Whether you are looking for inspiration for this year’s Christmas catering or for a gift for a loved one, today at The Amazing Blog we’ve narrowed down three of our favourite new seasonal cookbooks just for you.
Having watched the series, and enjoyed the twists and turns of the Crawley Family on the big screen, we now have the chance to channel our inner Mrs Patmore and bring a flavour of Downton to our own humble kitchens in the form of The Official Downton Abbey Cookbook. Fans of the show will salivate over the sumptuous pages of their favourite series dripping from every page - not just full of tempting recipes, but also bon mots as can only be delivered by Dame Maggie herself, along with historical facts of catering for such a house in those times. The writer behind this surefire bestseller is Annie Gray, one of Britain’s leading food historians, who brings the stories of both the upstairs, and the downstairs to life for us in her detailed research of recipes of the period. Alongside such mouth-watering options as ‘Veal Chops Périgourdine’, which would have appeared on the upstairs menu, we have the equally tempting ‘Toad In The Hole’ which would have been served downstairs in the Servant’s Hall, both with the relevant side notes of why they would have been popular, and how the ingredients would have been sourced.
Apart from the surge of culinary excitement to try favourite recipes out, this encyclopedia of food history and knowledge will be snapped up by fans of Lord and Lady Grantham, and foodies alike. Served up at £25.00, we can all secure ourselves a slice of this delicacy from all good bookshops including Waterstones and BooksEtc here.
If you or your guests diet is more plant-based, then a festive treat comes to us from Scandinavia, Karoline Jönsson who has put together the ‘Happy Vegan Christmas’ after the success of her online cooking blog which attracts 20,000 visitors every month, and the first all-vegetarian cooking show to air on Swedish television, of which she was the host. Karoline gives us five different sections to take us through the Christmas period, including the obligatory “Leftovers”, which is a definite ‘must read’ as it not only offers up the irresistibility of ‘Sun-Yellow Energy Soup’, but also craft projects to keep us all engaged over the holidays. Priced at £14.99, and published by Pavilion Books you can find it here.
Remaining on the vegan theme, we move onto the next course on today’s menu, which is the pudding section - ‘Incredible Plant-Based Desserts’. Written by Anthea Cheng, whose blog and social media account entitled ‘Rainbow Nourishments’ has inspired this fabulously colourful cookbook to give us all options on the desserts trolley from the vegan perspective with recipes including gluten and without gluten, with refined sugar and without. With mouth-watering methods to create ‘Raspberry and White Chocolate Cookies’, ‘Baklava Custard Tart’ or the intriguingly named ‘Rainbow Pear Tart with a Cardamom Coconut Cream’, this must be high on every vegan gourmand’s wish list. The colours of Anthea’s desserts jump off the page and are very effective in drawing us in to try our hand at making them - with such a successful online presence in the marketplace, she has a firm foundation on which to build a even greater fanbase. Anthea takes us through everything we will need - not just the best ingredients, but also the correct kit required, and her book is a joy to read - the fact we get to enjoy the secrets to her success is an added and welcome bonus. Available at £16.00 from Waterstones here whether you are vegan or not, the colours of this rainbow are for everyone.