A cookbook must have recipes, but it shouldn’t be a blueprint. It should be more inspirational; it should be a guide.
Thomas Keller
It seems that many people used the Covid lockdown period to be more creative with their home-cooking, and our cookbook sales certainly reflected that! With restaurants closed and more time at home, eager home cooks were flicking through their favourite recipes or looking up our website to order in some interesting new cookbooks. At the end of the year when we tallied up our bestselling titles, we were not surprised to see three Ottolenghi titles in our top six! Simple and Flavour are by Yotam Ottolenghi himself, and Falastin is actually from his business partner, Sami Tamimi, but we consider it to be part of the same family! Middle Eastern flavours have been becoming increasingly popular in recent years, and there has been an abundance of cookbook titles to reflect that. Here at Beaufort Street Books we are all big Ottolenghi fans and we cook out of his books frequently. Some people look at the list of unfamiliar ingredients like pomegranate molasses, sumac, or z’atar and wonder if they are worth buying, but we can say, with great enthusiasm, that yes, they are! Once you have a collection of Middle Eastern spices in your pantry, you will definitely acquire a taste for them and will find yourself reaching for them again and again – particularly if you have any of the Ottolenghi books!
Also featured in our top six titles is the latest book from the fabulous Hetty McKinnon, called To Asia With Love. Many of you will have purchased her first book, Community, which is one of our all-time bestselling cookbooks. Hetty says, “To Asia With Love is my homecoming, a joyous return to the humble, yet deeply nurturing flavours of my childhood as a Chinese girl born in Australia. It is also a celebration of the exciting and delicious possibilities of modern Asian cooking.” Once again, you can stock your pantry with all sorts of interesting ingredients to obtain those traditional and updated flavours at home. We recommend the cucumber and cabbage noodle salad with black bean sauce, among many others!
We held an event in-store some years ago when the first Cornersmith book was released, and we were delighted to be able to chat to Alex again, along with Jaimee, via ZOOM about their latest book called Use It All. As the name suggests, it is a guide to having a no-waste kitchen, and it is filled with useful hints, lots of information, plus a plethora of delicious recipes that are easy to whip up at home. If you’ve never tried pineapple syrup made from discarded pineapple skins, we urge you to do so! Served over ice with some soda water, it is perfectly refreshing for these summer days.
Julia Busuttil Nishimura’s first cookbook Ostro was popular, but her second one is proving to be even more so. Called A Year of Simple Family Food, it contains a collection of tasty recipes making the most of seasonal produce. From spaghetti with fennel and prawns in the summer through to Japanese braised pork in the winter, there is something to tempt your tastebuds in every season. Eating seasonally is the best and most efficient use of ingredients and Julia has many great suggestions and information.
Of course, these are just a small selection of the huge array of cookbooks we have in stock, so pop in and see us for more suggestions. Happy cooking!
Geraldine.