The last of my great cookbook splurge 2007 arrived today, Bill Granger’s Holiday. I love the Aussie chief, his books are a pleasure to read and look at it (the photography is stunning both mouth watering and envy inducing, as I’d just love to hop on the next plane down to Sydney everytime I look at the photos in his books). And more importantly the recipes themselves are easy, fun, light and reasonably healthy (although not too healthy all the time, that just would not be fun!). He has a lovely selection of dishes with Italian and Eastern influences and (I’m talking about his whole series of books here) a great selection of kiddie friendly dishes as he’s the father of small kids himself.
Holiday, Bill Granger’s latest book is no exception. The recipes are possibly slightly more elaborate than normal, but that’s the point of the book, these are recipes for special occasions, but not just any old run of the mill special occasion like Christmas and birthdays but also celebrating things like the first cold day of autumn or the first chance to have a barbecue on the beach. If you want ‘everyday’ recipes may I recommend Granger’s book from last year, funnily enough called Everyday, I have that one to and it’s excellent. The most family friendly of his books is probably Simply Bill, with a great (very well used in this house) chapter for kids.
Anyway recipes I reckon I will be definitely trying out from Holiday are:
- Potatoes with onion and pancetta
- Chicken in fresh herb marinade
- Chicken burgers with lemongrass and lime
- Spicy slaw
- Spicy rice noodle salad with cucumber and cashews
- Eggplant salad with chilli and mint
- Carrot salad with olives, honey and cumin (minus the olives, yuck)
- Caramel popcorn
- Coconut marshmallows
- Baked new potatoes on a bed of salt
- Ginger and sesame rice with poached chicken
- Cheat’s chips (it’s lovely to read that Granger has the same opinion on deep frying as I do, with me I’m scared to death I’m going to set fire to the place and like Granger says what do you do with all that oil afterwards? If I see that a recipe involves deep frying, my heart sinks and I don’t cook it).
- Coconut pudding with caramelised pineapple
- Patatas Bravas
