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Books for cooks

You would not believe the weather in Melbourne today!  It's real witches on the heath stuff - gusting winds and lashing rain.  Just awful!  We are supposed to be going to a rugby league match tonight, accompanied by The Little Princess, but it's really not weather to be going out with babes in arms, so her mum and I may just stay at home with her!  I could sit and watch her all day, she's just so beautiful!  And that's just not beauty in the eye of the beholder - she really is a beautiful wee girl!


If The Little Princess decides to have a snooze (unlikely) I can spend my evening looking at my latest purchase - a book about cooking with chestnuts.  I love chestnuts and can thoroughly recommend Mr Gaucho's chestnut risotto.  It's delicious!  Anyway, I bought the book at probably the most amazing book shop I have ever been to.  It's all cookery books, old and new.  Books for Cooks is in Gertrude Street in Collingwood and has rooms full of cookery books stacked floor to ceiling.  About 30,000 apparently - and it certainly looks like it!  It's just amazing.
Needless to say there were books on every conceivable type of cookery.  This shelf had lots of good books on dairy and gluten free cooking.  I saw so many familiar titles on the shelves.  I do have masses of cookery books at home.  Seeing so many of them today was rather nice - I have always tended to think of my cookery books as a bit like old friends!

If you are not planning a trip to Melbourne in the foreseeable future then we do have our very own Books for Cooks in the UK (no relation to the other one).  It's an equally enjoyable bookshop in Blenheim Crescent, just off Portobello Road in London.  I haven't been there for years but I am sure it is as good as ever, and it has the added bonus of the testing kitchen at the back of the shop - an excellent place for a delicious lunch or snack.
Today I was absolutely delighted to find an old paperback copy of a Rose Eliot book I had years ago and unaccountably lost!  It has a wonderful recipe in it for walnut pate en croute and I've been looking for that book for years.  So what with that and the book on chestnuts I've had rather a good day - despite the weather!

Comments

  1. Shame about your weather there....it is too hot for me here in good old UK....not used to it, and have already had to start watering in the garden! Chestnut risotto sounds fun. What else goes in it?

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