As a bookseller, one of the ‘perks’ of the job is the pre-publication author events hosted by publishers, exclusively for booksellers. We usually meet at an iconic Melbourne restaurant and chat to an author about their book and its upcoming release, while enjoying a meal and a glass of wine or two. One of the experiences that stands out for me was a dinner to celebrate the release of Annie’s Farmhouse Kitchen, where we were invited to dinner at Annie Smithers’ home. I’ll never forget the drive up the Hume with colleagues on a warm, late-summer Saturday evening, then arriving and being welcomed by Annie and her wife, Susan, at their then-home in Malmsbury. Annie, of course, was a consummate host.

Sitting on Annie’s porch with plates in our laps, we shared a delicious, casual dinner cooked by Annie, featuring vegetables from her garden (I remember a knockout tomato pasta) and afterwards were given a tour of the vegetable garden and heritage fruit orchard. It was the perfect evening; and reading Kitchen Sentimental encapsulates this experience of Annie’s humble and honest generosity.

For those who enjoyed Annie’s 2021 Recipes for a Kinder Life, Kitchen Sentimental continues with Annie’s engaging, meditative prose. It is a deeply personal memoir taking us on a journey through the kitchens that have influenced her life, starting in her childhood kitchen with her mother’s famously elaborate dinner parties, which Annie was fascinated by and desperately wanted to be a part of, through to today, at her applauded Du Fermier kitchen in Trentham, where Annie cooks garden-to-table seasonal, French-farmhouse-inspired menus with her small, like-minded and dedicated team.

Each chapter in the book features a different kitchen in which she has worked or lived, and it is no surprise that the kitchens of Stephanie Alexander’s Stephanie’s and Alla and Allan Wolf-Tasker’s the Lake House restaurants were seminal in Annie’s development into one of Australia’s finest chefs and supporters of food provenance today. Annie also revisits other iconic Australian restaurant kitchens of the ’80s and ’90s, giving us a unique and personal perspective of the often harsh and brutal realities of such kitchens. In doing so, she shares how her life and relationship with food and loved ones has been shaped outside these environments and in her own home kitchen.

Why cook? Kitchen Sentimental reminds us all why.