Heavily inspired by Betty Magazine’s lust worthy gift guide, and after much deliberation over what I will be buying people for Christmas, I thought I would put together a Christmas Gift Guide for the foodies in your life (or for yourself of course!).

These are a selection of my favourite cookbooks I love to give as gifts and one’s that are on my wish list this year!

I have also included a selection of food or food related gifts from Australian based small business that I love, to give you some extra inspiration for the festive season.

Each picture has click through link, so if you want more information about any of the books or products, click their picture.

NB: If buying online from these great small businesses, please note their Christmas delivery cut off dates so you aren’t disappointed.

Farmer - The Cookbook

WILD Adventure Cookbook - by Sarah Glover

Ottolenghi Simple - by Yotam Ottolenghi

Now & Again - by Julia Turshen

A Table in Venice - by Skye McAlpine

Greatest Hits - Katherine Sabbath

Farmer - The Cookbook, starting at $40. This book is a charity project supporting Rural Aid for farmers affected by the drought. The book is due to be released in February 2019, however there is a great Christmas gift option for $50, where you get a Gift Voucher mailed to you to give to the recipient for Christmas, and the book itself will get mailed to them come February next year. For more information check out their Chuffed fundraising page.
WILD Adventure Cookbook by Sarah Glover, $69.95. This book started as a Kickstarter project between Sarah Glover and photographer Luisa Brimble, and since then gone on to be released in the USA and is also available in bookstores here in Australia (David Jones and Booktopia to name a couple). This is a really different style of cookbook and is filled with beautiful images of food being cooked outdoors.
Ottolenghi Simple - by Yotam Ottolenghi, $34.95. I don’t know many who don’t want this book! Yotam Ottlenghi’s recipes are always fantastic and this book has an edge of comfort and simplicity, whilst maintaining his characteristic flavour combinations and interesting ingredients.
Now & Again - by Julia Turshen, $40.75. Julia’s recipes and food writing are so enjoyable, and I can’t imagine anyone not getting some good use out of this book. This book creates magic from leftovers in Julia’s trademark friendly and inviting style.
A Table in Venice - by Skye McAlpine, $46.25. This book is a dream, visually and in terms of the recipes. The photography and design of the book are stunning and would make a lovely gift for any lover of Italian food.
Greatest Hits - by Katherine Sabbath, $125. This book is like nothing else you’ve seen before! A pop-up cookbook filled with Katherine’s fun and colourful creations would be the perfect gift for any keen baker.

Rocky Road Bon Bon -Sweetness by Adora

Toasty Block-O-Choc - Bakedown Cakery

Sun Dried Smyrna Quince - Singing Magpie Produce

Real White Drinking Chocolate - Grounded Pleasures

Cornersmith Gift Voucher

Crumpet Rings - The Lost & Found Department

Rocky Road Bon Bon from Sweetness by Adora Chocolates, $12. These are the best rocky road you can get. Coming in dark, milk and white chocolate each bar contains handmade SweetMallows (Sweetness by Adora’s handmade marshmallows) along with their handmade pâte de fruit.
Toasty Block O Choc from Bakedown Cakery, $12. This chocolate bar is unlike any other - it’s caramelised white chocolate! Much more addictive than it’s regular white chocolate sibling, this bar is well worth a try. But get in quick as Bakedown are changing their chocolate offering in 2019 and Toasty will be no more! All Bakedown chocolate bars come in beautifully designed packaging so they make the perfect gift.
Sun Dried Smyrna Quince from Singing Magpie Produce, $33. You've probably heard me go on about this dried fruit before, but they are just so good! Sun dried in Monash, South Australia these quinces come from trees planted over 100 years ago, and have won many a food award, and for good reason!
Real White Drinking Chocolate from Grounded Pleasures, $12.90. I love this white drinking chocolate! White drinking chocolate can be very hard to find, but Grounded Pleasures has you covered. The chocolate is beautiful and creamy, yet not too rich and is great for a warming winter drink. It can also be used in baking and for iced drinks too. Grounded Pleasures also make a variety of other drinking chocolates which are well worth checking out.
Cornersmith Gift Voucher from Cornersmith, from $50. Who wouldn’t want to do a cooking class at Cornersmith? From bread making to pickling and preserving Cornersmith offers a wide range of classes during the year which are super enjoyable and informative.
Crumpet Rings from The Lost and Found Department, $2.50 each. The Lost and Found Department sells a range of baking ware handmade in Tasmania, and one of these products are these crumpet rings. Used to cook crumpets on the stove, these rings are a rare gem as they are otherwise extremely hard to come by! The are a great little present for any keen baker.

Toasty Bloc-O-Choc by Bakedown Cakery (stars are Christmas Limited Edition Toasty Caramel & Praline by Bakedown Cakery)

Greatest Hits The Pop Edition by Katherine Sabbath

Christmas Gift Guide for Foodies - Kulinary Adventures of Kath

Earlier this month I went to a cooking class at the Cornersmith Picklery with the Monday Morning Cooking Club (MMCC). The class was all about Jewish Comfort Food, and the day the class was held was so cold it was a perfect day to be cooking and eating warming comfort food. We all sat and watched three of the lovely MMCC ladies demonstrate each dish, then we got to sample them.

First we ate egg & onion dip with challah, a staple at the Friday night table. I have been wanting to make challah myself for years now and just never got round to it, but with the amount of it I eat I really should have had a go! The egg dip was super simple, boiled eggs grated and mixed with onions cooked until they were soft and golden with little salt and pepper. The combination doesn’t sound much, and this is probably why I’ve never tried making it before, but it was heaven. I knew I would be making both these things, very very soon.

We then had matzo ball soup, a traditional dish of Passover. I made some of my own over the Passover/Easter long weekend this year, and it was nice, but the MMCC’s one was so much better. I had used a recipe in Ottolenghi’s book Jerusalem, because it made a smaller quantity and used more herbs which I hoped would add more flavour to the soup. But I will definitely be using the MMCC’s recipe next time, as mine didn’t have nearly as much flavour as I had hoped.

We then ate brisket with a salad. Now, I haven’t eaten red meat in at least 20 years - I have never been able to stand the taste and the texture. But I did try the brisket and I didn’t mind it. The sweetness of the honey and caramelised onions was really nice, and sliced really thinly I could imagine myself eating it on a really good reuben sandwich.

Then came the Blintzes, a dish often served during the festival of Shavout. Consisting of individual crepes filled with a cream cheese filling and then baked with more cream, it was a decadent dessert and definitely worthy of the title comfort food.

As the MMCC ladies were making each dish, we heard tips and tricks they had for each recipe, sometimes learnt from the person whose recipe it had been originally or things they had worked out themselves after making it many times. The stories behind each dish were fascinating to me, as I love the history of food and the preservation of heirloom recipes. Which is of course in part why I love the MMCC so much. The stories contained in each of their books are just as interesting to me as discovering the recipes held within each book. Then the recipes themselves have opened up a whole new world of cooking and flavours for me and my family, that we now can’t live without.

To that end, and after being inspired by this wonderful class at Cornersmith, I decided the following weekend that it was finally time to make my own challah and serve it with egg and onion. Since I was cooking only for me, I made a much smaller quantity of the egg and onion, and once the challah’s had cooled I sliced them up and placed each loaf in a zip lock bag and froze them. I found they defrosted really well, and of course toasted really well too. The egg and onion also keeps well in the fridge if stored correctly.

Here are links for the MMCC’s Challah recipe and the egg and onion, but I have also included my paired down version of the egg and onion recipe here - something I have since gone on to make 3 times in about 2 weeks! For this recipe, the idea is to cater for one egg per person.

Egg & Onion

Ingredients:

x3 eggs, at room temperature

1/2 small/medium brown onion

2 tbsp vegetable oil

salt

ground pepper

Method:

Peel and dice the onion, and heat the oil in a small fry pan. Add the onion and cook on a medium heat for about 10 minutes, or until the onion is nice and soft and golden in colour.

Meanwhile, place the eggs in a medium saucepan and cover with cold tap water. Bring to the boil on a high heat, and continue to cook for a further 8 minutes once the water comes to a boil. The eggs should not be boiled for longer than 8 minutes. Once the eggs have cooked for 8 minutes transfer to a bowl of cold water.

Once the onions have finished cooking, take them off the heat and set aside.

When the eggs are cool enough to handle peel away the shells. Using a grater sitting in a wide but shallow bowl, grate the eggs into the bowl using the coarse side of the grater. Add the cooked onions to the eggs, allowing most of the oil to remain in the pan. Add a pinch of salt and ground pepper, and mix with a wooden spoon until combined and the salt has dissolved.

The mixture should lightly hold together if you try to roll it into a ball with your fingers, so if it is too dry add a little more of the oil from cooking the onions.

Serve at room temperature with slices of challah.

If not serving immediately, cover the egg and onion with plastic wrap ensuring the wrap is touching the mixture and directly covering it, not just covering the bowl.

Left overs can be kept covered in the same way in the fridge, and will last a few days.

These recipes can also be found in ‘Monday Morning Cooking Club - The Food, The Stories, The Sisterhood’ by Merelyn Frank Chalmers, Natanya Eskin, Lauren Fink, Lisa Goldberg, Paula Horwitz and Jacqui Israel (HarperCollins, 2013), pp.78 & 263.

A Christmas Gift Guide for Foodies

Monday Morning Cooking Club @ Cornersmith + Challah with Egg and Onion

Egg & Onion

recipes

Egg & Onion

Kulinary Adventures of Kath

Food Photography, Recipes & Baking