Christopher Menz

Anyone who has dined at Annie Smithers’ eponymous restaurant in the picturesque town of Kyneton, eighty-five kilometres north-west of Melbourne, or read her food columns in TheAge, will understand her commitment to growing, sourcing, cooking, and presenting the best available local produce. She achieves this with a simplicity that belies the care and hard work needed to create culinary perfection from raw ingredients. Annie’s Garden to Table: A Garden Diary Featuring 100 Seasonal Recipes (Lantern, $49.95 hb, 256 pp, 9781921382345) reveals some of her secrets and much of the sheer slog involved in producing dishes of such quality. As the subtitle indicates, the book is arranged as a diary with recipes. Smithers presents her creations – kitchen garden notes and appropriate recipes – commencing in August of an unspecified year through to the November of the following. In this, she more than covers the full annual cycle of preparing, planting, growing, harvesting, and cooking.