we need one of these Simon

Okay Simon and Kirsty here's a project that you'd like

and here's my challenge to you
DO IT AS WELL AS THESE PEOPLE!

Yay Brett's cook book's here

What a fantastic job you've done with this Brett!
I'm green with envy...

...and what a generous thing, to add a page from the other 11 Series 1-ers.

Thank you, it's going onto my recipe book shelf right now!

Cook books and "celebrities"

I loved finding out what the top 4 (Steve, Tracey, Kelly and Brett) had devised for their cook book ideas.

I read Richard Till's comment that 25% of Whitcoulls' Christmas delivery of books was cook books. There's obviously a great deal of people who love them. My mother buys them all - she loves them for the photography. I do wonder how many people buy them for no other reason than to have them on the shelf or the kitchen counter? Staging the kitchen perhaps? Well, I'm shallow like that - and I expect others are too.

Now I expect that Kelly will continue with her book too... her idea for a Feelings or Mood based book was quite inspired, given her belief in fitness and whole body well-being. Very interesting, especially choosing to use no meat or fish in her recipes from the cookbook challenge. She was able to take it from the concept stage through to plating wonderfully creative and visual dishes.

Cook's books - your recipe Diaries

I had this great idea to make loose-leaf diaries with blank pages for cooks - somewhere you can collect all your recipes. With blank pages, you could either paste cut-outs in or hand-write. So I went looking for old  cookbooks - great in terms of retro-vintage photography and graphic design.
Here are a few of the ones I've bought ...

so now I'm going to turn them all into blank notebooks, with a few of the pages from the original books spread through - you can use them as dividers or just as quirky little reminders of cookbooks past....

And they're for sale at $20 each - a wonderful gift for a foodie, or something unique for you to squirrel away.

A fab little book on smoking, and Smoked Mussels

"The Kiwi Smoker" by Carl Scott

I found this at The Warehouse, a gift for Stew for Valentine's Day.
What a find... please look out for it if you catch fish or hunt or gather in any way. Published by David Bateman.
Carl makes his own brand of food smoker called the Bushfire Smoker and has developed recipes to suit it and the smaller portable smokers that most people have. Look for my tutorial on stove-top indoor smoking - you won't believe how simple it is....

Off we went to hear Diana Krall at Villa Maria and so I experimented with Smoked Mussels to enjoy with a white wine.

I love them smoked in tins, but we have these wonderful, plentiful, fat mussels at a ridiculously cheap price in the supermarkets.

Here they are packed up for the picnic - super easy and very very good. (And that's also my excuse for not having them well-presented).

Steam them open as you normally would, remove from the shells and take out the beards, place back in the half shells and onto the smoking rack. Top with your own mixture; I used sweet chilli, brown sugar and dark soy sauce.

Smoke without too much heat for as little as 10 minutes....

they were lucky to make it as far as the concert...

#8 Favourite

My old Edmonds book - I use it every time I bake, and often refer to it for the meat cooking guide.

And the cookbook my grandmother gave me when I turned 50 and asked if everyone would give me a copy of their favourite book...

It has all her hand-written recipes tucked into its pages. Fab!

This is Nana at my daughter's wedding last year. She'll be 96 this year. I want her outfit...