Printed in a large format that plays up its extraordinarily beautiful photos, The New Classics ($50) by Donna Hay is one of those rare cookbooks that both excels as a coffee table book and as an actual instructional manual. Recipes range from basics with a twist (think soufflé omelets and bacon-wrapped meatloaf) to more exotic fare like sesame-crusted salmon with pickled daikon or pumpkin and tofu laksa, making for a good mix. Because it's an Australian cookbook, an inexpensive kitchen scale for metric measurements is a must, and you may have to google a few ingredients here and there — garfish, brown onions, and beef scotch fillet come to mind — but it's otherwise very user friendly. Really, we can't recommend this book enough.
Recipes we can't wait to try:
- Pumpkin, chorizo, and kale frittata
- Caramelized onion hummus
- Char-grilled sirloin steak with pink peppercorn and whisky sauce
- Harissa chicken with olives
- Lemongrass fish skewers with chilli dressing
- Classic pavlova with passionfruit and strawberries
- Caramel crunch brownies
