Celebrate with food and wine by Victoria Heywood
Great recipes for a year of feasting and festivities
Laura Cullen
Celebrate with food and wine – Victoria Heywood [©Slattery Media Group]
Fill your year with feasts and festivities with this collection of meals, party foods and sweet treats for a range of special occasions. With recipes and wine matches for all manner of special events, from Australia Day through to Christmas, Celebrate! with food and wine takes all the stress out of catering for family and friends.
Broken into the chapters of Party Time, Australia Day, Valentine’s Day, Easter, International Celebrations, Mothers’ and Fathers’ Days, Religious Feasts, Halloween, Birthdays and Anniversaries and Christmas, Celebrate takes the stress out of event planning and puts the true focus of events back on sharing good food with the people you love.
As I write this Christmas is fast approaching and while I don’t have to cater this year, it means our annual Australia Day barbeque is not far away. And this year I’ll be offering options besides bread and sausages. Vegemite snails, orange and honey prawns, barbecued baby potato salad and liquid lamington shots are some of what I’ll be offering based on recipes from this book. Celebrate is full of why-didn’t-I-think-of-that moments. It offers recipes in situations that call for them that could easily be forgotten by the time poor cook. Generally, and in the book’s favour, the recipes are quite simple and easy to follow without the need for exotic ingredients.
Celebrate! with food and wine oozes fun and gives heaps of opportunity to involve family members in the cooking process, especially kids. For Halloween you can have the kids prepare some gruesome party treats like Slime Punch and Meringue Bones. Or the younger members of the family could even make use of the Mothers’ and Fathers’ day sections to prepare something other than burnt toast and orange juice for the annual breakfast in bed moment. Golden syrup apple hotcakes? Breakfast burritos? Chocolate Vesuvius puddings? With a bit of help surely the kids can manage a feast for the lucky recipient.
Other highlights include Apple Pie as made for the American Independence Day celebrations, beer-basted sausages for Oktoberfest, and the pumpkin based dessert Calabaza en tacha that is a traditional part of the Day of the Dead Mexican festival. Even a pumpkin and bacon risotto that has its origins in Groundhog Day is covered. Also nice are summaries for the International Celebrations section that help give a picture and history of the celebration surrounding traditional dishes.
Of course, the bonus with this cookbook is that it comes with wine recommendations by Ralph Kyte-Powell for each recipe. An exceptionally handy feature during celebratory dinners and meals.
This is a handy cookbook, one that can be kept in the top drawer and pulled out at different times of the year with no concern for a lack of recipes. You can forgive the lack of photos as the recipes are at times fun, easily achievable and relevant to the festive events encountered throughout the year. With the wine advice thrown in, this book is a very good purchase and well worth putting under the Christmas tree as a gift for someone close.
Celebrate! with food and wine written by Victoria Heywood is published in Australia by The Slattery Media Group (Melbourne, 2011; sc, 207 pp) RRP A$19.95.
Subscribers of VisitVineyards.com and Winepros Archive can purchase Celebrate! with food and wine at 12.5% discount via our book partners Seekbooks (postage extra).
Celebrate! with food and wine is also available via Booko here »
Regions
- Melbourne (VIC)
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