Real Food Projects 30 skills . 46 recipes . From Scratch by Kate Walsh

Real Food Projects by Kate Walsh is one of the more interesting cookbooks to land on my kitchen bench this season. Subtitled 30 Skills. 46 Recipes. From Scratch, is a one-stop handbook covering a range of cooking skills and recipes.

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A self-taught cook and sustainable food advocate, Kate Walsh is shining a spotlight on simple ways to transform how we cook, shop and think about food. Working on organic farms and with Slow Food
USA instilled in Kate a dedication that sparked the creation of Real Food Projects, an active community of chefs, growers, foragers, butchers and eaters. 

Challenging the idea that 'making food from scratch is too difficult', Ms Walsh invites her readers, the home cook, to make the most of a wooden spoon and few bowls, and simply get cooking. Her philosophy is that learning how to cook a few kitchen staples from scratch, using fresh local and seasonal produce, is the best way to improve our health and our food system.

'It is the very act of buying the best seasonal produce we can, and cooking fresh, real food that brings us so much joy and pleasure. Learning the magic of combining simple ingredients such as flour, water, yeast and salt to end up with a spectacular loaf of bread to share can be a revelatory act. To taste a peach at perfect ripeness and feel your tastebuds explode can be mind-blowing,' she writes.

Through a series of real food projects, readers can learn how to make granola, nut butter, cordial, preserved garlic, preserved pears, mustard, jams, pickles, chutneys, butter, yoghurt, labne, cheat's ricotta, milk kefir, no-knead bread, cornbread, pizza dough, crackers, sauerkraut, kim chi, fermented chilli sauce, kombucha, water kefir, vinegar, passata, corn tortillas, wok-smoked chicken, gravlax, sausages and strawberry shrub or vinegared fruit syrup.

Kate Walsh - self taught cook and sustainable food advocate (image courtesy Murdoch Books)

Real Food Projects by Kate Walsh, Murdoch Books, $39.99. Thank you to the publicity team at Murdoch Books for giving me the opportunity to review this title.