As the days get colder and shorter, there’s something very nurturing about cooking – creating hearty food that warms your hands and tummies; generating warmth and delicious smells throughout your home; or even recreating bright fresh flavours that remind you of the summer. If you do find yourself at home and keen to cook, find some fresh inspiration in this winter’s crop of new cookbooks :
The Pasta Man: the Art of Making Spectacular Pasta with 40 Recipes by Mateo Zielonka
Mateo Zielonka is an artist, and pasta is his medium – this chef has been delighting his more than 170,000 Instagram followers with hand-made pasta in a profusion of colours, shapes, and sizes. Besides the silky dough and flavourful fillings, he adds visual interest by colouring his pasta with stripes and spots (using natural ingredients). In The Pasta Man, his first book, Matteo offers beautifully-photographed, stepwise instructions on how to recreate his dishes. Learn to master classic shapes such as pappardelle, ravioli and orecchiette, or try your hand at his whimsical coloured creations.
Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love by Yotam Ottolenghi
Shelf Love proves that necessity is the mother of invention – when the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen team turned the pandemic lockdown into a force for creativity. This tight-knit team of chefs, whose job is to dream up, experiment and develop food ideas for Ottolenghi restaurants and stores, kept their inventive spirit alive by experimenting with home cooking. The result is Shelf Love, which shows readers how to add some Ottolenghi flair – big flavours, veggie-forward, diverse influences – to your weeknight meals. With chapters on how to make the most of freezer and pantry staples, one-pot meals and tips on ingredient substitutions, Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love is a book you will want available to you all the time.
Crazy Sweet Creations by Ann Reardon
I first discovered Ann Reardon through my children (such is the way of social media). She’s a YouTube superstar, with over 4.7 million subscribers for her baking channel, How to Cook That. Ann Reardon combines her warm friendliness and professional understanding of food science to offer fun and informative videos about baking, desserts and debunking internet cooking hacks. Crazy Sweet Creations showcases her most popular sweet treats – with step-by-step instructions for pastries, cupcakes, ice-cream and spectacular desserts.
Maggie’s Harvest by Maggie Beer
This reissue of Maggie’s Harvest brings a modern Australian classic to a new generation of cooks and readers. Maggie’s Harvest is a big, substantial book, divided into sections by seasons and ingredients. It is beautifully produced and packed with recipes, stories and reminiscences about a lifetime’s worth of enjoying and creating good food. Maggie Beer’s writing is evocative, with the same warm, enthusiastic tone as her TV persona, and reflecting her longtime championship of seasonal produce and the Barossa Valley food scene.
Pizza Czar: recipes and Know-how from a World-travelling Pizza Chef by Anthony Falco
Anthony Falco has the enviable job title of International Pizza Consultant – travelling the world, using his expertise and industry connections to help more restaurants develop their own distinctive and delicious pizzas. He’s been making, inventing (and eating!) pizzas for a long time, and can consistently turn out great specimens whether he’s in high-altitude Colombia or in subtropical India. Pizza Czar is Anthony Falco’s comprehensive guide to the techniques, tips and hacks of making world-class pizza.
Chasing Smoke: Cooking over Fire around the Levant by Sarit Packer, Itamar Srulovich
Chasing Smoke, the fourth book by the award-winning team behind Honey & Co, is firmly focussed on grilling – the special deliciousness of flames and smoke on meat and seafood, fruit and vegetables, even bread and cheese. This collection of recipes, whether traditionally cooked at street stalls, at home or in restaurants, highlights and contrasts the flavours of different Middle Eastern countries including Egypt, Israel, Turkey and Greece. And keen cooks who don’t have grills need not despair – the recipes provide advice on how to recreate the dishes in an oven or on the stove.
