Larder by Orla McAndrew (Blasta Books)
Tasty bites at a brilliant book celebration.
A cookbook launch is a good place to showcase recipes to a very receptive audience: for the launch of Larder, author Orla McAndrews and her team brought peacamole with parmesan, antipasti canapé cups and little fish cakes with lemon mayo to the party. These are all delicious examples of the kind of easy, tasty and family-friendly dishes that you’ll find in abundance in this book.
There’s lots of great inspiration for anyone wanting to make the most of their own store cupboard supplies – I’ve my eye on the artichoke options and I love the idea of keeping a stash of béchamel in the freezer for occasions when a yearning for cauliflower cheese might strike you. Simple page headings – risotto, couscous, barley – belie the wealth of ideas included. That barley can become a bean and barley soup, a pearl barley, bacon and leek casserole or be transformed into roasted squash and barley salad with feta and dill vinaigrette.
As always with Blasta Books, this is a gloriously colourful little package, the appearance of which will bring joy to any chilly early-spring kitchen. It’s also a lovely example of integration within the Blasta family, with references to Wok, Tapas, Wasted, Hot Fat, Whole Fish and others scattered throughout that will make you pull out and leaf through the older books
Kudos to all the team, and to Orla who has done such a lovely job of articulating her larder-love, no-waste kitchen concepts.
Larder by Orla McAndrew is published by Blasta Books (€15). Find the whole series here.
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