Cooking

Gay Bilson, in her Plenty: Digressions on Food, is good on garnish. She describes the occasion of the queen mother’s tour of this country in 1958, during which the royal visitor ‘was offered white-bread sandwiches in the shape of Australia, with a sprig of parsley at the south-eastern tip, thoughtfully representing Tasmania’. Bilson understands, wisely, that the anecdote speaks for itself, and requires not further garnishing from her. Instead she reflects on the strange resilience of the parsley sprig, and the way it keep turning up on plates, decade after decade, as a signal to the diner that the dish had been composed by someone with an interest on how it looked on the plate; that somebody in the kitchen was taking the trouble, even if only to the extent of adding the sprig of parsley that had been sitting patiently in chilled water, waiting for its big moment.

This book in praise of the potato, the most versatile and delicious of vegetables, is one I thoroughly enjoyed. Having a penchant for the potato I am an easy mark for the creative use of this lovely vegetable.

Ms Souter shows us over and over again in this well defined book how very diversified one can be with the potato. She gives general information on the types of potato grown in Australia and those types usually available at the local markets, which type to use according to methods of cooking, and growing and storing potatoes.