From The Urban Cook,
Mark Jensen, Murdoch Books, 2011.
Does urban mean dark?
This must be the most unappealing cookery book in my
collection. The photographs are dark; some of them so poor that you would not
even consider cooking the dish. The print is never on a white background but
always on olive-brown backgrounds making it difficult to read on some pages. I
am surprised that the design team would think that people busy trying to follow
a recipe would want to compete with small print on dark pages with overprinted
images.
The author obviously has a message about the environment. I
could tell this from the section headings but didn’t bother to attempt to read
the text on pages that were uninviting and at times not very legible.
Why they bothered with contents pages for each section I can’t understand when they are designed so that they are almost illegible. I am surprised that a book like this would come from Murdoch Books which are generally so well designed.
It took me some time before I decided to try cooking
something from the book but since I had it (it came cheap when I bought another
item) I thought I’d better try and see whether the food was better than the
wrapping.
The first thing I did was to soak the currants in hot water
so they could plump up a little while I prepared the remainder of the
vegetables: radishes, celery and yellow baby squash. When cut into small pieces
they were put in a bowl together with the drained currants.
The dressing was now prepared: Dijon mustard, lemon juice
and olive oil with seasonings. Sliced chives and mint leaves were added to the
dressing and it was folded through the vegetable mix. It was then left for
about 30 minutes before serving when some thinly sliced chillies were added to
the top.
This was a crunchy salad with a bit of bite though not a dish I
would go back to. It did, however, reintroduce me to radishes
which I don’t seem to have had for several years now. I must use them a little
more often
Taste: ✔✔✔
Ease of
cooking: ✔✔✔✔
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