Blasta Books series – serie

For Orla McAndrew, a busy working mum of three who loves to cook but still needs to feed her family while spinning lots of other plates, a well-stocked larder is her secret weapon.With over 100 quick and easy recipes packed into this small but mighty book, Larder will help you stock your pantry, fridge and freezer with the useful staples you need to make good food fast.

Facundo Rodulfo and Pam Neumann are the dynamic duo behind Tango Street Food in Killarney, County Kerry. Originally from Buenos Aires, they want to share not only the flavours of their homeland, but also their love of fostering cultural awareness and togetherness through food. In Tango, Facundo and Pam showcase a fusion of Argentine and Italian street food-style recipes. Each recipe is a testament to the power of food to transcend borders, connect people and create community. From their famous beef empanadas and stuffed pizzas to family favourites such as Argentine shepherd’s pie and chocotorta, Tango brings a fresh new way of sharing Argentine food culture to everyone’s table.

Nestled among the southern streets and river walls of Cork City is the award-winning Café Izz, run by beloved couple Izz and Eman Alkarajeh.Serving top-quality Palestinian food, including the always-popular manaeesh, steaming fresh pittas, traditional homemade desserts and rich coffee, Café Izz has become a much-loved destination in the heart of Cork’s food community.In Jibrin, named after Eman’s family hometown in Palestine, Izz and Eman share recipes that will take you on a culinary journey of their homeland, with recipes including perfectly tender roast chicken (musakhan), bite-size dumplings (shishbarak), stuffed pickled aubergines (makdous) and the syrupy, cheese-stuffed pastry cake nabulsi kunafa.

Aoife McElwain is a messy cook, but she’s managed to go from chaos to craic in the kitchen, and that’s what her book, Messy, will help you do too.With simple recipes interspersed with musings on how to harness the joy of cooking, this book is for anyone who’s tired of the cult of busyness and the lie of perfectionism or whose inner critic follows them into the kitchen.

If you take the five basic flavour profiles – sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami – then add the basic contrasts of a successful dish – smooth, crunchy, zingy, fatty, crispy – you soon realise that using pickles in your cooking can lay down some excellent funky beats.Having a range of pickles and preserves in your fridge is akin to your Spotify playlists: you can scan through them and, depending on your mood, use them to add verve to your dishes and your day. For Caitlin Ruth, when it comes to pickles she’s looking for taste, a contrast of flavours and a good way to make a funky dish.There are few dishes that can’t be improved by the addition of a pickle – and few fruits and vegetables that can’t be thrown into a jar in a 10-minute pickle project. With suggestions for how to eat and serve each pickle and tips on how to use them in surprising ways (think pickle-brined fries or a pickle zhoug), Caitlin puts the fun into funky to pack your plate with flavour.

The whole-catch approach underpins everything Aishling Moore does at her Goldie seafood restaurant in Cork City. She wants to serve the fish that had previously been thrown back and to convert the wary to fully fledged seafood lovers.Determined to take whatever was landed and to use as much of that as possible, not to mention building up a larder for days when bad weather meant there were no boats out, Aishling had to get creative. That philosophy is reflected in Whole Catch, which shows you how to cook seafood from gill to fin.With musings on sustainable seafood and regenerative aquaculture, illustrated step-by-step instructions on how to prepare whole fish and pro tips for how to cook fish at home, Aishling challenges the idea of the ‘catch of the day’ and will change how you think about seafood.

Agak-agak (pronounced aga-aga, with a silent k) is a Malaysian saying that means ‘guess-guess’ or ‘use your instincts’. In this book, Sham Hanifa has translated those instincts into easy-to-follow recipes that pack in all the flavour of his diverse heritage, which includes Chinese, Thai, Indian and Malay influences.  This multicultural background is reflected in Sham’s food, from Thai basil beef and the Malaysian comfort food classic of chicken rice to his grandmother’s famous crab laksa and Sham’s own renowned lamb rendang.  With instructions on how to make many dishes out of one batch of spice paste, satay sauce or chicken broth and clever cooking tips for how to plan ahead to get two different meals out of the same ingredients, Agak-Agak packs a big flavour punch into a little book.