Cookbook highlights from the year
I’m proud to let you all know that this year, for the first time, I kept a sourdough starter in my fridge. I also watched my adult kids argue, chop, disagree, stir and use every dish in the house in order to create delicious family meals. This year my cookbooks were bent, splattered and marked for inspiration, for banana bread recipes, noodle soups, and quick, cheese-heavy meals. This year has given us so much anguish, so much anxiety and so much time to cook soups, bake cakes and create casseroles. Feeling diminished? Cook. Feeling fraught? Serve. Feeling hopeless? Eat.
There were certain cookbooks we used continuously because the recipes were not complex and didn’t contain ingredients we couldn’t buy within our 5km radius – and also because we wanted comfort food rather than elegant dishes with side sauces. We needed meals we could balance on our laps, eat at our home desks, and munch through a lively family set of Cards Against Humanity. This year we stayed home, and we cooked.
Julia Busuttil Nishimura’s A Year of Simple Family Food fulfilled many of our expectations of an excellent cookbook. We relished her pasta dishes, her no-nonsense approach and, in particular, became experts at kneading dough. We consider her simple butter cake with raspberries a gift to all our senses and often had a slice for breakfast. We turned to Natalie Paull’s Beatrix Bakes on the weekends when we had time to beat those egg whites into a glorious, glossy creation. We gifted her chocolate caramel bars to our dearest friends and neighbours, we munched through an entire cheesecake while watching Fargo, and we learnt that those with cold hands (and a warm heart) have a way with pastry.
Recipes from Hetty McKinnon’s To Asia, with Love filled our soup bowls with noodles and coconut milk, which we dripped over our clothes, slurping with the pleasure of not seeing anyone outside the family that day. Ottolenghi’s latest contribution, Flavour, was met with delight. Oven chips with curry-leaf mayonnaise was sometimes all we had for dinner. However, it was his influence that made us reconsider the potential of polenta and the versatility of tofu.
In recent days we have laughed and read aloud sections from Africola by Adelaide’s Duncan Welgemoed. Surely, he is our new cooking rock star – filled with attitude and advice for living oh so well. It is because of him that we have perfected the art of chermoula sauce (perfect with nearly everything but particularly recommended with sardines) and his green goddess dressing for all our green leaves. Talking of culinary heroes, New Classics from the people behind Good Food is a perfect roll call of chefs giving us their best lessons on creating delicious food. Kylie Kwong’s chicken is a dream, as is Neil Perry’s cauliflower gratin, and Adam Liaw’s parmigiana is a cheesy delight.
It’s been a tough year, but also a year in which my family slowed down and cooked for one another. We commiserated over dishes that failed us, and celebrated those that didn’t. I hope the year brought you some happy family mealtimes. It was one of the silver linings of 2020.
