Hardcover. Navy cloth binding with silver title on the spine.

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For conditions, please view our photographs. A nice clean copy from the library gathered by the famous Cambridge Don, computer scientist, food and wine connoisseur, Jack Arnold LANG. ‘A feast is a shared occasion and a joyous affair. Feasting to me implies richly coloured, laden platters. It means generosity, hospitality and friendship. Many feasts are made of absolutely delicious, homely dishes. Stories are very important in order to understand who we are and where we have come from.’ This is a book about sharing pleasure. It’s about how the experience of eating is a way of looking at the world. As a traveller Stephanie Alexander is always seeking new tastes and new flavours; by translating them into workable, delicious feasts she is able to share the memory with all its happy associations. Feasts and stories draw on a very broad palate, from settings in countries as varied as France, Italy, England, Greece, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Australia. It celebrates eating and food, how people live, what makes their life exciting, and how food is linked to events of significance. It demonstrates Stephanie’s interest in both understanding traditional ethnic boundaries and in absorbing culinary details of various cultures into what is her own very personal style. 

Review: Stephanie Alexander must have the same tastebuds as me – never have I found in one book so many recipes for things citrus and quince and wonderful french sauces. This is definitely a drag-out-of-the-burning-house item for me. This book represents the collected weekend columns that Stephanie Alexander wrote during the 1980s for an Australian newspaper. Though not such a famous name in Britain, she has been a well known restaurateur and food writer in Australia for several decades. This book contains chapters such as ‘Confits and Birds’, ‘Snips, Snails and Oxtails’ and ‘A Few Nice Tarts’, each with accompanying anecdotes. The enthusiastic cook may be tempted to skip straight to the recipes, but I found myself fascinated by the wealth of entertaining and useful detail. One feels as if you are being told the author’s life story, but that it just happens to revolve around food. The style of food presented in the book reminds me of Elizabeth David’s fantastic book ‘French Provincial Cooking’, and in fact Ms. Alexander cites this as well as other material by authors including Marcella Hazan and Jane Grigson. However, recipes for things like Balinese chicken, lamb tagine and okra curry also reflect Australians’ love-affair with food from all over the world.

The recipes are mostly not low maintenance, everyday food. Amongst the pages are crayfish quenelles, stuffed zucchini flowers and quince tart with browned butter topping. Nevertheless, if you have the inclination, I found them impossible to make a mess of and extremely simple to follow. My only wish was that this book might have contained a few tempting photographs of the finished dishes. Otherwise – perfect!

Stephanie Alexander is one of Australia’s greatest chefs and food writers. Her world-acclaimed Melbourne restaurant, Stephanie’s, just celebrated 20 years.