When Thomasina Miers first visited  Mexico at the tender age of eighteen,  she fell so in love with its food that she went back to live there, opening up a cocktail bar in Mexico City and using her free time to travel the country and cook with some of Mexico’s top chefs. Returning to London, she entered and won  BBC’s MasterChef in 2005. She went on to open a  Mexican street food cantina, Wahaca, which won the Observer Food Monthly’s ‘best cheap eats’ award, and has now opened three branches. She writes a regular recipe column in the Times and is co-editor of Soup Kitchen (2005) and the author of Cook (2006) and Wild Gourmets (2007). Her latest book Mexican Food Made Simple is a really great introduction into Mexican food, as she puts it  “It’s not necessarily completely authentic – I’m not trying to prove how good at making this food I am! It’s meant to be fun and accessible.“

And accessible it certainly is.  Recipes are simple to follow, yet at the same time wholesome and full of Mexican flavour.  The book is written in a very easy to read style. it has some great chapters including sauces and salsas, salads, soups, snacks and easy dishes for the grill.  If you like it spicy, this book is a definite must.

Click here for a delicious recipe from the book.

Interested in buying this book? visit - Red Pepper Books – The South African online bookshop, they will be able to offer you great prices on any book you are looking for.

Wickedfood Cooking School, Sunninghill – (011) 234-3252 sunninghill@wickedfood.co.za

Wickedfood Cooking School runs cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built cooking studios. Classes are run in the mornings and evenings 7 days a week (subject to a minimum of 12 people). The venue is also popular for corporate events and private functions – team building cooking classes, birthdays, kitchen teas, and dinner parties with a difference.

Our classes are hands-on, where every person gets to participate in the preparation of the dishes. They are also a lot of fun where you not only learn new skills, but get to meet people with similar interests. For corporate groups and teambuilding cooking classes these events are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.

Remember the movie Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child, partially based on Julia Child’s memoir, My Life in France. In the movie Julie set herself the task of  cooking every dish from Julia Child’s book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1 originally published more than 40 years ago. Fortunately the book has recently been re-printed, with all 524 recipes.  It leaves nothing to chance, packed with sumptuous recipes, detailed instructions, and precise line drawings.  Some of the instructions look daunting, but as Julia herself says in the introduction, “If you can read, you can cook”.

The book is aimed at both the seasoned cooks and beginners who love good food and long to reproduce at home the savoury delights of classic French  cuisine, from the historic Gallic masterpieces to the seemingly artless perfection of a dish of spring-green peas. This beautiful book, with more than 100 instructive illustrations, was in its time revolutionary in its approach because it:

• leads the cook infallibly from the buying and handling of raw ingredients, through each essential step of a recipe, to the final creation of a delicate confection;
• breaks down the classic cuisine into a logical sequence of themes and variations rather than presenting an endless and diffuse catalogue of recipes; the focus is on key recipes that form the backbone of French cookery;
• adapts classical techniques, wherever possible, to modern  conveniences;
• offers suggestions for just the right accompaniment to each dish, including proper wines.

Although the book has been written primarily for the American market, it is nonetheless highly informative.

Click on the links below for two delicious recipes inspired by the book:

Beef Bourguignon

Coq au Vin

Interested in buying this book? visit - Red Pepper Books – The South African online bookshop, they will be able to offer you great prices on any book you are looking for.

Wickedfood Cooking School, Sunninghill – (011) 234-3252 sunninghill@wickedfood.co.za

Wickedfood Cooking School runs cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built cooking studios. Classes are run in the mornings and evenings 7 days a week (subject to a minimum of 12 people). The venue is also popular for corporate events and private functions – team building cooking classes, birthdays, kitchen teas, and dinner parties with a difference.

Our classes are hands-on, where every person gets to participate in the preparation of the dishes. They are also a lot of fun where you not only learn new skills, but get to meet people with similar interests. For corporate groups and teambuilding cooking classes these events are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.

Jamie will try real American food and meet the most interesting cooks and producers that this vast country has to offer. His epic journey will take him to the heart of America: its people, culture, music and, most importantly, its food. Along the way Jamie will be getting his hands dirty – meeting hunters, cowboys, fishermen and local producers – as he finds out about the best (and strangest) ingredients on offer. He won’t just be sampling, he’ll be getting involved: entering a gumbo ‘throw-down’ in Louisiana, fishing in California and sampling bison in Montana as he joins life on a ranch.

As well as being a visually stunning journey Jamie’s America  is a practical cookbook, with each chapter focusing on the food and recipes of a different state. And the food will be as varied as the landscapes – from spicy Mexican in the desert to freshly caught Alaskan salmon. With 120 brand new recipes, and Jamie’s diary narrative running alongside, this will be a celebratory cookbook of a country with a wide food heritage.

It seems that Jamie never stops writing books and one thing I realized is that he could probably still write another 5 books and there would still be room for more. Cooking is an ever changing game and there is always room for growth and experimentation so what could be seen by some as a totally strange thing to eat – take alligator for example would be the staple diet to another group of people. In this book, Jamie gets in to the homes of the average American to see exactly how they eat, and is strangely surprised to see that America isn’t just fast food, hill billies and Jerry springer..

Interested in buying this book? visit - Red Pepper Books – The friendliest online bookshop under the South African sun, they will be able to offer you great prices on any book you are looking for.

Wickedfood Cooking School

Sunninghill – (011) 234-3252 sunninghill@wickedfood.co.za

Wickedfood Cooking School runs cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built Johannesburg cooking studios. Cookery classes are run in the mornings and evenings 7 days a week (subject to a minimum of 12 people). The venue is also popular for corporate events and private functions – team building cooking classes, birthdays, kitchen teas, and dinner parties with a difference.

Our cooking lessons are hands-on, where every person gets to participate in the preparation of the dishes. They are also a lot of fun where you not only learn new skills, but get to meet people with similar interests. For corporate groups and teambuilding cooking classes these events are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.

Creole is a vibrant celebration of this unique and much-loved style of cooking. The heritage of French, Spanish and African settlers, Creole cookery takes the best of these cuisines and combines them with Asian and Indian influences and native West Indian ingredients to produce a style of cooking that is rich in history and full of flavour.

Containing over 160 recipes and including some of the most famous West Indian Creole dishes, from fish and shellfish dishes to cooling punches and frappes, Creole paints an evocative picture of the food in Guadeloupe and is bursting with the sun, freshness and energy of the Caribbean.

About the author : Born in Guadeloupe, Babette learned the complexities of Creole cooking from her Grandmother and from there began her love affair with West Indian cuisine. Now a celebrity TV chef in France, she is the owner of the famous restaurant Le Table de Babette in Paris, where she offers her customers the delights of Creole cooking.

What a great read.  This book had me fascinated from cover to cover with its interesting fusion food with a whole chapter dedicated to fish and seafood from simple delights like “deep-fried spicy calamari” to more complex dishes like “deep-fried shark batons with spicy mayonnaise.” Although the book has recipes on meat, poultry, desserts, etc… it’s clear that Barbette’s passion is on fish and seafood and with dishes looking like those in her book I can’t wait to give them a try as they look like the perfect treat to be snacking on while sipping beer and relaxing on some deserted beach off the Caribbean sea.

The WickedFood Chef

Wickedfood Cooking School

Sunninghill – (011) 234-3252 sunninghill@wickedfood.co.za

Wickedfood Cooking School runs Johannesburg cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built cooking studios. Cooking lessons are run in the mornings and evenings 7 days a week (subject to a minimum of 12 people). The venue is also popular for corporate events and private functions – team building cooking classes, birthdays, kitchen teas, and dinner parties with a difference.

Our classes are hands-on, where every person gets to participate in the preparation of the dishes. They are also a lot of fun where you not only learn new skills, but get to meet people with similar interests. For corporate groups and teambuilding cooking classes these classes are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.