I’m excited to announce that my new book, The Cook’s Apprentice, is at the printers and will be released in October 2018!

This book was inspired by The Cook’s Companion, but this time I found myself thinking of young people just starting to cook.

The new cooks I know often have many questions about ‘how?’ and ‘what is it?’. This new work concentrates on achievable (but of course delicious) recipes, highlighting and explaining each technique as well as identifying unusual ingredients and where to get them.

I had  a curious teenager in mind as I wrote … but I know that new cooks come in all shapes and sizes, all genders, and all ages. Circumstances change in families, and sometimes even older ‘non-cooks’ find themselves becoming ‘new cooks’!

There are 54 chapters and 300 recipes. The language is straightforward and where a recipe has been transferred from some other work, I have scrutinised it to ensure that it is crystal-clear and never confuses. Each ingredient has its quirky and delightful hand-drawn image by artist and designer Evi O.

Last week I had the excitement of seeing a mockup of the final book whilst doing some short video clips for eventual social media promotion.

The Cook’s Apprentice will be available in bookstores and online from 1st of October 2018.

Available from Booktopia and Angus & Robertson.

Researchers at the University of Melbourne are looking for people aged 18–23 to take part in a new study about what young people are cooking and eating.

The What’s Cooking? study is a follow-up to the evaluation of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program that  found children who were part of the Kitchen Garden Program had better cooking and gardening knowledge, skills, and confidence, and an increased willingness to try new foods.

The new evaluation aims to find out if these changes are retained when participants become independent young adults.

All adults aged between 18 and 23 years who attended primary school in Victoria are eligible to participate in the study.

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