Review: Homecooked: seasonal recipes for every day

I fell in love with Homecooked at first sight. Like anyone who is in love, I can find myriad reasons for my new passion. It’s everything I want and admire in a cookbook: fresh ideas, simple food, seasonality, honesty and a wealth of easily accessed or grown New Zealand ingredients. Most importantly, it’s filled with lovely writing that’s expressed with clarity and is often very funny.

For too long the cookbook genre has been cast aside from the serious and/or highbrow sector of modern New Zealand literature. That changed at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards this year when Hiakai by Monique Fiso took out the treasured prize for illustrated non-fiction writing.

But that award-winning culinary treasure trove of modern Māori cuisine is the antithesis of Homecooked, which is a truly practical book filled with simple recipes featuring everyday ingredients from the modern pantry. Whereas Hiakai is almost a reference for indigenous ingredients and is serious and scholarly, Corry has a light touch that make for great reading and easy cooking.

I think of Corry as a young, fresh version of the epitome of British food writers, Nigella Lawson. They share a journalistic background that underpins their narrative and exhibit deeply-trained enquiring minds well versed in the art of communication. They’re also both mothers who feed families while managing to entertain close friends with delicious food. Corry might make an excellent television host too, but that’s in the future.

Right from the first page, Corry made me feel hungry and I quickly found myself marking almost every single page “must try this.” The book is well organised; helpfully divided by the four seasons, with each focussing on readily available seasonal ingredients appropriately worked into recipes.

It’s refreshing to see recipes so well written that there is not the need for glossy photography. Roughly about one quarter of the recipes are accompanied by photographer Carolyn Robertson’s lovely images but never fear, Corry’s writing instantly fires the imagination to taste, rather than see, the food. As it should for it’s been a long time since any local food writer has dared to present food in this manner – a bold move in times when we’ve become used to seeing every recipe in full colour.

Corry dives into an exploration of exactly what New Zealand ingredients are, well explained in the excellent introduction to her book. Continue on and it becomes clear that she has gone where few other food writers (exceptions like the legendary Lois Daish spring to mind) think of going. Along with the obvious seasonal ingredients that grow in our gardens and farms, she sneaks in some terrific subjects for her recipes. I particularly liked the inclusion of recipes, grouped together, for the seemingly ordinary tinned fish, sweetened condensed milk, a can of Doris Plums, (the syrup manages to also steal its way into Corry’s recipe for a red cabbage slaw) frozen peas and our national taonga, whitebait.

There are fine tips along the way, always cleverly worked into her recipes, and often with a fresh wit that made me chuckle aloud. Her five ways to peel and chop an onion without tears is hilarious and then defaults to the very good method she learned from her high school home economics teacher.

As summer approaches I am keen to cook everything in her eggplant section, especially the roasted eggplant with whipped feta; to serve my friends a plate of Black Forest sandwiches, which will be a welcome relief from the cake of the same name, and to indulge in of all of her summer drinks and the fresh salads.

It is also refreshing to see that locally grown meat and fish get their day in the sun in this book while the chicken section, with great recipes and ideas, is outstanding. My other favourites are the fennel section with truly delicious recipes and I await the fig season as using fig leaves under a roast chook is beyond brilliant. It’s a very well balanced book too with equal weighting to light vegetable centric meals and some utterly toothsome desserts and baking recipes.

The very first recipe I tried was the French crumpets. How inspiring is that twist on French toast? My 3-year-old grandson declared it his best meal ever! That’s a great example of how Corry has absolutely captured New Zealand home-cooked food today.

There are none of the current obsessions with the Middle East and very few flavours of Asia in her recipes yet when she does stray into those cuisines, she does so with flair and, most often, well-made connections and attributions to those who inspired her. I really cannot recommend this book highly enough to everyone who enjoys to both read and cook.

Reviewed by Lauraine Jacobs