Cookbook Corner

Project 52, BKD Cookbook Club, Christmas wish list

Nov 29, 2024

Project 52

My daughter thinks I have more cookbooks than years left to cook from them. Yes, she said that. Out loud. Given that I’m still in my fifties (okay, closer to sixty than fifty, but let’s not quibble), I happen to disagree.

That aside, I have cookbooks from which I cook extensively, others from which I read but cook rarely and a handful from which I’ve neither read nor cooked.

So when John Rieber at Bite Eat Repeat told me his wife challenged him to cook 52 recipes from 52 books in 52 weeks, I figured I could do the same. Enter Project 52.

The rules (such as they are) are simple:

If it’s a book I’ve cooked from before, this must be a new recipe.
Each book can only be used once for the challenge.
It has to be a book I own (either digital or physical) rather than one borrowed from the library.
The 52 weeks don’t have to be concurrent - which covers me off for 2025’s travel schedule

So far, I’ve cooked recipes from the following (with the usual apologies for my crap just-before-we-eat-so-really-badly-lit-and-not-at-all-styled photos…

Week 1…

The Book: Lagom, by Steffi Knowles-Dellner

The Recipe: Fish Soup

Week 2…

The Book: Vietnamese, by Uyen Luu

The Recipe: Shaking Beef with Watercress Salad and Tomato Rice

Week 3…

The Book: One Tin Bakes, by Edd Kimber

The Recipe: Peanut Butter Brookies

BKD Cookbook Club

Well, I’ve written two novels involving a cookbook club - Escape to Curlew Cottage and Christmas at Fountains Hall - so it stands to reason that I’d run one myself at some point. And you’ll find it here.

The idea is simple - it’s a place to talk about what you’re cooking and the books you’re cooking from. Once a month, we’ll review a book on a specific theme and post thoughts on it either on the BKD blog or the Facebook page.

Last month we visited Spain with José Pizarro’s Basque. Upcoming themes are:

December 18 – Tell us about your favourite Christmas cookbook – old or new. I’ll be cooking from Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Christmas

January 22—Is it time for a fresh start? Let’s talk about those books that inspire healthy eating, whether by accident or design. I’ll be cooking from either Alice Zaslavsky’s Salad Days or Mark Diacono’s Vegetables (depending on which one Santa brings me…).

February 19 – If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s the middle of winter, whereas here in Australia, it’s the most feral part of summer. I’ll split the difference and review two older books from my collection – Delia Smith’s Winter Collection and her Summer Collection.

March 19 – The season is changing, so let’s dig into our libraries for something seasonal. I’ll be cooking from The Farm Table, by Julius Roberts, but plenty of by-the-season books are out there. A few suggestions from my shelves include Home Cookery Year by Claire Thomson, A Year of Sundays by Belinda Jeffery, any of Nigel Slaters’ Kitchen Diaries or Greenfest books or From the Veg Patch by Kathy Slack.

Dear Santa…

Regular readers know I lost my best buddy in June - Kali, Adventure Spaniel and Best Dog In The World. She always left a wrapped cookbook under the Christmas tree for me and had fantastic taste in cookbooks. Anyone would think she’d read my mind.

Now she’s gone, and I’m relying on Santa to do the right thing for me.

If anyone has any influence with him, these are the books on my list this Christmas: