Taste is a truly original look at food and cooking. Apart from the essential fact that everything is told in Pictures, graphic illustrations or Infographics, it isn’t a recipe book. A collaboration between Laura Rowe and Vicki Turner, this is a book stuffed with foodie facts to make you think, trigger your imagination and create something a little different from your ingredients.
Laura Rowe is an experienced food and drink writer, having written for Word Of Mouth the Guardian’s foodblog, Olive magazine, and edited the Guild Of Food Writers magazine. In addition to the theory she is also a home economist working with several celebrity chefs creating the – “Here’s one I made earlier.” Vicki Turner is a British designer and illustrator with a passion for the natural world. As well as working with Disney/Pixar, Cartoon network, Surfers Against Sewage and the RNLI her projects have been featured in Elle Decoration, The Telegraph and Grand Designs.
“Taste is meant to be a starting point, a beginners guide to being a foodie”
This is where you’ll discover the perfect proportion of filling to bread for a Reuben, an Elvis or the best fish finger sandwich; how many calories the average Brit eats on Christmas day (you’ll be staggered) or how to best savour a courgette, grated, peeled, sliced or spiralized. Explore the permutations of pesto or make a fabulous hummus with a great pictorial recipe.
Have you secretly always wanted to make a sourdough starter and revel in fabulous homemade bread or do you throw away too much stale bread? Turn it into a salad, pudding or layered casserole. Bluff your way in honey with a vibrant double page spread, or discover the name for all those curious pasta shapes. Taste has the answers.
Flip to the back of the book and indulge in cocktails, raise a glass of mother’s ruin whilst taking in the silhouetted botanicals and if you find vodka a little bland, pep it up with a ferris wheel of flavours.
My only bug bear is that there is a table of contents in the front, but no index, so you do need to know whether the item you want is – From The Plot, Off The Farm, Out Of The Water, In The Larder, On The Table, From The Bar or Any Other Business. But if you’re using it to dip in and out of, this really doesn’t matter.
Taste is as much a coffee table book to enjoy and amuse your friends, as a permanent part of your cook book shelf. Fun and lively, beautifully illustrated, it fills you with facts and ‘can do’ in the kitchen.
The book is published by Aurum Press, Price £20, click here for more information.
I’m giving away one copy of this fabulous book to one lucky reader.
You need to have a UK address and fill in the rafflecopter to enter. GOOD LUCK!
To enter this Giveaway, all you have to do is the following:
1. Complete the Rafflecopter widget below to verify your entries – ONE mandatory question will appear, which you need to answer by leaving an comment to the question at the bottom of the post then follow me, @glamorousglutto on Twitter, before going back to the Rafflecopter form and hitting “Enter”. (After this, you can complete the bonus entries as explained on the form to increase your odds of winning – you can also return daily to tweet about the giveaway for more bonus entries)
2. Entries are by blog comment, Twitter, Facebook etc
3. Closing Date: 23 December 2015
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This competition is open to entrants with a UK address only. You must be over 18yrs old to enter. The closing date for this competition is 23 December 2015. The winner will be selected at random from all correct entries received. The prize is as stated: no cash alternatives are available. The winner will be selected at random by the Rafflecopter widget and you can enter via Twitter on a daily basis to have more chances of winning. The winner will be notified within 7 days of the closing date by email and must respond within 3 days to claim the prize.
More competitions at the Prizefinder
I’ve never really thought about my favourite foodie fact before, off the top of my head I’d say that bananas are easier to open from the bottom than the top.
My favourite foodie fact is that if you boil a tin of Carnation condensed cream for around three hours, it turns to smooth, sweet caramel! I discovered this when I first made banoffee pie. I just find it so surreal to be able to create thick caramel from a tin of Carnation cream.
Coconut water can be used (in emergencies) as a substitute for blood plasma
I love that it’s guide to learning how to be a foodie. We had to practice for years, didn’t we?? 🙂 Great giveaway.
This would make such a good Christmas present for a foodie. My favourite food. Depends on the day but right now I am going with plantains.
What an interesting cookbook! It would really appeal to visual readers I think 😀
This definitely looks like a book that’s good to dip in and out of and if I had a coffee table. I’d be very happy for it to sit there. Beautiful illustrations.
Hmmmm, best foodie fact. The only one I can think of is one recently told to me by a butcher that if the fat on a piece of beef is yellow, it’s from a female and isn’t as good a quality piece of meat than if it were from a bull.
Janie x
My best foodie fact is that although we have the tale of the The Gingerbread Man here, in most countries, he’s a Pancake Man! =D
I don’t really know any food facts! So would love these! <3
That peanuts aren’t nuts! They’re legumes!
Great idea for a book – in info-graphic form!
My fave foodie fact is taken from those above, I love that the Gingerbread man is known as the Pancake man in most countries!!
Too much dairy can cause acne! 🙁
Good luck to all those that can participate…the book sounds interesting.
Ketchup used to be used for healing!
Pringles once had a lawsuit trying to prove that they weren’t really potato chips.
peanuts aren’t nuts! They’re legumes!
That almost half of the worlds food is thrown away every year!
What an interesting concept. I would like it even better if it did have an index though. Despite that, it does sound like a very helpful kitchen companion xx
Hard boiled eggs are really easy to peel if you crack the shell once cooked & leave them in water for 5 mins. The shells will peel away really easily!!
Great giveaway, would love to win so I could come up with an interesting food fact! x
Ketchup was sold as medicine in the 1830s
Shellac is made from insect excretions & the red food-colouring ‘carmine’ (used in sweets!) is made from boiled cochineal beetles! ICK! I’m vegetarian so have to know this stuff :/
Lettuce is a member of the sunflower family
Carrots were originally purple!
One bee will produce as little as 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime! Gosh, I didn’t know that, makes me appreciate honey (and honey bees) a lot more!
Apples belong to the rose family
Prunes are dried plums
You can use banana skins to clean plant leaves.
Avacardos are fatening
Turkey contains the amino acid tryptophan, which forms the basis of brain chemicals that make people tired
That eating celery uses more calories than you take in
Can’t think of any foodie facts I know. This book would certainly help me with that. Merry Christmas x
A stunning prize love to win it
‘honey can be used to make beer’ mm ;D
That honey is the only food known to man which never goes off!
Bananas are tastier if you eat them “sideways”
All fruit contains sugar naturally
There are 7500 different varieties of Apple ????????????
Apples belong to the rose family, as do pears and plums.
Grapes are good for you, but full of sugar
I don’t know any food facts – sorry – this book would be good for that
The first soup was made of hippopotamus
I think mine is that ripe cranberries will bounce!
Brazil nuts and peanuts aren’t nuts! They’re legumes!