Verdict: Marie Claire Cooking

The Marie Claire series of cookbooks has been at the forefront of new Australian food style for a decade. Nearly every kitchen I've been in since 1998 has at least one of these poking around somewhere. They are fresh, minimalist and as least-fussy as possible.
I've decided to judge this one first, seeingas it was the first of the series, I've had it for many years and it has served me well, addicting me to Donna Hay and the ABC delicious magazines.

Most-cooked recipe: Chocolate Chip Cookies (p.164). These are easy, quick, don't call for 40 eggs or 3 kilos of sugar. They do however call for a quarter of a kilo of normal eating chocolate (Cadbury's, Lindt, etc). I have been known to double the recipe when taking to a large gathering, but instead of smashing up the chocolate like it says, to just break it into normal squares and secrete one or two inside each giant super-cookie. You love 'em or you hate 'em.

Recipe I haven't tried, but it was one of the reasons I bought the book: Tea-Smoked Baby Salmon (p. 134).
I love tea: I love salmon. Amazing that I have never made this. Doesn't look hard- you cook the salmon and then fire up a wok full of tea, blasting the salmon in a steamer over the top. Smoke, you salmon!

Rejected recipe: None.

General good things: Easy and clear sections for pasta, vegetables, meat, poultry, fruit, baking, etc. Pictures and simple steps for all recipes. No fussy instructions. The kind of cookbook that would make your 90-year-old grandmother think she could whiz up a modern feast for a hip cocktail party, or the kind you could give your cool friend who would never be caught dead cooking but likes to show off a few shiny kitchen props. These recipes won't always be modern and fresh, but they will remain appealing and makeable for a long time.

General bad things: I have issues with over-hyphenated recipe titles: tea-smoked, lemon-fried, wok-fried, pesto-crusted, sugar-grilled and so on. Sounds a little pretentious and mid-90s these days. Although to give Donna credit, she did write it in 1997, and these titles occur rarely in an index of sensibly-named, accurately-listed recipes.
I'd be proud and impressed of any friend who served up one of these funky delicacies.

Overall rating (from 20): 15