Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Jams & Preserves - another beautiful title in the Ladies a Plate series


Ladies, a Plate: Jams and Preserves

Alexa Johnston - Penguin Books NZ - $47.00

Publication 27 September.

'Books that focus on one subject are always worth having, especially when the author is Alexa Johnston . . . Her studious approach to everything in the kitchen guarantees this will be a useful guide to preserving, with some lovely old recipes and plenty of handy tips.' --Lauraine Jacobs, NZ Listener
If you have ever been disheartened by a batch of jam that just won't set, or intimidated by the thought of bottling fruit – this is the book for you.
In the latest of her Ladies, a Plate series of best-selling cookbooks, Alexa Johnston removes all fear and trepidation from the processes of making jams, jellies, pickles, chutneys and sauces – and even fruit cordials and liqueurs – and bottling fruit.

With over 100 traditional and contemporary preserves Ladies, a Plate: Jams & Preserves celebrates the pleasures and rewards of a time-honoured branch of cookery. It is a must for every cook and every kitchen. And includes a set of self-adhesive labels to use with your home preserving.

The fourth in what is proving to be an essential and truly beautiful series. A must for every NZ kitchen.

About the author:
Alexa Johnston is a writer and independent art curator. After working for nineteen years as a curator at Auckland Art Gallery, in 2002 she was curator of the exhibition Sir Edmund Hillary: Everest and Beyond for Auckland Museum. Her first book, Sir Edmund Hillary: An Extraordinary Life – a definitive biography of the legendary New Zealand mountaineer – was a finalist in the Montana Book Awards.

An enthusiastic and accomplished baker from a young age, Alexa has published three cookbooks celebrating New Zealand's culinary history. The first Ladies, a Plate (2008) won a Montana Book Award, the Publishers' Association of New Zealand  Award for Best Illustrated Book and was Recipe Book of the Year in the New Zealand Guild of Food Writers Culinary Quill Awards. This was followed by A Second Helping (2009) and What's For Pudding? (2011) and in 2012 a hardback collectors' edition of her baking recipes, Ladies, a Plate: The Collection (2012). For her latest book, Ladies, a Plate: Jams and Preserves, Alexa turns her attention to a once-essential branch of domestic cookery and makes a convincing case for bringing it back to the centre of our kitchen activities.

Alexa Johnston makes and tests all the recipes for her cook books – and takes all the photographs – in her home kitchen in Auckland.


No comments:

Post a Comment