Listener
By LAURAINE JACOBS
The food of Italy, France and Morocco and recipes from closer to home feature in a bunch of new books.
Creamy paua on toast, photo Kieran Scott
A lot of swish meals have been devoured over the past few weeks as part of Restaurant Month in the centre of Auckland. The promotion put the spotlight on central city businesses in many different ways – a great idea in what is traditionally a lean time at the end of winter. But why not extend the promotion across the entire city? At the same time, the Wellington on a Plate events celebrated that region, and I could only gaze enviously at the myriad postings on Twitter and Facebook to see what I was missing. Maybe it’s time for a New Zealand Restaurant Month.
One of the stars in Auckland was guest chef Monica Galetti. Born in Samoa, Galetti cut her teeth in Wellington restaurants before moving to London, where she has worked for over 10 years with the famed Roux brothers at top restaurant Le Gavroche. She presented a delicious, complex and classic dinner at Auckland’s the Grove restaurant. So I was excited when her book, Monica’s Kitchen (Quadrille, dist by Bookreps, $50), turned up with three others by female cooks. Along with her London job, Galetti manages a family life, cooking for her husband and small daughter. Her book is filled with recipes for every occasion at home, some expanding on original ideas from her youth, such as her dad’s octopus. The photography is stunning, with almost every recipe illustrated in colour.
Talented young English cook Rachel Khoo, who completed a pâtisserie course in Paris, has written The Little Paris Kitchen(Penguin, $50). To accompany her stories, she has gathered her favourite French recipes together, such as lemon and lavender chicken and the spring stew that features on page 56. Refreshing and delightful, this book will appeal to lovers of French food. And there’s a TV series coming soon, too. Paula Wolfert is respected for her painstaking research and recording of recipes from the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Forty years on from her first book, Good Food from Morocco, she has revisited and revised her thoughts on the food of this exotic land. Her new book, The Food of Morocco (Bloomsbury, $75), would be a comprehensive addition to any cook’s shelves. This is the definitive book on the subject, with everything you need to know about Moroccan cookery, ingredients and techniques.
Known for her gorgeous books, Tessa Kiros has produced another, this time featuring brilliant Italian recipes. Limoncello and Linen Water (Murdoch Books, $75) is a delight, with fantasies created through the use of evocative photography. Counterbalancing all this femininity, and showing that men can do cookbooks well, too, is MasterChef contestant Cameron Petley. Hunter from the Heartland (Random House, $49.99) is a blokey book from one of the most recognisable of the contestants who didn’t make the finals. Petley shares his love of the wilder side, with simple Kiwi recipes for pork, venison, eel, trout and more. Commenting on this paua recipe, he says, “This was one of the favourite dishes [when I was] growing up and is a hit among Maori families throughout New Zealand. If you undercook paua, it’s going to be tough; if you overcook paua, it’s going to be tough. So it’s a matter of just getting it right – I like to flash-fry for best results.”
CREAMY PAUA ON TOAST
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
50g butter
4 paua, finely sliced into slivers
100ml cream
salt to taste
2 slices ciabatta, toasted
Brown the onion and garlic in half the butter in a frying pan for 2 minutes. Set aside. Melt the remaining butter in another frying pan and gently fry the paua for 2-4 minutes until tender. Add the onion and garlic, then stir in the cream. Cook the sauce until it thickens or reduces by half. Season with salt and serve on toasted ciabatta. Serves 2. Wine match: chardonnay.
I LOVE THE sassy introduction to this recipe from Khoo’s The Little Paris Kitchen. “For the fashion-conscious, the arrival of spring in Paris means that it’s out with the winter wardrobe and in with the spring one. The same goes for stews. Forget your winter boeuf bourguignon, it’s so last season. Navarin printanier, a lamb stew with fresh vegetables, is what should be bubbling away in your kitchen.”
NAVARIN D’AGNEAU PRINTANIER SPRING LAMB STEW
6 lamb neck or shoulder chops
2 cloves of garlic, crushed to a paste
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
1 bay leaf
2 sprigs of thyme
4 carrots, cut into chunks
100g fresh or frozen peas
100g green beans, sliced
salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 160°C. Brown the meat, garlic and onion with the oil in a large flame-proof casserole (cocotte). Add the bay leaf, thyme and carrots and enough water to cover the meat by at least a couple of centimetres. Bring to a simmer and remove any scum that rises to the top. Once all the scum is removed, cover the pan and transfer to the oven. Cook for 1½-2 hours or until the meat is tender. Ten minutes before serving, bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil and add the peas and beans. Cook for 5 minutes or until the vegetables are tender, then drain. Take the casserole out of the oven and remove the bay leaf and thyme sprigs. Add the peas and beans to the lamb, then season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately. For an English twist, serve the stew with mint sauce. Serves 6. Wine match: a lighter-style pinot noir.
Where is that recipe?
When I signed up with www.eatyourbooks.com and listed on my own page all the cookbooks I own, my life changed. Now if I have a lamb shoulder and need inspiration, all I have to do is type in “lamb shoulder” and the site comes up with the titles of all the recipes that use that ingredient in the books on my shelves. And if I wonder “where is that recipe?”, I just type in the ingredients I can remember and a list of recipes shows up using them and informing me which book on my shelf to look in. Eat Your Books is a recipe search engine that uses ingredients, ethnicity, special diet and more. It is designed to be specific to your own cookbook and magazine collection. Adding interest and value to the site are recipes, blogs and a cookbook community. It is a paid subscription site, but if you have more than five cookbooks, it’s really worth joining. We have a special offer for Listener readers. Go to www.eatyourbooks.com and use the code LISTNZ3 for a free three-month trial subscription.
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