Receta Have You Eaten? - Book Review
Salted Caramel from page 246, easy to make and very versatile
If you have ever watched MasterChef Australia, you might recognise the author of an exciting new book called Have You Eaten?, which I was kindly sent to review.
I was already familiar with Billy Law (a Malaysian who is based in Australia) after following his food blog A Table For Two, where he combines his Malaysian heritage for traditional recipes with modern ideas to create amazing fusion food.
This cookbook is a little bit different from your usual run-of-the-mill cookbook. Billy did most of the food styling and photography himself, creating a quirky, beautiful book - with virtually every recipe in glorious full page colour. I really liked the layout, with some pages having white text on vibrant coloured backgrounds and other pages with black text. There are a couple of spreads showing the different, more unusual, ingredients that Billy uses in his kitchen. Some of the ingredients are a little hard to get hold of if you live in the countryside, alternatives can be used but I think it's worth making the trip to an Asian supermarket for them.
The book is divided into seven chapters, including 'Snack Attack' - little bites and finger foods, 'Over the Top' - challenging and more complex recipes, and 'Sugar Hit' - my favourite chapter, which includes home baked sweet treats and beautifully presented desserts.
Inside the book, one of the recipes I want to try
Some of the recipes I have bookmarked to try include 'Yee Sang', a salad that consists of different shredded vegetables and slices of raw fish, mixed with sauces and condiments, 'Nyonya Devil Curry', a spicy hot curry that that you will regret you ate come the following morning (!!!) and a 'No-Bake Key Lime Tart'. For the really adventurous, there's the 'Vegemite Cheesecake' recipe or the 'Avocado Ice Cream'.
One of the recipes I tried was the 'Popcorn & Salted Caramel Macarons', which was slightly different to my usual Italian macaron method, but gave me lovely cute macarons with a gorgeous salted caramel buttercream filling. I'm not quite sure if I would bother with the popcorn on the top of them again, blitzed popcorn is a bit like the static residue from those polystyrene packaging pellets.... but the filling.... OMG the filling!
- Popcorn & salted caramel macarons
- Salted Caramel Buttercream
- 100g unsalted butter, softened
- 200g icing sugar
- 4 tablespoons of salted caramel
Beat the butter with an electric whisk until the butter is pale and creamy.
Add the icing sugar a little at a time, beating until it's all incorporated.
Add the salted caramel and beat until well mixed in.
Fill a piping bag with the buttercream and pipe onto your macaron shells.
This book can be bought from Hardie Grant Books, Amazon and all good book shops.
Have You Eaten? By Billy Law
£25.00/ Hardback, 288 pages
Publisher: Hardie Grant Books
October 2012
ISBN: 978-174270381-7
Disclaimer: I received a review copy of the cookbook from Hardie Grant, but all views expressed above are my own.
This content belongs to Nic at Cherrapeno. All writing and photography copyright N Fowers © 2007-2012 unless otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.