Commentary from Chef Kathryn Taylor

I have never been one much for following recipes. If I cook something for the first time, I may do a google search or 3, or, more often than not, I will flick through my ever growing library of cookbooks.

Once I have found what I am looking for, I gain insight into how the dish I am cooking is to be prepared. I usually try and get a few examples of the same dish and choose the one closest to my style of cooking and base my recipe on this. From there, I steal bits and pieces from the others that appeal, and voila! I have my ingredients and my method and it’s time to start cooking.

This Christmas I received a new addition to my half decent collection; the molten cookbook, from Michael Van de Elzen. Full of popular dishes from the Molten kitchen, the book is beautifully presented thanks to some wonderful photography from Babiche Martens. The introductions to each recipe speak of influences, ingredient sources, or simply some reassurance the effort is worth it.

Packed with wonderful recipes it is hard to pick a favourite, or even two. And whether or not you intend to replicate any of the dishes to the letter, it would be almost impossible not to be inspired by this superb book. I love beetroot, asparagus and sweetbreads so if I was forced to pick, I think the cover recipe might win my ‘favourite recipe of the day’ prize. However, tomorrow is a new day.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 2nd, 2012 at 7:28 am and is filed under What's new.... You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.