Features & Stories

Newsletter: 🧄 A Consuming Passion for Garlic + fabulous vintage bakes 🍰

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For the love of garlic

Kumud Ghandi is a food scientist, nutritionist, spice maestro, author and broadcaster, whose passion for garlic in all its sweet and pungent glory has inspired her to write The Garlic Story: Nourish Your Body, Delight Your Palate: Rediscover the Ancient Superfood.

Newly published and added to ckbk, the book takes us on a tour through all types of garlic and all the global cuisines in which is it such a central source of flavor.
In her new feature for ckbk, Kumud also documents just what garlic means to her.

She considers garlic one of a culinary holy trinity, with ginger and chillies. And charts its particular potency, with its 7000 year history, used in medicine and magic, as an aphrodisiac, and as currency.
Kumud’s understanding of its real health benefits, and how to use a wide range of cooking techniques to maximise its flavor potential in dishes savory and sweet, simple and complex, is testament to her understanding of this small but mighty bulb.
Give almost any dish an injection of bright flavor with Kumud’s Garlic Parsley Oil. Cannellini Beans with Sweet Paprika and Garlic make a wonderful warming lunch or side dish. Try Spicy Crunchy Garlic Tofu, for the ultimate vegan meal, with some Garlicky Fried Rice. And if you want to explore surprisingly good garlic dessert options there are top tips in Kumud’s feature here. 
 
Find all 63 recipes from The Garlic Story
Pictured above: Chicken Shish Kebab with Garlic Sauce from The Garlic Story by Kumud Ghandi

Let's Bake

Of all kitchen tasks, putting something in the oven to bake has a particular place in our hearts, and is singularly comforting. The alchemy of flour and a few other ingredients, plus the warmth of the stove, becoming bread, cake, a cookie, is one of life’s great joys. It is often one of our first as cooks. Pure and simple, baking is kitchen therapy.

We are thrilled to have The Vintage Baker: More than 50 Recipes from Butterscotch Pecan Curls to Sour Cream Jumbles newly added to ckbk.
Cookbook author and recipe developer Jessie Sheehan’s book – one of The Washington Post’s Best Cookbooks of 2018 – is an ode to classic American baking.

Gorgeously retro styled, the recipes are presented with the clarity and enthusiasm that characterises her work, and while each are put into historical context, they are also expertly tweaked to ensure the method is bang up to date.
Slice and serve a pan of Devil’s Food Sheet Cake with Sea Foam Frosting, switch it up with some Butterscotch Potato Chip Balls. Or if you want a show-stopping centrepiece, try this Coconut Blitz Torte.

If all this talk of cakes and bakes has just got you started, there’s plenty more on our Baking Bookshelf.

Ingredient focus: bananas

South East Asian in origin, the banana is a fruit that has grown to widespread global appeal and consumption. This is partly thanks to the development of plantation agriculture in banana growing countries, and its sweet, mild taste. It is also easy to peel and eat for all ages.

Although in temperate countries where bananas are imported there is rarely any diversity in variety to be found, in tropical countries where bananas are grown there is great variety, from sweet dwarf bananas, to starchy cooking bananas such as plantain.
Common yellow bananas are good to eat raw, but also take their place in sweet and savory dishes.

Once past their best, when the skins have blackened and the flesh is very soft, they are ideal for bakes. Banana Bread is hugely popular for a reason!
Start the day with Caramelised Banana Breakfast Parfait, try Chicken and Banana Korma, go all out with a Banana Cream Pie, or try any of the dishes in our collection of 12 Ways with Bananas.

6 of the best recipes with lima beans

Respect to the lima bean, there’s a day for that – April 20 is Lima Bean Respect Day. This staple food is highly nutritious and a great vehicle for flavor. Here are some of our lima bean favorites.

Pan-Seared Branzino with Lima Bean-Avocado Puree and Tarragon-Mint Sauce

from Pescan: A Feel Good Cookbook by Jacqueline King Schiller and Abbie Cornish

Fassolada (baked lima bean soup) + pickles

from Wild Weed Pie: A Lifetime of Recipes by Janni Kyritsis and Roberta Muir

Spiced Butter Bean Curry

from 30 Minute Mowgli: Fast Easy Indian from the Mowgli Home Kitchen by Nisha Katona

White Beans with Sage and Garlic

from Wood-fired Oven Cookbook by David Jones and Holly Jones

Roasted Sweet Potato & Butter Bean Salad

from Celebrate: Plant Based Recipes for Every Occasion by Bettina Campolucci Bordi

Express Leek & Bean Red Curry

from 7 Day Vegan Challenge: The easy guide to going vegan: Featuring Over 70 Tasty Recipes and Menu Plans by Bettina Campolucci Bordi
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