When Gourmet Hot Dogs arrived in my letterbox, the first thing I had to do was wrangle it from my teenage son. Hot dogs are a firm Saturday lunchtime favourite in our house, and within minutes my teen was suggesting (read: nagging) all sorts of amazing toppings and homemade buns to up the ante of our usual cheese and tomato sauce on soft white bread.

Gourmet Hot Dogs is an impressive book (trust me, this is the first time my teen has shown the vaguest interest in any sort of cookbook), every double page spread includes a stunning photograph paired with a recipe and suggestions for gourmet toppings. And we’re not just talking about your average frankfurt here. Recipes include a range of different sausages, buns, and a whole section on the perfect side for your dog, including sauces and quick, simple relish and chutneys.

There’s a twist on the old Chilli Dog – a veal sausage paired with kidney beans, piquillos peppers and melted cheddar served with a milk bun; the Musclor Dog, made with a cervelat sausage (Reynaud gives handy suggestions for substitutes if your local butcher doesn’t have much of a gourmet range), mustard, pear (!) and brie cheese; the Capri comes with a chipolata, caperberries, cucumber and tomato pesto, while the Patate has a merguez sausage, potato, pine nuts and curry sauce.

Sound strange? Trust me – looks delish enough that this will be the first one I try.

Stéphane Reynaud is a renowned chef, and owner of restaurant Bill 9 Trois, just outside Paris. Gourmet Hot Dogs is his eighth cookbook. The others include: Pork & Sons, Terrine, Ripailles, Rotis, 365 Good Reasons to Sit Down to Eat, Pies and Tarts and Book of Tripe. If you’re looking for a cookbook that will interest the whole family, I don’t think you can go past Gourmet Hot Dogs.

*The fries! I forgot to mention the fries. And the House Potato Crisps. Oh my!

Gourmet Hot Dogs — How To Dress Your Dog With Style By Stéphane Reynaud 

‘Gourmet Hot Dogs: How to dress your dog with style is the piece de resistance of dude food, casual snacks and the family dinner table. Featuring 60 easy, tasty hot dog recipes, prepared with passion in charming French style, Gourmet Hot Dogs elevates sausages in buns from hastily devoured snacks to truly memorable food experiences through imaginative topping combinations.’

Murdoch Books

Published: August 2014

Page: 144 Pages

ISBN: 9781743363133

Price: AUD $29.99

‘Argentinian Street Food’ might be a super-cute cookbook with its simple cover and cut-out design, but don’t be fooled – it works damn hard for all that cuteness. A little on the quirky side, filled with simple step-by-step illustrations and gorgeous photographs, it’s the sort of book that will have you pouring over the recipes just for the fun of it. And then, pretty much demanding you cook from it. It’s that irresistible.

 But what I love most about Argentinian Street Food is the subject matter. Yeah, yeah, of course – FOOD – but my favourite kind of food. We’re not talking sit-down to eight courses that take three days to prepare here, Street Food is exactly what it should be: simple to prepare. Simple to hold. Simple to eat, pastries. The kind of food where you’re more concerned about the awesome conversation you’re having with the people you’re sharing that food with than which of the eight knives and forks you’re supposed to use first. In other words, this is social food. It’s fun and it’s tasty. And then there’s ice cream. Well, helados, which is kind of like Argentina’s version of gelato, but… different.

The authors, Enrique Zononi and Gaston Stivelmaher are Argentinian chefs who live and work in Paris, serving up their specialty pastries and ice cream in three different restaurants, as well as a mobile food cart that wanders through the streets of Paris. Called ‘Carrito’, the van is a tribute to the Buenos Aires of the 1950’s, serving empanadas and helados. The book starts out with the basics – how to make the two different styles of dough required for making stuffed empanadas (baked and fried).

Then, with step-by-step instructions even a first-timer can understand, it moves on to how to fill and fold the dough ‘parcels’, and, most importantly, how to ‘hem’ them to get not just a great-looking result, but a empanada that won’t leak. And then, the recipes move on to the actual fillings. For me, the first one I’m going to try cooking is definitely the Blue Cheese and Celery (with pecan nuts and mozzarella too!) though my husband is keen on checking out the Duck Confit and Foie Gras version. But it’s not just extravagant, out-there fillings included here – good old ham and cheese gets a look-in too.

Zanoni and Stivelmaher have also included a handful of ‘Pica Pica’ dishes, which are basically ‘little dishes’ – a bit of something on the side. My favourite here is the marinated beetroot with fresh goat’s cheese and chopped pistachios. Omgosh!

Finally, we get back to the helados and dulces – or confectionary. I’m passionate about making my own ice cream, and the stand-out recipe for me here is the Raspberry-Malbec sorbet. I can’t wait to try it out with some home-grown raspberries. And oh, while we’re at it, I think the Preserved Cumquats recipe just saved me the drama of marmalade this year…

Argentinian Street Food is available from April 1^st, 2014.

Published by Murdoch Books

160 pages, hardcover

ISBN – 9781743362945

RRP – $29.95

Mandy Wrangles says: The countdown is on! Only one and a bit (or a little more if you count tonight) shopping days until Christmas. If you’re anything like me – there’s that one person still on the list that you have no idea what to get them. You know who I mean. Not the one who already has everything – no, I’m talking about the one who is just too cool to buy for. The Foodie who already has All Of The Cookbooks. The Hipster with too many satchel bags. The Rockabilly Chick with a wardrobe filled to overflowing with vintage frocks and scarlet lipsticks. Well, have I got the solution for you.

Recipes For A Good Time by Elvis Abrahanowicz and Ben Milgate is the coolest, sexiest cookbook I’ve ever held in my hands (and I’m not talking sexy in the Nigella double-entendre-raised-eyebrow kind of way). I’m talking hot vintage cars, cool tattoos, rockabilly hairstyles, vintage style photographs and absolutely, utterly to die for food. From the under-stated hardcover to the texture of the paper, this is not your everyday cookbook. It’s more coffee table delight with a practical, easy to follow internal instruction guide. With diagrams!

The authors are a pair of besties who also happen to own a couple of Sydney restaurants. In their introduction, they note that the idea for their first restaurant, ‘Bodega’ came from the two of them being sick of working in fine-dining restaurants. They opened the type of eatery they’d like to go to: somewhere with great quality food and a fun environment. They wanted Bodega to be a place that played good music, where you could sit at the bar and watch the chefs at work. These days, their award-winning restaurants include the original Bodega as well as Porteño and Gardel’s Bar. You can certainly get a feel for the restaurants from the stunning photographs contained here.

The contents in Recipes For A Good Time cover topics such as ‘The Perfect Picnic’ to ‘Cooking With Fire’ to ‘Pickles & Sauces’ (which will be my personal go-to around March when my tomatoes and chillies and ripe).

Their signature dish of Fish Fingers might sound basic, but as the boys note, they don’t call them fish fingers because they’re fingers of fish – it’s because ‘you’ve gotta use your mitts’. What I love most about this particular recipe is that they’ve added four pages of variations – one with a double spread of photographs, and another double spread of illustrated, coordinating diagrams. Win! While the original recipe uses cuttlefish and sashimi kingfish, they suggest using ingredients such as mud crab, sea urchin, prawns and even…wait for it…grilled spam. Kind of makes things accessible to every level of cook, huh?

I don’t think you can go past Recipes For A Good Time as that last minute Christmas gift, and not just for the Rockabilly Chicks or the Hipster crowd or your favourite Foodie. It’s a book that will be treasured and loved for many years to come by anyone lucky enough to receive it…if you can bear to give it away and not keep it for yourself that is. I couldn’t!

Photo Credit: Anson Smart

Recipes For A Good Time by Elvis Abrahanowicz and Ben Milgate

Published by Murdoch Books (Allen &Unwin)

Hardcover, 290 pages.

ISBN – 978-1743364376

Mandy Wrangles reviews and tests Anna Gare’s new cookbook.

You probably already know Anna Gare as judge of Australian Junior Masterchef, and also as the host of Great Australian Bake-Off. She’s also the author of two cookbooks – in 2011 she released Homemade and the brand new Eat in – the best food is made at home. I have to agree with her on the title!

I love Anna’s theory that “…cooking, like love, does not have to be rocket science. It is a way of thinking, tasting and feeling that allows you to draw pleasure out of what could otherwise be ordinary. It turns a chore into a little party, or, sometimes, a big one…”

Eat in is a simple cookbook to navigate. Beautiful colour photographs accompany each recipe, which are listed under the headings: good morning!, lovely lunches, feeding family & friends, salads, what’s for dinner mum? and sweet things.

Included is a handy conversion chart – something I wish every cookbook had (I can’t tell you how much time I’ve wasted trying to convert American recipes to Australian measurements).

Recipes vary from the more exotic-sounding, such as the Quail with pistachio, orange and sage butter and Whole poached trout with celeriac rémoulade to one of my Nanna’s old favourites – Butterfly cupcakes. All the recipes are written in an easy to follow manner; there’s nothing too difficult or out of reach for the everyday home-cook.

I decided to give Anna’s Tealight chocolate mousse with pistachio praline a go as my test recipe. Now, you’ll need to read the book to get the actual recipe… but I can tell you as the first time I’ve ever made praline – it was a success.

Praline is one of those things I’ve always been a bit wary of in the kitchen; too much can go wrong (think burned toffee, burned skin, a big old messy pot to scrub…) but this was simple, everything I needed was already in my pantry and fridge, I escaped without burning anything, and the clean up was immediate with hot water. Too easy!

I didn’t have any tealight glasses handy to serve, so instead used my favourite glass tumblers that are reserved especially for desserts. And the verdict from my family? More please…

 ‘Anna Gare – Eat In – The Best Food is Made at Home’

207 pages

Text by Anna Gare

Photography by Ian Wallace

Published by Murdoch Books 2013

ISBN – 978-1742663890

Okay. Deep breath. I’m going to try really hard here to give a straight-up, unbiased review…

…but I don’t think that’s possible. I lovedlovedlovedlovedloved When We Wake by Karen Healey. It completely entranced me for the few hours it took to devour it.

The premise of When We Wake was interesting enough: Sixteen year old Tegan Oglietti is at a climate change protest when shot and killed by a badly-aimed sniper who was trying for the Prime Minister instead. Tegan doesn’t remember dying, but she remembers waking up 100 years later after being cryonically frozen and thawed. She’s the first person ever to be successfully revived, making her an instant celebrity. This doesn’t so much thrill her – she’d rather get on with the business of being a normal teenager and grieving for the family and life she left behind. School, friends, boys and the political issues that defined her in her ‘first life’ are still foremost in her mind. For Tegan, being the puppet of ‘Operation New Beginning’, the army and the scientists who raised her from the dead isn’t her idea of a fun time.

The thing is, Tegan wasn’t exactly your pliable, cookie-cutter teenager the first time around. When she died in 2027, she was not only obsessed with social issues, but music as well. And not just any old music; she loved the ancient band The Beatles. Karen Healey uses this in a novel way – each chapter is headlined by a well-known Beatles song and Tegan uses her knowledge to sing their songs in times of stress. As the first-person narrator of the story, I was sucked in by Tegan’s voice from the first paragraph. She’s strong, funny, loyal, clever and fiercely independent with a sense of empathy and compassion for others that makes her impossible not to like and cheer for.

But Tegan and her likability isn’t the big issue with When We Wake. It’s consequences. Underneath the main character’s (and secondary characters – did I mention how well formed each and every one was?) amusing and self-deprecating voice is a whole world of consequences. Literally. Things change over a hundred year period, and while I wouldn’t label When We Wake as dystopian, it comes close. Some things are better. Marriage is no longer the domain of just a man and woman. Meat and animal products are no not eaten by (most!) humans. Technology has reached the point where computers can be scrunched into a tiny ball and stuffed inside your pocket. But there’s also major climate issues; Australia has a zero immigration policy and there are new diseases to replace the old ones. ‘Illegal’ immigrants are kept in prisons up north and religious fanatics have split the church. Sounds unbelievable, huh. Oh… wait…

The majority of When We Wake is set in Melbourne, Australia, and the surrounding suburbs – which happens to be my home city. It’s obvious the author has spent time living here too. Even the college Tegan is allowed to attend is named for one of our most real and beloved philanthropists (side note – there is actually a college in the area by this name). As a science fiction novel, I possibly would have like to see a bit more science, mainly in the explanation of the revival process which is glossed over a little. But the truth is it doesn’t matter to the Tegan, so it doesn’t really matter to us either.

When We Wake is Karen Healey’s third novel, and the second one I’ve read. While the last one didn’t grab me the way this one did, I can’t wait for the sequel. This is an important book. Not just for Young Adult readers, but everyone. It will make you question your morals, your everyday decision making and your government. I think we’ll be hearing much more about When We Wake when award season rolls around.

Oh, and you neeeed to read it. Right now.