Cooking As Expression Of Individuality

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30269, 23 October 1963, Page 2

Cooking As Expression Of Individuality

New Zealanders are becoming more venturesome, more experimental with their food, and as they develop a taste for meals with a difference they must look beyond the standard recipe books in their kitchen cupboards.

In “Entertaining With Kerr,” Mr Graham Kerr has met their need with a high quality publication that could have as big an impact in New Zealand today as did Mrs Beeton’s cookery book in Victorian England.

The recipes are not intended for every-day family meals; they are mainly for dinner parties when good food, good wine and stimulated conversation make up an evening’s entertainment. But the book does include useful recipes for dressing up cold meats and television snacks, for instance, which will appeal to the cook who must keep an eye on the housekeeping budget.

Every dish in the book has been adapted to suit New. Zealand conditions and the author hopes some of the recipes may become a foundation for a national cuisine that will match the quality of the country's produce.

"Good Food Is Fun” To Graham Kerr, good food is fun. His enthusiasm for cooking is infectious and the book is well worth reading for its bright discussions, which introduce the recipes, his fund of hints and reasons for doing what he does in preparing dishes. He lifts cooking from a mundane chore to a “practical means of expressing individuality As he says, every individual, deep down, loves an audience. P re-cookery Hostesses will find a short chapter on pre-cookery most valuable. It is so planned to help them enjoy preparing a meal for entertaining by allowing them time to relax before the guests arrive—assuming they have not small children to feed and put to: bed!

Pre-cookery recipes can be! picked up quickly in the de-, scriptive index by the initials: “P.C” standing before such; recipes. Ibis is something! that will be greatly appreci-l ated by the hostess in aj hurry.

Same wcenen will be reluctant to agree with his claim that cookery is a “masculine art,” though the reasons he puts forward are sound. But they will accept the bright idea that by allowing a man to practise cookery he wiiia become more appreciative of his wife’s day-to-day efforts. They will most certainly like his picture of a

husband, skilled as a cook, taking pert in the entertaining and of giving his wife a break from cooking on her birthday by setting a celebration meal before her.

A dish suggested for such a romantic meal, to be served by candleitight with the right drinks, is a chicken casserole cooked with red wine, mushrooms, ham. a bayleaf and other morsels including parsley.

Parsley Mr Kerr is keen about parsley, as his television viewers well know. He has, in fact, dedicated his excellent book to parsley and his wife.

The book, which is published by A H. and A W. Reed, is liberally illustrated with what are called “lineal garndshings” by Robert Kramer, throughout its 238 pages. The volume also carries a foreword commending it by Andre L. Simon, a wellkniown food and wine expert of London.

“Entertaining With Kerr’’ sold out in its first edition wi;liin eight day's of publication and is now being reprinted.