This book will be your inspiration to be adventurous, to extend your cooking repertoire and to be more ecologically aware.
Based on the popular TV series on BBC Food, Cooked, this unique compilation of places, spaces and fl avours combines chef Justin Bonello's three favourite things - Southern Africa, food and friends.
Bonello is passionate about ensuring that Africa's diverse food cultures are recorded and celebrated so that future generations will be able to savour the culinary pleasures we enjoy today.
His love affair with cooking and wide-open spaces began with weekends and school holidays spent in the great outdoors either on the Breede River or on the Wild Coast. He learnt to embrace the land and all that it has to offer without taking from it anything that nature can't replenish.
Bonello believes that the beauty of travel and cooking can be found in searching for fresh produce, making new friends and discovering foods you didn't even know existed. Once you've learned the basics and started growing your own produce, there's no reason not to produce awesome meals - all it takes is a little courage and a pinch of creativity.
Maria Benardis invites you to enjoy food the way the Greeks do. The preparation and serving of food in Greece is a ritual, and one that simply must be shared with friends and family. Food is always blessed before a meal, just as they did in Ancient Greek times. In this collection of recipes handed down through the generations in Maria's family, she offers the best way to make traditional moussaka and lamb souvlakia, through to her own Greek-inspired modern creations.
Binding this collection together is the glue of Maria's family. Reminiscences from her childhood spent on the island of Psara transport readers to the rugged hilltops where the family would pick wild greens for use in their cooking. The struggles of Maria's grandmother to feed her young family during the war years offer ways to make use of the few ingredients she had available: dried figs, walnuts, oranges and cauliflower. And Maria's aunt Stavroula, who never writes a recipe down but memorises the detail of each one and demands that others do too, at last allows Maria to pass on, in print, her recipe for delicious avgolemono soup.
From Eccles cakes to Cornish pasties, Chelsea buns to Scottish gingerbread, The Great British Book of Baking takes us on a tour of the very best in baking our nation has to offer.
With trips to notable landmarks from baking history - Melton Mowbray and Sandwich among the more famous, as well as locally loved secrets from towns and villages around the country - the book highlights the importance of baking as part of our national heritage. Narrative features explore the regions and showcase the real people behind this hugely popular culinary trend. Recipes that have been passed through the generations, securing themselves as baking classics, make up the chapters of this timely and beautiful book.
Over 120 recipes, as well as numerous adaptations and suggestions, cover the whole range of baking skills from sweet jam tarts to savoury game pie, with flans, rolls, breads and all manner of luxurious cakes in between. Learn how to make perfect puff pastry, the secrets to traditional hand-raised pies and discover the original recipe for West Country lardy cakes.
Throughout the series, ten contestants will battle it out to be crowned Britain's Best Baker. They will face a series of challenges to test their baking skills to the max, and these recipes are included in the book.
Whether you want to try your hand at the delicate art of petticoat tails shortbread or dish up a hearty steak pie to a hungry family, you will be looking between the pages of The Great British Book of Baking time and time again as it serves up the very best recipes from around the British Isles.
