Having just completed her 10th cookery book, food writer and stylist Michele Cranston turns her attention to her time at Marie Claire magazine – she was food editor there for five years – celebrating the last decade at that famous institution and monthly women's magazine that was first published in France, although it has obviously been published in a number of different languages throughout the world.
Containing Cranston’s personal anecdotes from her time in the cookery business – as well as being a journalist she has worked as a chef in various restaurants and in the food industry – in short snappy sound-bites, the book’s 250-odd recipes are divided into sections such as spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
Inside the book’s cover there is also a selection of coloured sticky notes and a writing pad to help one note and mark one’s favourite recipes. The best of the recipes that are beautifully photographed include berry breakfast trifle; chocolate and cinnamon breadcrumbs with berries with yoghurt; feta cheese and spinach fritters; witlof (from the chicory family ) and celery with boiled eggs; asparagus and artichoke salad; marinated lamb and spinach open sandwiches; corn fritters; lobster salad with brown butter and capers; Asian-style vegetable salad; lemon risotto with seared prawns; chicken meatballs; piquant buffalo mozzarella bites; black bean salsa with tortillas; rack of lamb with spinach and white beans; burger with beetroot slices; seared lamb with almond salad; spiced duck breast; baked ricotta with a tomato herb salsa; tofu, broccolini and almonds; lamb curry; barramundi fillets with ginger butter; Sichuan pork with an orange fennel salad; maple-baked pork fillet with an Asian salad; pink grapefruit sorbet with morello cherries; coconut pavlova with banana and passion fruit; peach and fig semifreddo; chocolate, cardamom and date puddings; and fig and filo parcels with a pomegranate syrup. Overall, a colourful repackaged collection of some of the best recipes from the last decade in Marie Claire that are not overly complicated or difficult to prepare.
