Just before Christmas I was given the Donna Hay cookbook titled ‘The New Classics.’
While browsing through the cookbook I was in awe of her food photography. One of my first thoughts was if the recipes were half as good as the pictures then this book would be fantastic!
My second thought was how simple things appeared (ingredient lists and the recipes themselves). It reminded me a bit of Michelle’s food shots and recipes at Bite by Michelle.
Two friends also bought the cookbook after browsing through mine and that is what prompted the birth of our Donna Hay Cookbook Night.
Our recipe for getting there…
- You have a wine meeting to go through the cookbook in detail (again) and flag all the recipes that appeal to you – most of them did.
- Determine any guests with food allergies or diets. (After Christmas, everyone is on a diet.)
- Narrowing down your recipes before your wine is gone is no small task. We would have been there for hours discussing the recipes without the wine time limit.
- Challenging the person who loves to bake to stay out of the dessert section and stretch themselves. Trying another chapter is always fun.
- Reading your recipe in its entirety is critical. Michelle taught me this. Well, actually I learned the hard way and she let me – I just like to dig in.
- Now sticking to a recipe is also very difficult (for me). I always want to tweak things before I’ve even tried the original recipe. (It may be confidence, arrogance or ignorance – or a combination of all three!). I hear my sister Michael-Ann’s voice saying ‘just make the recipe the way it should be and then tweak it’. So I did.
- We agreed to prepare our dish(es) at home, to the point of just being able to finish them at the host home.
We, the re-creators of the Donna Hay recipes, made a pact to not deviate from her recipe directions. Other than not being able to find yellow zucchini in the middle of winter, we honoured our pact.
Plus, once I fixed my problem of purchasing the wrong ingredients for the wrong recipe, I was well on my way to my chicken dish. (It’s that reading thing I was telling you about.)
These are the recipes we chose to prepare from the Donna Hay cookbook titled The New Classics and each of them was fantastic! 6 out of 6 wins!
Taking photos of our dishes and comparing them to her cookbook’s pictures was a lot of fun … as you can see (below). The cookbook pics are on the left side of the picture and our dishes are on the right. Just in case you couldn’t tell the difference. 🙂
- Cauliflower Puree pg. 220 (was served with fish; however, we eliminated the fish)
- Chinese Spice Pork Loin Rack pg. 156
- Sticky Lime and Ginger Chicken pg. 127
- Zucchinni and Mozarella Salad w/ Lemon Vinagrette pg. 268
- Porcini Gnocchi with Creamy Mushroom Sauce pg. 52
- Coconut Palm Sugar and Bananna Upside Down Cake pg. 343 (We missed this pic)
Where Did We Get the Book?
We picked up our copies of The New Classics at Costco. It is also available at Chapters/Indigo. (We couldn’t see it on Amazon except as used copies – and they were pricey.)
