SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 7 2014 FOOD 35 INSPIRATION FOR FOLLOW ME. COLUMN MATT PRESTON THE HOME COOK @mattscravat Taste www.taste.com.au Top cook’s reading list Here’s my ultimate list of cookbooks everyone should own. Many, especially some chefs and authors, may disagree which is why we want you to contribute as well. Oh, and you don’t need to own them … borrow them from the library to see BY MATT PRESTON if you want to make the investment. 1. ENCYCLOPEDIA OF from old favourites like to explain to a stuck-up chef — FOOD AND COOKERY carbonara to bolognese, 11 and prove — that searing Margaret Fulton different frittata recipes and doesn’t seal in the juices of a OR THE COOK’S my current Hazan favourite, steak no matter what they say! COMPANION meatballs with savoy cabbage. Stephanie Alexander 5. WHITE HEAT My world is divided between 3. LAROUSSE Marco Pierre White these two. I love Fulton because GASTRONOMIQUE White Heat launched a it basically has the solution for The encyclopedic work on thousand culinary careers cooking just about anything cooking from a very French with dreams of roll ‘n’ roll you might find in the perspective may seem a little celebrity and the idea of supermarket but, more than outdated now. The wonderful kitchens that were cooler than that, over the years I’ve found thing about French cuisine is nightclubs a decade before the that whether its golden syrup that there is a definitively right celebrity TV chef was a fixture dumplings, lemon delicious or way to do everything — and on our screens. While Bob pancakes, no-one’s recipes are these are all detailed here. Try Carlos Clarke’s black and quite as good as hers. I love to find an older, second-hand white photographs still look Stephanie because it is basically edition as they are cheaper, wicked, it is the elegant and a bible of the best Australian more purely French, and comparatively easy recipes that family cooking. The recipes are strangely more authoritative always remind me that simple pretty bulletproof and her tone because of that, than the more home cooking can still be really means that the book — to recent revised editions. sophisticated and elegant. quote one of my Twitter pals –—“keeps you 6. THE RIVER company” while you 3 CAFÉ COOK BOOK cook. Everyone has a Rose Gray and favourite recipe but her Ruth Rogers scallop potatoes, Deep fried whole Vietnamese chicken artichokes; baked herbed salad and the ricotta; shells with broccoli, 1 afternoon tea orange anchovies and chilli; cake are the messiest ribollita; pumpkin soup; on cooking with Middle Eastern pyjama raids on the fridge 9. ROAST CHICKEN pages in our copy. their lemon, rosemary and flavours. While books from the of her TV series. This book AND OTHER STORIES garlic marinated butterflied Clarkes of Moro, Melbourne’s (and her other cookbook, Simon Hopkinson 2. THE lamb leg on the BBQ; lamb MoVida and Yotam Ottolenghi How to Eat) proves what a It was a toss-up for this spot ESSENTIALS shank slow-cooked in would also chart the Muslim wonderful, inspirational, between Hopkinson’s almost OF CLASSIC balsamic, red onions and Mediterranean, North Africa food-writer Lawson is. She mythical book and pretty much ITALIAN rosemary; pork loin cooked and Spain most successfully — turns a phrase with the grace anything from Nigel Slater like COOKING in milk with sage and and would definitely all be in of David Beckham stroking his Real Food or Eat. I’ve gone Marcella Hazan lemon … If the measure of a my top 20 — it was the Maloufs over an in-swinging corner; with Hopkinson because I find While Jamie Oliver successful cookbook is that who blazed this trail in her writing is rich, extremely it an even more friendly and may have turned on you cook three things out of Australia. Of course if being evocative and at times very inspirational read when it more Australians to the it then this list is proof this first is the key factor, then funny. And the recipes aren’t comes to elevating home wonders of Italian flavours and 4. ON FOOD sophisticated simple Italian NSW-born Tess Mallos’ half bad either. cooking. Pellegrino Artusi may have AND COOKING book needs to be in my top 10. Complete Middle Eastern Home written the first great truly Harold McGee Cookbook, first published in Italian cookbook, Marcella If you want to understand the 7. ARABESQUE 1977, might have a case for 10. THE LAST SPOT IN THE TOP TEN Hazan’s epic is the benchmark science behind why things Greg & Lucy Malouf edging out Malouf! NEEDS TO BE MADE UP BY YOU on all the rich regional happen the way they do in the Middle Eastern flavours are Tell us your choice on twitter at variations of cooking Italian. kitchen then this is a must read! now very much part of the 8. HOW TO BE A @Mattscravat. For some No pretty photos, just the While it is loads of science, modern home cook’s repertoire DOMESTIC GODDESS inspiration check out a list of my occasional plain line drawing McGee’s writing has excellent — and much of this due to the Nigella Lawson suggestions for this final place and 700 pages of wonderful, clarity and there is something influence of Greg and Lucy Forget, if you can, all the online at taste.com.au delicious recipes for everything rather exhilarating about being Malouf and their 1999 primer finger-licking and midnight 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 V1 - NTNE01Z01MA.