Gizzi’s Season’s Eatings

 

I love this book! Gizzi’s Season’s Eatings Feasts & Celebrations from Halloween to Happy New Year by Gizzi Erskine Mitchel Beazley 2016.

I’m quite a Gizzi fan, all the recipes of hers that I have cooked have been lovely. So, it was with much anticipation that I awaited this new book.  We went on a long weekend break the day this book came out, and it came with me as part of my holiday reading! I couldn’t leave it!!

Chapters are: Devilish Delights * Sparkle & Pop* Celebrating the Harvest* Festive Baking* Bring Back the Buffet* The Night Before Christmas* Christmas Day* Festive Foraging* and  Ring in the New.

The pictures are good, some a little dark to reflect the season, some simply bursting with Hygge. The graphics are fabulous! Cats, deer, trees, pumpkin and all things Christmassy. Good chatty intros to the recipes.

There are so many tempting recipes for cold weather food. I have made three so far, Old School Sausage Hotpot & Root Vegetable Mash, Tartiflette de Savoyard-(ish) and Epic Malted Hot Chocolate. All fab and will make them again. Next on my long list are: The Infamous Erskine Turkey Curry, Little Gilded Ginger Sponge Puddings, Blueberry & Spelt Cobbler, ‘Nduja Sausage Rolls (though I’ll use the alternative chorizo, as never seen ‘Nduja), Smoke-Roasted Treacle-Cured Salmon with Potato, Cucumber and Buttermilk Salad not to mention the fabulously indulgent Chocolate-Orange Cream Liqueur,  though I’m saving it for December!

So, to come full circle, I do like a good Christmas and winter feasting cookbook, and this one of Gizzi’s I just love. :)



Vegetarian

 

 

 

This is a fab veggie book!  Vegetarian by Alice Hart (Murdoch Books 2010).  I wanted to blog about it because Alice has a new vegetarian book our later this month, which I have high hopes for… anyhow, it seems right to do this one first.

I’ve bought a number of vegetarian books over the years, and really, an awful lot of them seem to find their way to the charity shop, more so now than before, as space has become very tight in our house, I expect it’s the compulsive book hoarder that lives here that is to blame….   (I’m only half kidding),  my point though, is that now with space at a premium every book must earn its place  - be it to cook from or as inspiration reading.

I do really like this book, it is the first book I’d come across that felt like it was vegetarian by default – just filled with very nice recipes.  I’ve made the giant couscous salad with roasted parsnips and peppers and a preserved lemon and charmoula dressing, which was very good, if portioned on the small side. Plus a sort of warm salad, quinoa with parsley, pesto, cranberries, roasted hazelnuts and mushrooms.    The recipe pictured here is cashew fried rice, which you serve with chilli tomato jam. I’ve never bothered with the jam, but have substituted sweet chilli sauce or sriracha.  It was the first time I’d made fried rice as the main event, and really loved it. A keeper.

Two other recipes that I am keen to try from this book are warm salad of slow-roast tomatoes, labne almonds, on mujadhara  and carrot and coriander fritters with a halloumi and sweet lemon dressing. Both of which look so good.

If the second book is anything like as good as the first, it’ll be a winner too!