Masterchef New Zealand The Cookbook: Volume One

The Masterchef model has a pedigree as impressive as that of a Michelin-starred chef: having debuted on British TV screens via the BBC in 1990, the series has been spun off in multiple directions, from a celebrity version to one featuring adolescent amateur chefs. Adaptations have been produced in Australia and in the US, where this year the ferocious Gordon Ramsay will co-host.

Our own edition premiered early this year, with amateur chef Brett McGregor named New Zealand’s first Masterchef. Ratings were sufficiently robust to ensure a second series, now filming.

No celebrity chef can claim that title if he lacks a cookbook, and McGregor’s is one of the first faces you see (after that of the inimitable Simon Gault, a Masterchef judge and Auckland chef-restaurateur) when you open this dense, glossy volume. But beyond McGregor’s foreword, this Masterchef compendium is uncommonly egalitarian.

With recipes from each of the top 12 contestants, and from Gault and several other notable chefs, Masterchef The Cookbook: Volume One starkly contrasts with that other Masterchef book to hit Kiwi shelves this year, Our Family Table, the collection released by Julie Goodwin, winner of the first Australian edition.

Where Goodwin shares her own well-worn recipes, from lazy brunches to one-pot campfires meals and simple home baking, Masterchef The Cookbook is what it claims to be: a book for cooks who are at least aiming for kitchen mastery. The recipe categories reflect what is found on a restaurant menu – nibbles, entrees, degustation, mains, dessert. No chutneys, not a cake or scone in sight. A Masterchef has lofty goals, and is unafraid of chocolate, orange and pistachio marquise with poached rhubarb, raspberry marshmallow and chocolate and vanilla tuiles. To a Masterchef, a recipe containing five mini-recipes, including one for spun sugar, is but the work of a moment.

Chefs rarely view desserts as a fitting test of their talents, and the book is dominated by savoury recipes both light and heavy, from prawn and coriander dumplings to blueberry and goat’s cheese wontons and quattro formaggi pie. Meat lovers too are well-served: beef carpaccio with summer salad, parsnip chips and Bloody Mary shots; beef, bacon and Guinness hot pot pie.

Make no mistake – this is restaurant food, and person inexperienced in the kitchen would be ill-advised to embark on culinary education with Masterchef The Cookbook (though the early ‘how to’ chapters – dice an onion, joint a chicken, prepare stock and other basics – contain valuable instructions for starter chefs, and these sections are well composed).

The distinction between home and restaurant is evident in dishes such as an apple, rhubarb, prune and blueberry crumble pie. Few, at home, would faff around with pastry only to turn the whole enterprise into a crumble – but in a restaurant, or competitive cooking show, that elevation matters. (Every chef wants to stand out – and I couldn’t help but wonder how much the televised competition continued to play out in the process of submitting recipes for this book.)

Masterchef The Cookbook is a fine volume, produced with obvious care and the contributions of many talented folk. It’s best recommended to the ambitious home cook – someone good at adapting and simplifying recipes to their own style and taste – or the would-be restaurant chef. Someone aiming for Masterchef glory might use it as a test of skill.

3.5 / 5 stars: Not your everyday Edmonds.  Click here to view more Easy Mix Book Reviews. 

Our Family Table by Julie Goodwin

Seven-and-a-half-thousand people vied last year for a shot at $100,000 and a cookbook deal, with the ultimate victor emerging in the form of a 40-year-old New South Wales mother of three, amateur cook Julie Goodwin. The contest was the first Australian edition of the TV cooking show Masterchef, which proved as much of a hit Downunder as in Britain, where it originated.

The publishing prize has resulted in Our Family Table, a handsome, weighty compendium filled with family recipes, passed down through generations, and newer dishes given to Goodwin by friends and neighbours.

The tastes are doled out in an orderly, 10-chapter fashion, starting with breakfast and covering the usual suspects: side dishes, desserts, sweets, special-occasion dinners and Christmas feasts.

More inventively, a chapter titled ‘Feeding the multitudes’ contains the dishes Goodwin loves to serve to her family (there’s a spaghetti bolognese, heavy on the mince, a ‘ridiculously cheesy lasagne’, chicken parmigiana . . . do you detect a theme?), while, in a rather sweet gesture, the final chapter (‘Our family table) consists of blank pages for the recording of the reader’s own culinary treasures.

‘Wide open spaces’ was my favourite, with its recipes for the camping trips Goodwin writes about relishing as a child and now with her husband and three sons. An easy recipe for damper on a stick is accompanied by a delectable ‘Camp fire train smash’ of vegetables and a simple lemon risotto cooked in a pot over the fire.

Our Family Table could not be classified as avant-garde: it features trusty crowd-pleasers and the odd harkening-back to a 1970s dinner party (veal with mushroom sauce, cauliflower cheese). There are instructions for ‘Mum Coughlan’s passionfruit shortbread’ and ‘Grandma’s hazelnut chocolate biscuits’: comfort food rather than culinary feats.

A personal attempt at Goodwin’s great-grandmother’s six-ingredient treacle scones resulted in small, light and irresistibly tasty morsels. They were moreish without being overly indulgent, the recipe calling for just three teaspoons of butter and two tablespoons of golden syrup.

The book leaves you with a strong sense of who Goodwin is, with its quotes and cooking tips from her loved ones (‘Use the good china. Every day is a special occasion’) and personal anecdotes (she shares the trial-by-fire experience of learning to make the perfect poached egg during a stint at a Sydney café).

It is not for the would-be chef or advanced home cook; for someone comfortable with the most complex tasks of Elizabeth David or Julia Child, this compendium of family favourites would be unchallenging and I daresay uninspiring.

Rather, it can be categorized alongside the likes of the Edmonds Cookery Book as a useful and dependable resource for simple, crowd-pleasing fare. The dishes are straightforward, requiring no sophisticated equipment or cooking techniques. Such risky dishes as souffle are modified by being twice-baked, and Goodwin manages to make even the potentially intimidating crème brulee, with its call for a blowtorch, look manageable.

Our Family Table is the work of a woman who loves food and who is accustomed to finding nutritious ways to fill the bellies of growing children. For those with similar requirements it would be a smart investment, and as one of the loveliest-looking cookbooks I have seen, a harmonious addition to the shelves.

3 / 5 stars: Comfort, not cordon bleu.   Click here to view more Easy Mix Book Reviews