New Cookbooks: Summer 2019

California: Living + Eating by Eleanor Maidment

California: Living + Eating is a celebration of West Coast food. British food writer Eleanor Maidment journeyed through the state’s varied landscape – from Sonoma’s rolling vineyards to the deserts of Palm Springs, via the global food hotspots of San Francisco and Los Angeles – uncovering its diverse culinary influences and taking inspiration from some of its best chefs and restaurants. Within, over 80 recipes capture the Californian spirit, with chapters covering an array of sweet and savoury brunch dishes including whipped ricotta on toast with blackberry jam and breakfast burritos with cheddar scramble and coriander salsa. Colourful salads and light meals, such as salmon, citrus kale and black rice salad are ideal for everyday eating, while the likes of roast chicken with grapes, onions and sourdough, followed by cherry and almond galette are perfect for weekend entertaining.

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Greenfeast: Spring, Summer by Nigel Slater

Greenfeast: Spring, Summer is a vibrant collection of the food TV favourite Nigel Slater eats at the end of the day. Featuring over 110 spring and summer recipes, each with suggested variations, the book focuses on meat-free dishes that can be on the table in 30 minutes. This is perfect for people who want to eat less meat, but don’t want to compromise on flavour and ease of cooking. From roasted spring vegetables with peanut sauce to rice broad beans and asparagus; and peaches with blackberries and ice-cream, Nigel’s follow-up to the bestselling Eat is for everyone who wants daily inspiration for quick plant-based suppers. Greenfeast: Autumn, Winter will follow in September 2019.

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Sardine by Alex Jackson

Taking influence from Italy as well as North Africa, acclaimed chef Alex Jackson's recipes are a delight to cook. For Sardine, Alex escaped his east London restaurant to create a book dedicated to the signature dishes of Provence. Within, Alex has included a selection of recipes for each season. From bouillabaisse and autumnal grand aÏoli to an Easter feast, most of these menus revolve around a central celebratory dish and each chapter ends with a set menu – perfect for dinner parties. With recipes running in seasonal order, Sardine promises to reignite a love affair with French provincial cooking and its multitude of influences, focus on seasonal eating and, ultimately, an attitude to food which centres around sharing and enjoying food.

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Andalusia by Jose Pizarro

From sandy beaches to amazing architecture, buzzing tapas bars and flamenco dancers, the southern Spain is full of passion. In Andalusia, award-winning chef Jose Pizarro takes readers on a journey through its most delicious dishes. Blessed with land that produces magnificent wild mushrooms, delicious Jabugo ham and some of the world's best olive oil and seafood, readers will be spoilt for choice when it comes to recipes – such as pork loin with pear and hazelnuts, prawns baked in salt with mango, chilli, coriander salsa, and a rather boozy barbary fig margarita. Written in Jose's signature fuss-free style, this is genuine, bold-tasting Spanish food, easily made at home. Set to the backdrop of beautiful location shots, this cookbook is a must for anyone who loves authentic, simple Spanish food.

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Charred by Genevieve Taylor

Fire and smoke don’t always have to be about hunks of meat. Chargrilling and barbecuing are fantastic ways of getting the maximum flavour out of versatile vegetables. If you're bored of burgers, or if you're vegetarian and want more than scorched sweetcorn and chewy halloumi, charred offers up over 70 original recipes to cater for all your veggie BBQ needs. With sections on ‘stuffed and wrapped veg’, 'burgers and fritters’, ‘kebabs', ‘low, slow and smoked’, and ‘sharing platters’, these vegetarian dishes will be the highlight of every meal. Expect the likes of whole roast cauliflower drenched in spiced garlic butter, griddled radicchio with burrata and figs, and corn on the cob with Cambodian coconut, lime and chilli. What’s more, live-fire and BBQ expert Genevieve Taylor has developed these dishes so that they can just as easily be cooked in a pan or conventional oven year-round.

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The Island Kitchen: Recipes from Mauritius and the Indian Ocean by Selina Periampillai

This beautifully illustrated cookbook will take you on a journey around the Indian Ocean islands to taste the flavours of the colourful markets of Mauritius, the aromatic spice gardens of the Seychelles, the fishing coasts of the Maldives, the lagoons of Mayotte and the forests of Madagascar. Selina Periampillai, born in London but of Mauritian descent, celebrates the vibrant home-cooking of the islands, with dishes such as sticky chicken with garlic and ginger, mustard and turmeric-marinated tuna, Seychellois aubergine and chickpea cari, and pineapple upside-down cake with cardamom cream. With 80 simple recipes for everything from quick mid-week suppers to large rum-fuelled gatherings, this book will take you straight to the warm, welcoming kitchens of these beautiful islands.

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The Joyful Home Cook by Rosie Birkett

From renowned food writer and broadcaster Rosie Birkett comes this collection of recipes aimed at inspiring readers to become instinctive home cooks. Embracing seasonal ingredients, The Joyful Home Cook shows you how to coax the most flavour out of every morsel to deliver delicious meals every day of the year. As well as resurrecting underused home cooking skills like smoking, brining and fermenting, this cookbook applies a thoroughly modern approach to flavour combinations and global culinary influences, including practical tips on how to minimise waste. Following her tips and techniques, you’ll be able to cultivate a well-stocked culinary arsenal you can call upon to create game-changing meals for friends and family; from homemade sourdough and pickled veg to pistachio pesto and peach eton mess.

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Green by Elly Pear

In Green, bestselling cookery author Elly Pear shows you how to easily vary veggie and vegan dishes, with ingenious options to make a meal speedy and simple or a bit more special. The book offers over 100 easy recipes developed for either weekdays or weekends. The weekday recipes target speed and ease, and the weekend recipes are for when you have a bit more time and fancy something a bit special. Weekday offerings include freezable food, no-fuss traybakes and one-pot dishes for when you can’t face washing up or hands-on cooking. A meal prep section will have you sorted for the week ahead, plus there’s a whole load of meals you can make in 20 minutes. Whether you are already vegetarian or vegan, or just want to eat a bit less meat, this new book serves up tasty, flexible fare, all of which is meat-free, and half is vegan.

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Baan by Kay Plunkett-Hogge

Born and raised in Bangkok, Kay Plunkett-Hogge spoke Thai before she spoke English and has spent more than half her life in Thailand. Baan is an homage to her childhood, to the delicious recipes that she was raised on and a cuisine and country that she loves. The book features over 120 recipes that Kay has collected from all over Thailand from friends, acquaintances and street-stall holders, all gathered over around 30 years of travel, and all of them tried and tested back in London. Here, Kay demystifies Thai food, providing clear and concise recipes and revealing the shortcuts, kitchen hacks and ingredient substitutions that make delicious Thai cookery achievable in an ordinary Western home. Essential chapters include ‘How To Cook Rice’ – which covers the necessities and offers easy recipes for the likes of steamed jasmine rice or sticky rice.

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Veg: Easy & Delicious Meals for Everyone by Jamie Oliver

From simple suppers and family favourites to weekend dishes for sharing with friends, Jamie Oliver’s forthcoming book is packed full of nutritious recipes. Whether it's embracing a meat-free day or two each week, living a vegetarian lifestyle, or just wanting to try some brilliant new flavour combinations, this1 book ticks all the boxes. Sharing simple tips and tricks that will excite the tastebuds, this book will also give readers the confidence to up their veg intake and widen their recipe repertoire, safe in the knowledge it'll taste great. If it’s anything like his best-selling 5 Ingredients book, Veg is guaranteed to become a household staple.

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