Best Kitchen Basics beats the revolutionary drum in the domestic kitchen - no longer are high-end techniques or recipes the sole domain of multi-award-winning restaurants like Best's Sydney fine diner Marque and his bistros Pei Modern in Melbourne and Sydney. Here, Mark Best breaks it down, putting the individual elements of each recipe into the home cook's hands and empowering them to think differently. It includes 100 original recipes built around 30 accessible ingredients - from eggplant to pumpkin to chocolate and eggs.
Best Kitchen Basics ups the ante on the familiar. Best insists that it is not a question of luxurious ingredients, simply the knowledge and wherewithal to unlock the beauty of some of the most basic elements of cooking. He says a good cook can compose a menu walking through a supermarket. A purple salad onion has its own beauty, for example, and in good hands can be elevated beyond the ordinary. Or a parsnip usually relegated to the roasting pan or soup pot can sing as a dessert when transformed with common builder's lime.
In the case of pumpkin, he starts with a basic recipe for the ubiquitious but much-loved pumpkin soup. Explanation of basic principles and detailed technique deliver a superior version. The next step is a pumpkin custard, sweet or savoury, and requiring a little more application. And then, for the enthusiastic cook with a little more time on their hands, a pumpkin ravioli in pumpkin consomme.
