Saturday Kitchen has become a staple of Saturday morning viewing. The show has been around since 2002 in various guises with various presenters but since 2006, James Martin has been the main presenter offering weekly cooking tips and recipes, and featuring a wealth of special guests. The show never fails to make our mouth water and just in time for the festive season 200 recipes from the show have been put together for new book release Saturday Kitchen Cooking Bible.
Featuring a foreward from James Martin, Saturday Kitchen Cooking Bible the book first gives you plenty of useful tips before you start cooking. These range from listing the kinds of ingredients you should always stock up your kitchen with to the most essential utensils you should own to make your cooking experience as easy as possible. Once you familiarise yourself with them, and in our case pop to the shops to stock up, you can start digging into all of the recipes.
The book is split into 9 main sections offering plenty of great ideas for every kind of cooking need. Whether you want to make a tasty and easy breakfast or plan a feast for the entire family, there are plenty of ideas on offer here. Whilst there are some traditional recipes there are lots of things we’d never think to cook and some really refreshing ideas to make any dinner party all that bit more impressive.
The family feasts chapter is where we found ourselves spoiled for choice. From the tasty looking spiced chicken dumpling soup through to the malai murg tikka (chicken cream tikka), there are so many dishes we couldn’t wait to try. We also loved Ken Hom’s recipe for crispy pork belly which is so easy to make and one of the tastiest joints of pork.
If you’re a fish fan there’s plenty of seafood dishes in this book. We’re not massive fish fans but the range of recipes here is truly impressive. Whether it’s something simple you want to make or something more fancy, there’s plenty to choose from. The Roast salmon, gnocchi and chestnut recipe is one example which is really easy to make and so tasty. There are lots of ideas for crab and lobster too.
Something you can never go wrong with is a good old-fashioned classic dish. Our pick of the bunch from this book is James Martin’s Classic beef and ale pie or Theo Randall’s classic lasagne. Both recipes are really simple to follow and they make an incredibly tasty dish for you to enjoy. The only section of the book we were a little disappointed with is the puddings chapter. There isn’t quite enough chocolate on offer for our liking but there’s a fantastic jam roly poly recipe with vanilla custard that is simply delicious.
At the back of the book there’s a helpful guide to wine which will help you decide on which is the right bottle for the right occasion. It helpfully points out that there is always going to be an element of taste involved when it comes to selecting wine but it does emphasise that complementing a home-cooked meal with the right wine can be really rewarding. There’s also a handy guide to what’s in season with recipe suggestions for each month of the year.
Saturday Kitchen Cooking Bible is a really great addition to your cookery book collection. We are really impressed with the variety of recipes and it’s helped us to think outside of the standard kind of meals we’d serve for various occasions. There are some old favourites mixed in with some really interesting recipes giving you plenty of choice. What more could you want from a cookbook?
