Abundance product reviews

I love browsing through "coffee table" recipe books - they are equally at home in a kitchen or on a shelf or tabletop in a different room as part of a display. The cover of "Abundance" is beautifully designed, with a photograph of the colourful Super Salad as its focus. There are very few words, just the minimum to indicate the book title and author together with a one-line description. There is also a person actually holding the bowl, but it took me several days before I realised she was there because the image blended into the background so effectively. I was more intent on finding the recipe to go with the photo; I found it on Page 76! And another accolade for the binding; unlike many paperback cookbooks, this one stays open at the appropriate page without trying to close up when you are in the middle of creating a culinary masterpiece.

The high standard of photography is maintained throughout the book. The shots of each dish are colourful and the food is tastefully arranged; it is clear what the recipes might look like once completed. Sometimes it is hard to imagine the end result when you are just reading a recipe; these graphics provide a guide on what to aim for. It also shows what happens when you add garnishes like chopped herbs or edible flowers; this makes it easy to substitute a different item if the suggested topping is not readily available.

I have already tried several of the recipes. Although we are not all vegetarian, Miss Eleven prefers to avoid meat. My partner and I eat vegetarian food most of the time, but are not averse to an occasional steak or fish meal! There is a wealth of variety to choose from; so far, I have prepared the Thai Pumpkin and Cashew Soup, Gnocchi with Sunshine Sauce and Pistachios, and the Pot Sticker Dumplings - largely because I had most of the ingredients already on hand. The dumplings are something I have often made in the past using prepared wrappers, but this was the first time making my own. I found them easier than I had anticipated although my shapes were not so perfect! But the result tasted good. I left out the suggested chilli sauce for the dip, however, as I knew some of the family would not like it. I just used soy sauce, sesame oil, and fresh lime juice.

Gnocchi are something else I have made in the past, albeit with a less complicated recipe. The suggestion was to use yellow capsicum and tomatoes for the sauce, but red could be used as a substitute. I went one further because I had a bag of green capsicums and red tomatoes, so my sauce colour was something of a fusion. It tasted good, so nobody minded. The sauce just wasn't sunshine - more like rainy day and cloudy sauce!

My third recipe to try was the Thai soup, and here I came unstuck. Despite following the recipe precisely, I found that the result lacked body and flavour. I added more salt, but it was still not quite right. I think the fault may have been with the pumpkin I included. This was one item I had to purchase as I did not have any at home, and I think it may have been too immature to use. I should have realised that when I cut into the skin and found it had not started to harden. No need to drop the pumpkin from a great height to split it open; this one could be cut with an ordinary table knife. Underripe pumpkin does have much less flavour and body than the mature vegetable, so I will try the recipe again some time with a new one. In the meantime, I rescued the brew by adding a couple of tins of pumpkin soup concentrate and some more coconut cream, and that did the trick.

Just one thing annoyed me about the recipes in this book. As a confessed orthographer, I respond to prose that is well written. There was a number of run-on sentences in the method sections of the recipes, and they did start to annoy me. While I appreciate that this is a practical publication and not meant to be read sequentially as one might read a novel, for people like me it does detract from the overall reading enjoyment.

The only other comment I would have would be that some of the recipes contain several ingredients which may be expensive or difficult to source in some areas. For that reason, I would use the book for special occasion cooking rather than as an everyday resource. Having said that, I am certainly looking forward to exploring more possibilities with the family. The next items I plan to try are the Stuffing Stuffed Vegetables and Hasselback Potatoes, and the Sushi with Crispy Tofu. Everyone in the family is looking forward to trying them.