Gary Rhodes' Cookery Year: Spring into Summer

Publisher and industry reviews

Jacket review

Best known for his TV cookery programmes, Gary Rhodes is also the owner and chef of two Michelin star restaurants and a proactive campaigner of British produce and cuisine. This is the first of two books where Gary takes the reader through the Spring and Summer seasons using the freshest of ingredients, those products which are at their peak of perfection. Freshly harvested fruit and vegetables, seasonal fish and meat are presented in novel, tasty recipes, gloriously illustrated with colourful photographs. Using fresh produce and highlighting their special taste, the recipes are easy to prepare involving few sauces, the freshness of the ingredients being paramount. Courgette tart, red pepper mousse and fresh herb gnocchi will whet vegetarian appetites while pot-roasted lamb, boiled ham hock and guinea fowl will get meat-lovers' taste buds flowing. Soft chocolate pudding, baked blue cheesecake and Cointreau champagne raspberries will sate those with a sweet tooth. Extra recipes for vegetable accompaniments complete the picture with to-die-for side dishes such as blood orange and chive sea kale, grilled honeyed aubergines and warm leeks with vegetable vinaigrette. Such is the standard of the food and recipes, Gary Rhodes ensures a superb dinner party or a tasty dejeuner a deux with the ease of preparation leaving the hostess plenty of time to enjoy herself with her guests.

UK Kirkus review

Written to tie in with Rhodes's television series 'Gary Rhodes' Cookery Year', this book is a joy for all of the senses. In a thriving global economy where transport efficiencies often mean that your fresh produce is better travelled than you are, it is sometimes easy to forget that food is subject to the season. Sure you can get strawberries all year round, but at what cost? Picked before their peak and force-ripened, gassed to preserve their shelf life and shipped halfway around the world - 'fresh' produce can end up tasting about as appealing as cardboard. This is a timely book that reflects on the joys of seasonal produce, with Rhodes providing mouth-watering recipes that will encourage you to shop for food at its best. Crispy wild salmon with warm lemon and tarragon mayonnaise is particularly delicious, as is the prawn and creme fraiche tart and the summer fruit family slice. With a range of recipes covering meat, poultry and desserts, fish recipes do seem to predominate, so if fish is not your favourite this may not be the book for you. But if you are looking for new ideas and some seasonal inspiration then it is ideal. The only danger with television chefs is that many of their recipes can be difficult to reproduce in a domestic kitchen, but this does not seem to be the case here. A few seem a little fiddly, but in the main the recipes are straightforward and reasonably simple, with delicious results. Each recipe includes a preamble about the main ingredients, what to look for, and when they are at their best, which is really useful. The photographs are excellent and help to identify some of the less common ingredients with which the average cook may not be familiar. Overall, an excellent book. (Kirkus UK)