Sometime around 2012, the phone rang. “Could we come and film in your kitchen?” No, not to film me, they said. They wanted to use it to film the new blonde. A thousand bucks would be deposited in my account, and yeah, okay, I said they could. I was churning out dozens of recipes a month for magazines at the time, but God, save me, if I had to stuff another turkey (for a magazine shoot) … so yeah, the film company could have my kitchen to film a television commercial.
And so one warm sunny day, the newly famous Chelsea Winter stood in my kitchen, bright and polished, bubbly and sparkly-eyed. She ran her hands over my Corian bench top. “It’s lovely. I want one like this.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, for intruding, I think.
“Thank you,” she said, for making her feel at home.
The television commercial was about dried herbs in packets, or something.
Some 13 years later, her latest cookbook Nourish has made me reflect on her trajectory from culinary nobody to number one cookbook seller, in fact the number one book seller, in NZ. I don’t cook her food. That’s not personal – I don’t usually cook from cookbooks because my job is to create recipes. But I am a pretty good judge of recipes and cookbooks. Nourish is a chunky 258-page soft-cover recipe book. Photographic grids on the inside front and back covers also run over the first and last pages. It’s tight – there are no blank white pages, no air, we are going straight in.
The photos are of Chelsea, tumbling blonde tresses, Chelsea eating, Chelsea with her sons, her sons eating, Chelsea with friends and kids playing; the book is packed with plenty more. Bells and whistles are few: there are two ribbons, one deep gold and the other soft terracotta, which can be used to mark your favourite page; you’ll likely have many. The paper is uncoated, the type that kindly absorbs splatters, reduces glare but softens the crispness of photographs. A matte finish also makes it easier to read text in softer or changing lighting, such as in kitchens when your eyes dart from pots and pans to the bench, to a cookbook, to a glass of wine, to the kids … although the text in Nourish, especially the ingredients, is fine and relatively small.
The book features around 90 recipes, nearly half of which are sweet. Holy smoke! Is that what she means by nourish? The retail price is $49.99. That’s about right for this sort of book, not a bargain, but not overpriced.
It opens with home-cooked dinners that’ll feed the troops and keep them coming back for more. There’s no pussyfooting around with dips and spreads and la-de-dah tidbits, it’s straight into mid-week flavour-busters such as Creamy French-style Chicken, Spaghetti & Meatballs, Slow Moroccan Lamb, Beef Hotpot, Cottage Pie and Curried Sausages. It’s a wintery, comforting mix, although the book is a spring release, and there’s nothing revolutionary here with the recipe choices. But when you look at the ingredients, you’ll notice small touches that set the recipes apart: the meatballs are nutrient-dense, packed with beetroot and carrot to keep them moist, and hemp seeds have snuck into chicken burgers. As an accompaniment to stews and hotpots, you could have a fluffy mash, she says, but you could also try cooked millet. The more you dig, the more these subtle differences become apparent, and ingredients such as coconut oil, dates, chia seeds, spelt flour, and the aforementioned millet and hemp seeds, replace sugars, fats and grains. It has been done before, but this is Chelsea’s way.
Overall, the recipe introductions are wordy, and a bubbling confidence percolates through them: “Remember the Lightning Chicken from Scrumptious? It was a smash hit, but I’ve taken it up another notch here; I get older and my recipes get better … and this one is a doozy; This recipe is going to take the country by storm – I can just tell.”
It’s her voice, self-assured, full of enthusiasm, warm and friendly, goofy and offbeat. Her dedicated followers most likely don’t mind that many of the recipes have a lengthy ingredient list with multiple steps or require prepping in advance. She’s big on things needing to be soaked, or ground in a high-speed blender before cooking begins. What she recommends today may change; it’s an evolving story, she says so herself. She writes in the Introduction, “Isn’t it interesting how life shifts and changes? I still love plant-based food, but there’s a place for everything when it is in balance.” So, meat is back on her plate along with eggs, dairy and fish.
Chapter 2 is Sweet Treats. Oh Lordy, nourish, all right, not my teeth, not my skin, but my pleasure dome. I want to eat everything. I’d eat Sunday Hotcakes on a Monday and Apple & Raspberry Crumble for breakfast, like she suggests. I’d even try a slice of Chocolate Zucchini Fudge Cake, though I hate chocolate zucchini cake.
Other chapters, including Breakfasts, Lunches, and Snacks, are bolstered by Chelsea’s ‘Basics,’ such as Magical Healing Chicken Broth and Gluten-free Flour Blend, and Celebrations, a mix of festive dishes. The final chapter, Home Remedies, features recipes for Be Well Gummies, Garlic Salve, Poultices and Cough Ease Syrup.
The book ends with Chelsea’s list of foods to celebrate and foods to be “mindful of”. One of the products she encourages readers to use is refined coconut oil for cooking because it can reach a higher temperature than other oils, including extra virgin olive oil, before breaking down (becoming toxic) but she eschews other refined oils.
Actually… I’ve cooked with extra virgin olive oil for over 50 years. I’ve never had a problem with the oil getting too hot or reaching the point of breaking down (I don’t deep-fry foods, I admit). Extra virgin olive oil doesn’t need refining, ie cleansing, bleaching or further purifying.
She is also firm on the right kind of salt. Take it all with a grain of salt, says Chelsea, specifically Celtic sea salt (imported primarily from France), but not Himalayan salt, as that may contain heavy metals.
Well, you know, shaking my head, thinking about it all, opting for local, hand-harvested sea salts and locally grown olive, avocado and nut oils will not only be good for you, I guess but they’ll help you save the planet as well. Go, Chelsea. If only she’d come back and cook in my kitchen again.
The new cookbook Nourish by Chelsea Winter (Allen & Unwin, $49.99) is available in bookstores nationwide. In recognition of her genius, ReadingRoom is devoting all week to coverage of Winter’s latest collection of recipes, which went straight to Number 1 with a bullet in the NielsenIQ BookScan bestseller chart.
Dining and Cooking