Tuesday, 06 March 2012 10:47

Cooking with rural women

Written by Pamela Tipa

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There's a real revival of interest in "growing your own", knowing where your food comes from and what it contains. For those picking up on this trend, late summer is the season for squirreling away goodies grown in the garden or picked up at farmers' markets, so they can be enjoyed long after the harvest is over.

The just released book, A Good Harvest – Recipes from the Gardens of Rural Women New Zealand, is packed with information that'll help you make the most of seasonal abundance, and explains how to grow a bumper crop in the first place.

It includes more than 300 favourite recipes collected from country kitchens across New Zealand for jams, chutneys, sauces, relishes, pestos, marinades, cakes and more.

But this is more than a recipe book. A Good Harvest takes readers from planting to plate and all the steps in between. It is arranged in chapters based on the individual fruit and vegetable, with planting and growing tips and variety choices. The book also includes step by step instructions on bottling, jam making and other preserving methods.

A Good Harvest – Recipes from the Gardens of Rural Women New Zealand is published by Random House, and is a companion volume to A Good Spread - Recipes from the Kitchens of Rural Women New Zealand (2010).

A Good Harvest, published by Random House, is available in book stores, and online from www.ruralwomen.org.nz.