Suffolk food writer Nicola Miller looks at the latest crop of cookbooks, including The Frozen Peas Cookbook by Sam Goldsmith
Green Mountains: Walking the Caucasus with Recipes by Caroline Eden (Quadrille Publishing Ltd £28)
Green Mountains: Walking the Caucasus with Recipes completes Caroline Eden’s book trilogy that began with Black Sea, published in 2018, followed by Red Sands in 2020.
Eden intended to start her walk in Dagestan in the North Caucasus, an autonomous region in southern Russia.
Putin's despotic war with Ukraine meant that time in Russia felt unconscionable - and high risk.
So, a new plan emerged: she would focus on the South Caucasus beginning in Armenia and walking northwards to Georgia, ending at the Black Sea.
“As an outsider, by walking, you immediately become part of the scenery,” she writes. “You make yourself vulnerable, approachable, and more open to encounters.”
Eden’s passion and respect for people and place guide everything she does: it's glorious to witness, and reading her books allows you to become part of the scenery too.
Eden’s ability to embody place through words, recipes and imagery is unique.
Her steps are light; she does not impose, making her a conduit and advocate for the Caucasus and surrounding territories in the fullest sense.
“Food is woven through these on-foot adventures because of a very simple idea: the fact that no meal - literally no meal - can compete with what is served to you after a long walk,” she writes.
Some favourites: an Armenian Dawn cocktail made with apricots, Trout Baked with Orange and Raspberry, Jingalov Hats (herb-filled flatbreads) and Eetch, the famous Armenian bulgur salad.
A Red Tkemali (sour plum sauce) and a recipe for Gozinaki and Cinnamon Ice Cream inspired by Georgia drew my eye.
I adored an essay titled ‘Mandarins in the Snow’ with recipes for Chvishtari (Small Mountain Cheese Breads) and Bloody Marys made with Svan Salt (a blend that includes blue fenugreek, dried marigold, caraway and red pepper for which a recipe is also offered), plus recipes for Transcaucasian Trail Mix, Tarragon Pannacotta, and a Kazbek Cooler made with herbs, lemon and vodka.
There’s an amazingly comprehensive seven-page bibliography, too.
The Frozen Pea Cookbook by Sam Goldsmith (Murdoch Books, £18.99
After taking on canned tomatoes in his debut cookbook, Sam Goldsmith is back with a book about frozen peas, “the emeralds of the vegetable world” and “easily the most useful frozen vegetable”, making the point that frozen is best unless you grow your own.
Goldsmith is a food editor with years of experience in recipe development and writing for titles such as Woman & Home, Waitrose Food, Good Food, Olive, and Easy Cook.
Ergo, his recipes work and taste delicious.
This is a great cookbook for busy families, singletons and students, packed with easily achievable classics (Shakshuka, Ramen Noodles, Omelettes, Fritters).
Seasoned cooks will enjoy it, too. First of all, Goldsmith shows us how to combine canned, tinned and packeted ingredients with a few freshly-bought items to make a Quick Rustic Chicken and Bean Stew, Spring Pea Soup (I made this the day after receiving the book!) and a Macaroni Cheese using Cheddar plus cheese triangles or spreadables.
Other sections include one-pot meals, family feasts and sweet recipes.
Here are some standouts: Ravioli with Sage Butter using store bought pasta and a Tuna and Pea Pasta described as a “holiday pasta dish - a recipe for which you don’t need to buy all the usual storecupboard staples” and therefore ideal for holiday rental kitchens; a Jewelled Couscous; Chicken Peasar Salad, which uses peas in the dressing as well as the salad; Cheesy Peas Pasta because it's pink and green and a Norwegian-esque Fish Soup (also pink and green); Green Goddess Salad (because its name reminds me of that bendy fitness lunatic from eighties breakfast tv); Minty Peas with Warm Cucumber Ribbons, and a Pea Cake with Coconut frosting (genius!).
Breaking Bread: How Baking Shaped Our World by David Wright (Aurum £18.99)
David Wright is a third-generation baker from Woodbridge who coordinates workshops at Pump Street Bakery and presents, writes and advocates for the British baking industry.
Breaking Bread is a meaningful book.
It’s fresh, moving, baldly honest, personal and - if a book can be described as artisanal (and I’m drawing from Wright’s definition of artisanal as “an admission that its quality is defined by the person who makes it”) - then yes, this book qualifies.
This is not a recipe book but an insight into a private world, where much of the work happens while customers sleep. Baking for a living can be lonely; it most certainly is hard, and Wright does not shy from describing the impact on his well-being.
Bread is dichotamous: romanticised to a ridiculous extent yet degraded by industrial production methods.
Too many people cannot afford to buy good bread, or it is no longer available where they live.
“My love for bread is not based on it being perfect but for all its imperfections, and although I will suggest in this book that the baking industry is broken, it doesn’t stop me from loving it,” he writes.
“The conclusions I draw in this book are personal ones, informed by my life experiences, based on information gleaned from conversations. . . For most, the starting point was a question I'd asked of myself: what do you think of when you think of bread?”
Wright breaks this weighty question down via ten perspectives in ten chapters that explore his relationship to bread and, in turn, its relationship with humanity and the planet.
He discusses the weaponisation of bread and grain supplies by governments as an effective tool of war in Ukraine; the science and art of breadmaking; our identities as bread eaters and the social currency of bread; uses the story of Frankenstein as an analogy for the impact of science and industrialisation on bread production; explores health and wellbeing and nutrition and “the impact of bread as a symbol of value” and ponders its future.
His lens is sweeping and holistic, his writing lyrical, beautiful and direct. Breaking Bread is a book to take your time over and return to.
Hot Date!: Sweet & Savory Recipes Celebrating the Date, from Party Food to Everyday Feasts by Rawaan Alkhatib (Chronicle Books £26)
Brooklyn-based cook, writer and artist Rawaan Alkhatib has written a cookbook so stunning that I think it might already be my book of 2025 - and we’re only four months in.
Hot Date is headspinningly rich in words and imagery, filled with date-centric recipes interwoven with personal stories, poetry and exquisite illustrations.
I am smitten by it. We kick off with an illustrated guide to date varieties (I never knew there were so many!) alongside tasting notes (the Abbada is “black, thick-textured with notes of chocolate and cream”; the Amir Hajj from Iraq is “deep amber in colour, with notes of caramel and warm spices”), followed by a section on botany, storage, stages of ripeness and a guide to Alkhatib’s commonly-used ingredients.
Recipes offer both volume and metric measurements accompanied by practical headnotes about cooking and shopping (the first recipe, for bacon-wrapped dates, advises you to ask your butcher to slice the bacon using the prosciutto setting on their slicer to get them lacily thin).
And what recipes!
I love the Grilled Dates in Grapefruit and Paprika Oil and the Duck & Date Jam Sandos in the party section. For breakfast, Alkhatib offers us recipes for Eggy Breakfast Sandwiches with Date & Olive Tapenade, Date & Cream Scones with Whipped Lemon-Vanilla Butter, hot-pink Dragon Fruit and Cardamom Smoothies, a simple Dibs Wa Tahini (date molasses with tahini into which you dip pita) and a double-page illustrated guide to her ‘Shami Breakfast’.
Main courses range from multistage confections (Whole Roasted Cauli with Briny Olive Oil-Cured Chillies; BBQ Mushroom Steaks with Cornbread Crumbles and Labneh Ranch) to simple (Speedy Spicy Shrimp with Chilled Clementines), followed by a section on soups, salads and sides (Red Lentil Soup with Date Molasses Drizzle; Fennel Ribbons with Salty Peanuts, and Butter-Roasted Radishes with dates, capers and anchovies stand out).
The ‘Sweets’ section is dazzling: Hoky Poky made with date molasses; a Whole Roasted Pineapple Draped in Spiced Caramel; Lime and Ginger Crunch Shortbread; and a Black Dessert Cake aka “one Bonkers Cake” inspired by Black Forest Gateau but deploying saffron-cardamom flavoured coffee syrup over layers of chocolate cardamom cake decorated with ‘Halwa Floss’.
We end with ‘Drinks and Condiments’; I particularly love her Palm Springs Date Shakes and a quirky illustrated guide to the Coachella Valley (home to said shake), its food specialities, local flora and fauna and, finally, a beautiful evocation of ‘A Lover For Palestine’ by Mahmoud Darwish.
Other favourites? Jammy Chilli Date Oil, Date, Feta and Lavender Relish, and a Hot Date Butter.
Malai: Frozen Desserts Inspired by South Asian Flavors by Pooja Bavishi (Weldon Owen £27)
Pooja Bavishi is the founder and owner of MalaI, the Brooklyn-based ice cream parlour, and her first cookbook is welcomed by her long-distance fans wishing to try Malai’s extraordinary flavour sorcery at home.
“Malai. . . Celebrates Indian heritage and culinary traditions. . . for a diverse audience,” she writes, describing her customers’ joyful reactions to flavours that combine nostalgia and modernity using India’s extraordinary ingredients and culinary techniques.
Her recipes are easily followable, but you will need an ice cream maker for most of them, plus a set of American-style cups; Malai uses volume measurements.
We begin with Sweet Milk Ice Cream, the base recipe for Malai’s dairy ice cream, whose ‘caramel flavour’ is produced by cooking milk, sugar, cream cheese, double cream and honey with cornstarch.
And then the real fun begins.
Using this base and variations of (sometimes omitting the cream cheese), Bavishi offers us ice creams flavoured with jaggery, mango and cream, fenugreek with walnuts, raspberry cumin or orange fennel before seguing into sherberts made with milk and cream (Apricot Mace), and ice creams made with condensed milk or yoghurt (Guava Ice Cream with Kashmiri Chilli Powder; Raita Frozen Yoghurt Sherbert).
Ice creams are flavoured with Horlicks or Carrot Halwa and use kheer, a South Asian version of rice pudding.
I love her Orange Creamsickle Mango Dolly Ice Cream (Mango Dolly is India’s version of a creamsickle, she writes.
A creamsickle is a fruit ice-covered ice cream lolly in the US, like our Solero.)
Malai has you covered if you don’t eat dairy.
I am intrigued by her Pineapple Pink Peppercorn Ice Cream made with coconut milk because I know how challenging its development must have been; pineapple’s enzymes can have a spooky effect on other ingredients and the freezing process, and Bavishi tells us how uncertain she was about its popularity - until the launch, when it flew from the freezers.
A Spiced Peanut Crunch Ice Cream also uses coconut milk, and there are several sorbets, including one made with delicate Lychee Rose Water and another using Passion Fruit and Cilantro (coriander) and more robust flavours in the form of a Coffee Jaggery Ice Cream or a Tulsi Tea and Dark Chocolate Granita.
Sections on ice cream desserts have recipes for a Falooda Sundae (a riff on the drink) layered with rose syrup and pomegranate molasses, Fried Ice Cream Pie (a riff on American state fair culture where vendors offer unusual fried goods), and a Ras Malai Tres Leches Cake.
She hasn’t forgotten baked goods, toppings and sauces either: make the Orange Cardamom Mini Muffins, a Cherry Rose Syrup or Blueberry Cardamom Sauce, little Confetti Shortbreads with candied fennel seeds, a brittle called Peanut Chikki from Gujerat, and Jaggery Nutmeg Palmiers.
Don’t miss Part 2 of Nicola’s cookbook rundown online next month.
Follow Nicola on Bluesky: @nicmiller.bsky.social
Winner of the Guild of Food Writers Online Food Writer Award 2020
Fortnum & Mason Cookery Writer of the Year 2022
