Fast is the very popular The Food Truck chef Michael Van De Elzen’s book that’s all about cooking for family and friends.
I’m liking
Let’s face it – there are so many levels to loving a beautiful cookbook – long before you have even contemplated making one of the recipes. This book is lovely to hold and the pictures are great – cute shots of his family and lots of pics of food i’d love to eat. I was perfectly happy to read it cover to cover with my little packet of post it flags (you know the ones – blue for fish recipes, green for veggie, yellow for poultry and red for red meat. Wait a minute – what’s the orange one for? Of course – dessert!) While it integrated lots of veg in a way that I can only hope my children will embrace one day (they eat mountains of food and then leave their veggies on the side for negotiating purposes), a lot of the recipes were really nice home-cooked-real-food versions of child pleasers such as pork sliders (we could still nostalgically call them burgers couldn’t we), cauli-mac ‘n’ cheese and sausage rolls. The few recipes I have had a crack at so far have worked out beautifully. Given I am by no means an accomplished cook I say go for it.
Things that made me go hmmmm
While I love natural real foods and cooking from scratch there are a fair few recipes that would be impossible to turn out for my family when I’m on the run. I love the look of the three-grain fried rice but the “cook the three rice varieties according to packet instructions” is incredibly alienating to a family situation. What about “stick the rice in a pot with some water and hope it doesn’t burn while you sort out some washing, deal with a battle between small boys and try to remember what you were going to cook with said rice” as an instruction?
Also – the first page of his pastry favourites are: Amaranth, Aperol, Chia seeds, Black rice, Buckwheat, Bulghur wheat, Chiogga beets, Chipotle paste and coconut cream. In my pantry you’ll find just two of those – so while i’m sure there are plenty of people who’ll get a better score than me it’s not exactly a household staples list.
The conclusion
This is a lovely cookbook. It’s a very enjoyable read and the few recipes i’ve cooked so far have gone down well with the troops.
