New from Penguin Australia is Utterly Delicious Simple food by Belinda Jeffery.
All around Australia home cooks praise food queen Belinda Jeffery for her brilliant knack of creating recipes for dishes that work and you want to cook again. You may know that this very experienced celebrity chef shares the same publishing house as Kylie Kwong, Maggie Beer, Stephanie Alexander and that the four of them plus Margaret Fulton were recently portrayed and photographed together as ‘Queens of the Kitchen’ in the 50th Anniversary Edition of Women’s Weekly.
What you may not know is that Belinda is a twelve-year resident of Mullumbimby and that many of these new recipes have been inspired by her northern rivers surroundings.
The recipes in her latest cookbook Utterly Delicious Simple Food are ready to work their charms on the healthy-sized foodie contingent in the northern rivers.
Inspired by produce and flavours from around the world, Utterly Delicious Simple Food has more than 80 simple, sophisticated recipes, divided to suit the season – so you can get inspired no matter what time of year it is.
On a hot summer’s day (with the weather up here lately you can call it a hot spring day) fire up the barbecue for salmon fillets with herbs and almond skordalia, or yoghurt-marinated lamb with zucchini, goat cheese and chilli salad. On cold afternoons perhaps some guilt-free comfort food – a light zucchini and ricotta lasagne or crunchy crushed potatoes perhaps?
Whip up a simple chocolate cake or tempt your guests with banana ice-cream complete with salted caramel sauce, pine nut and honey brittle, or a strawberry and lemon tart. Whatever the case, this book is a lovely read (even if you’re not cooking this week).
The book is well put together and presented with photography by Rodney Weidland, a handy list of must-haves for the pantry and additional quick tips on the side.
Belinda Jeffery’s Utterly Delicious Simple Food is the go-to guide for something different and interesting every day. The book can be purchased online or where all good books are sold (rrp $49.99).
See belindajeffery.com.au.
A tad more on our local heroine Belinda Jeffery: She’s an award-winning author, has worked as a chef, TV food presenter, freelance writer, restaurant reviewer and cooking teacher. Her books include Belinda Jeffery’s Collected Recipes (a compilation of her first two books, Belinda Jeffery’s 100 Favourite Recipes and Belinda Jeffery’s Tried-and-True Recipes); Mix & Bake; The Country Cookbook (all about living and cooking in the Byron area), and Desserts.
GIVEAWAY
The Echo Good Life has a complimentary copy of this beautiful new cookbook to give away to one of our readers. All you have to do is photograph or scan a hand-written family recipe and if possible a photo of the person who wrote down the recipe.
Email them to: [email protected].
The winning recipe will be published in the Good Life on Tuesday November 18 (so make sure we have your permission written on the email to publish the photo and recipe).
Oh, and don’t worry if they’re old, it’ll make them more interesting!