Fruitful Formerly of California’s Chez Panisse and now London’s Spring restaurant and Heckfield Place in Hampshire, Sarah Johnson’s heritage of farm-to- fork cookery translates beautifully to the pages of her first book. It’s full of desserts I could eat every day – the apricot and muscat tart, and hazelnut and pear cake immediately caught my eye. There are enticing preserves such as blackcurrant conserve with rose geranium, and appealing mains like lemony chicken piccata and slow-cooked salmon with pickled rhubarb relish.
Chapters include Stone Fruit and Berries (which encourages substitution, using raspberries in place of blackberries and so on). Perhaps my favourite thing about Fruitful is the many thoughtful touches: the use of leaves (peach, fig) to embellish, season and add contrast is particularly pleasing in recipes like roasted figs on fig leaves. The recipes are punctuated by stories from fruit farmers in this inventive, elegant book.
Published by Kyle Books and (£30). Photographs by Patricia Niven. The loganberry (a blackberry and raspberry hybrid) was developed in a private garden in Santa Cruz, California.
Lemon curd tart (below). Sift Pastry chef Nicola Lamb’s first book is a masterclass in baking. Chapters like ‘All About Flour’ and ‘How To Build A Bake’ help you understand why something did or didn’t happen and what to do about it.
There’s just enough science, delivered with an incision that illuminates the invisible elements of the ba.