Digesting the latest on the culinary shelves

Marco’s cheating art

Marco Pierre White, the youngest chef ever to be awarded three Michelin stars, has inspired both Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal, but the whole point of Marco Made Easy (Orion, R275) is to inspire people like you and me, who want a quick meal without any fussy truffle foam. His shortcuts include turkey steak with rosemary and Gruyere – brilliant for Christmas leftovers. Of the recent slew of cookbooks celebrating simplicity, this is by far the best.

Soap dishes

7de Laan has been running for 10 years on SABC2 and is one of our most popular soapies, partly because its characters behave like real people who do real things – like cooking and eating. Cook with 7de laan (Human & Rousseau, R250) gives away the secret recipes of seven characters. Hilda shares her delicious date fingers, Matrone makes a General De la Rey cake with dried figs and pecan nuts, and Charmaine gives us biltong and tomato quiche.

Willie the Wizard

Willie Harcourt-Cooze makes women faint with lust (and not just for his heavenly chocolate). In Willie’s Chocolate Bible (HarperCollins, R330), he takes chocolate temptation to a new level, with vivacious tales of the magic bean, and chocolate recipes that should come with a moral-guidance warning.

One-Pot Lady

Clarissa Dickson Wright, the remaining half of Two Fat Ladies and cook extraordinaire, achieves a triumph in Potty (Hodder & Stoughton, R265). Described as a cookbook for anyone who loves good food but hates washing up, this includes an ingenious recipe for bacon and eggs cooked in a mug.

Win two sumptuous summer recipe books

South African author Marlene van der Westhuizen is marvellous at merging provincial French cooking with local ingredients. Her previous cookbooks, Delectable and Sumptuous, were coffee-table-sized works of art overflowing with beautiful scenery and droolworthy recipes. Her two new books have retained the drool factor but dispensed with the large format. Lazy Lunches and Decadent Dinners (Bookstorm/Pan Macmillan, R140 each) are compact paperbacks containing the same high standard of food and photography. The first captures the spirit of long lunches around a French village table, while the second gives inspiration and instructions for everything from formal occasions to simple suppers.

WIN! Pan Macmillan is giving away five sets of Lazy Lunches and Decadent Dinners. To enter, get the  details from the January Issue of Food & Home Magazine. Competition closes on 15 January, 2011. Terms and conditions apply.

Compiled by Sue de Groot, Photographs by Graeme Wyllie. This article was taken from the January 2011 issue of Food & Home.