Kitchen Garden Companion

Like The Cook’s Companion this huge book started out as an alphabetical guide to the best ways of using popular crops being grown in so many school kitchen gardens. I felt that many good gardeners needed a bit of help when it came to cooking, and many cooks certainly needed to better understand how to grow food and to increase their understanding of seasonal availability. Well it grew and grew. And I realised that this passion of mine for growing and harvesting, and then cooking and sharing was of interest to many, many families. And that many families had limited space so it had to help them too. The result is a large book, with recipes, mostly based on plant foods, and with summarised planting and cultivation notes supplied by the Senior Project Officer of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, Jacqui Lanarus.

The superb photographs are by Mark Chew and Simon Griffiths.

Growing much of my own food has given me enormous pleasure and satisfaction. I have miniature melons and lettuce amongst the roses in the front garden, carrots and broad beans pushing through in wine barrels in the back garden and the very last of the tomatoes which may or may not ripen hanging heavy against their stakes. I hope this book of mine will encourage you too.

Lantern, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2009

The Cook’s Companion

The thoroughly revised and expanded edition of this Australian classic appeared in October 2004. It contains 1100 pages of practical advice relating to more than 100 common ingredients, arranged alphabetically. For each ingredient there is information on varieties, season, selection, storage, preparation and cooking, as well as recipes and quick cooking ideas. This massive volume changed my life and, if I am to believe the steady stream of letters and contacts with readers, the lives of many others. It was a deliberate decision to include seasonal and varietal information that pertained to Australia in particular and the Southern Hemisphere in general. For too long cooks downunder had referred to European or American basic texts. It was time for our own.

I have been humbled by its reception. I am excited to think that maybe I have contributed something that has encouraged non-cooks to become cooks, men and boys to venture into the kitchen, good cooks to become more relaxed in their cooking, and perhaps most exciting of all, a work that speaks encouragingly to the very young.

First published 1996. Reprinted in a revised and expanded edition in 2004

Lantern, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2004

Kitchen Garden Cooking with Kids

Kitchen Garden Cooking with Kids tells the story of the successful Kitchen Garden at Collingwood College,started in 2001. The book has been written in collaboration with Anna Dollard, my long time friend and research assistant. It records the challenges and the milestones experienced, and offers guidance and practical advice to schools and communities interested in establishing their own kitchen garden. It also includes more than 100 recipes for real food that have all been cooked by the students at Collingwood in a format designed to encourage cooking with children either at home or in the classroom.

This book has been hugely popular in all of the primary schools that operate a Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program. But it has also gone into many homes and I continually meet both children and their parents who tell me of the enjoyable cooking sessions that have taken place at home.

Lantern, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2006

Cooking & Travelling in South-West France

‘This book is the first time I have written at length about my love affair with France. As with The Tuscan Cookbook much of the book was written whilst on a working holiday with friends, (no students this time though!), and it is at the same time a tribute to the restorative and stimulating powers of friendship’.

It celebrates the food, wine, history and culture of France’s South-West. Illustrated with magnificent photographs by Simon Griffiths, it takes you deep into the Dordogne and the Lot (also known by the old regional names of Perigord and Quercy), exploring the underground caves and the food markets and discovering the land of black truffles, foie gras and confits, prunes, mushrooms, walnuts and chestnuts. In Cooking & Travelling in South-West France Stephanie describes the rich food culture she found there during her visits over the years and shares over eighty original recipes inspired by the region. This book won Best French Cuisine book in the World, and Best Cookbook of the year in English at the 2002 World Cookbook Awards in Perigueux France. It was also awarded a special prize, Prix La Mazille International in 2002 at the Salon International du Livre Gourmand, in Perigueux.

Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, first published 2002

Stephanie Alexander and Maggie Beer’s Tuscan Cookbook

Maggie Beer and I have been close friends for more than 20 years and the holidays that we have spent together have always been wonderful. It was during one such holiday with family and friends in Umbria in 1995 that we decided that, having fallen in love with Italy, we must return for a longer stay. On the spot we began to plan some very personal cooking classes. The rest is history and this book records in detail our return to Italy in 1997, the finding of Villa di Corsano in a tiny village near to Siena, the dishes cooked, the places visited, the people who made it all happen, our responses to the glorious landscape, and our enthusiasm. It was an outstanding life experience, never to be repeated. We laugh now about the mountains of luggage, the refrigerator that froze all the food, the three flights of stone steps to be traversed for a cube of ice, the funny stories, the marvellous students, and we wonder how we did it!

The book has been very successful and has been translated into several languages, including Italian. The beautiful photography is by Simon Griffiths who came along for the last school and became one of the family.

Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, first published 1998

Stephanie’s Journal

Stephanie's Journal invites the reader on an intimate journey through Stephanie's culinary year in 1997. This is a very personal account of a year of both difficulties and promise, which saw the opening of the Richmond Hill Cafe & Larder, the closure of the celebrated restaurant, Stephanie's, and cooking schools in Tuscany with Maggie Beer. Stephanie's observations reveal an openness to experience that will delight and inspire not only food lovers, but lovers of life. A special selection of recipes is sprinkled throughout.

‘I was not to know when I started it that this would become one of the most momentous years of my life. Many critics wondered why I revealed so much of myself in this book and I had no clever answer. Just that once I had set out to record and explain there seemed no way other than to tell the truth, or most of it’.

Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, first published 1999

Recipes my mother gave me

Stephanie's strongest influence – as with most cooks – was her mother. Recipes My Mother Gave Me contains the text of her mother's 1960 cookbook, Through My Kitchen Door, with annotations and reminiscences by Stephanie and her brothers and sister.

‘My mother Mary Burchett has been acknowledged in every one of my books. She was my initial mentor and inspiration . A shy and retiring person, her passion and enthusiasm was expressed first of all in the food she cooked for the family,in the interest she showed in all things culinary, and then in her garden and her paintings and her embroidery . It was by poring over her eclectic collection of cookery books that I broadened my own culinary horizons whilst still in my early teens.

My revisiting of Mum’s text was in order to allow it to be appreciated as a special piece of Australian culinary history. Her text remains unaltered and I have added comments and thoughts that I hope expand its relevance and appeal to today’s foodlovers’.

Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, first published 1997

Paperback edition expected May 2011

Menus for food lovers

Stephanie's first book – written while Stephanie's Restaurant was in full swing – comprises 20 of her favourite menus interwoven with anecdotes and illustrations. Each is a wonderful blend of the classical, the creative, the experimental and the exotic.

In this new edition published more than 20 years later, Stephanie has included illuminating comments and reflections throughout the text that highlight for new readers just how much has changed in these twenty years.

‘Sometimes I think that nothing has changed in the world of food and then I read what I wrote in 1984 and realise that a great deal has changed. Our lives have changed too.The Dinner Party has almost disappeared although friends still enjoy simple meals together. There is less time, there is less food, there is less meat and above all there is less skill’ .

First published 1985. Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, Revised edition 2003