The Best Australian Cookbooks of 2023

Change the Course; Two Good Co
Fish Butchery: Mastering the Catch, Cut and Craft by Josh Niland
Ester: Australian Cooking by Mat Lindsay and Pat Nourse
Meatsmith: Home Cooking For Friends And Family by Andrew McConnell and Troy Wheeler
Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking by Emiko Davies
Rumi: Food of Middle Eastern Appearance by Joseph Abboud
Recipes for a Lifetime of Beautiful Cooking by Danielle Alvarez with Libby Travers
The Dinner Party: A Chef’s Guide to Entertaining* by Martin Benn and Vicki Wild
Sustain: Groundbreaking Recipes And Skills That Could Save The Planet by Jo Barrett
Change the Course; Two Good Co
Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking by Emiko Davies
Josh Niland
Mat Lindsay
Meatsmith: Home Cooking For Friends And Family by Andrew McConnell and Troy Wheeler
Danielle Alvarez
Joseph Abboud
Jo Barrett

Change the Course; Two Good Co ·Photo: Courtesy of Two Good Co / Daniel Shipp

A title dedicated to modern Australian cooking by a chef who helped redefine Sydney’s drinking and dining scene. Recipes from some of the country’s best chefs in a cookbook contributing to a virtuous cause. And several volumes celebrating sustainable cooking and eating. It’s been another big year for Aussie cookbooks.

It’s been a bountiful year for Australian cookbooks, with an arsenal of big-name chefs and cooks (some from our favourite restaurants, others from our TV screens) releasing recipe-packed titles. But the best of this year’s bunch went beyond offering recipes – they told important stories, illustrated the state of the industry, or tried to change how we think about cooking and eating altogether.

Any one of the cookbooks below will provide inspiration for your next dinner party, expand your kitchen repertoire, or help revitalise your culinary habits. Dig in and bon appétit.

Change the Course: A Two Good Cookbook
Struggling to choose just one cookbook? Some of the country’s finest chefs have contributed to the latest collection from social enterprise Two Good Co, which helps empower vulnerable women and those who have experienced (or are at risk of) homelessness and domestic violence. We’re talking recipes from Danielle Alvarez, Julia Busuttil Nishimura, Kylie Kwong (Lucky Kwong), Recipetin Eats, O Tama Carey (Lankan Filling Station) and even British cooking royalty Nigella Lawson. Between its orange covers you’ll find recipes for kimchi pancakes, Kwong’s famed fried eggs, various curries, cookies and more.

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Ester: Australian Cooking by Mat Lindsay with Pat Nourse
Like modern Australian cooking itself, modern Australian restaurant Ester (in Sydney’s Chippendale) is tricky to define. So, who better to write a state-of-play about the cuisine than Ester chef-proprietor Mat Lindsay, in collaboration with critic Pat Nourse? In Ester: Australian Cooking, Lindsay helps breathe new life into the foundations of home cooking and shares weekend-project recipes for the restaurant’s long-term favourites: including the blood-sausage sanga, the chicken-fat butter and the cheddar pie. Patricia Niven’s vivid photography beautifully illustrates the book; this is one to show off on the kitchen counter.

Fish Butchery: Mastering the Catch, Cut and Craft by Josh Niland
Fish buff Josh Niland’s (Saint Peter, Fish Butchery, Petermen, etc.) third cookbook continues his mission of encouraging home cooks to use every bit of a fish to enhance sustainability and reduce waste. Why not make mortadella from fish offcuts? Doesn’t it seem silly we haven’t been turning yellowfin tuna into saucissons? And why haven’t we always made our own fish fingers instead of buying them? Not only does this handy volume offer recipes that reimagine how to use 15 fish species, it also walks readers through how to break down and prepare a fish to make the most of each part.

Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking by Emiko Davies
Italy-based Japanese-Australian food writer and cook Emiko Davies grew up on her mum’s Japanese cooking, and this cookbook helps bust the myth that Japan’s cuisine is too complicated to regularly make at home. Here, Davies explains how Japanese food is steeped in the belief that simple and seasonal is best – and that the best food lets nature do the heavy lifting. Inside is a slate of recipes that speak of comfort, no matter your background: tamagoyaki (rolled egg omelette), curry croquettes, cold somen noodles with cucumber and ginger, matcha-almond cookies and a salmon and beef rice bowl. This is Davies’s first book that strays away from the Italian recipes she’s become known for – and we’re so pleased she’s given us this glimpse into her heritage.

Meatsmith: Home Cooking for Friends and Family by Andrew McConnell and Troy Wheeler
Andrew McConnell (Cumulus Inc, Gimlet, etc.) and Troy Wheeler know meat. They co-own Melbourne’s chain of upscale butcher shops Meatsmith and bring their meaty knowledge to the pages of this cookbook. The beauty of this book is that it’s not just about majestic meaty centrepieces (though there are those, too) – it’s also packed with complementary recipes for sides and desserts, as well as handy instructions for prepping classics like rib-eye steaks and steak tartare. It’s one to dig out whenever you’ve bought a beautiful piece of meat and don’t know what to do with it.

Recipes for a Lifetime of Beautiful Cooking by Danielle Alvarez with Libby Travers
Danielle Alvarez moved to Sydney to open Merivale’s farm-to-table restaurant Fred’s in 2016. Though new to the city, she quickly made a name for her rustic, no-fuss, produce-forward cooking – a style honed at Alice Waters’s legendary California restaurant Chez Panisse. This charming cookbook is stacked with more than 100 recipes tracing the influences of her life, from her Cuban roots to her childhood in Florida, her time cooking in California and Sydney, and her love of Italian and French cuisines. It’s a handbook for dinner parties or midweek cooking at home. And unlike so many other cookbooks, you should be able to find all the ingredients at your local supermarket, making it especially approachable.

Rumi: Food of Middle Eastern Appearance by Joseph Abboud
The cheeky subtitle of Joseph Abboud’s new cookbook is a nod to what lies within: a series of recipes and essays informed by his Lebanese background – but by no means straitjacketed by it. Like his Melbourne restaurant, Rumi, his cookbook proffers non-traditional takes on dishes from Lebanon and the wider Middle East, including Persian meatballs, a three-cheese sigara (similar to burek), lamb shoulder and the self-explanatory The Quail That Anthony Bourdain Ate. The magic of this book is that Abboud has really ensured these are recipes you can achieve at home. Even if you don’t plan on cooking from it, it’s a warm, irreverent read.

Sustain: Groundbreaking Recipes and Skills That Could Save the Planet by Jo Barrett
Who doesn’t want to save the planet? Chef Jo Barrett (Little Picket, Lorne) does. She’s made sustainability a hallmark of her career – most notably when she lived in Future Food System, a self-sustaining, zero-waste house and farm that popped up in Melbourne’s Federation Square in 2021. Her first cookbook continues the sustainability theme, with recipes not only designed to make you think harder about where your food comes from and how best to utilise each ingredient, but that you’ll also actually want to cook. Alongside dishes like stuffed potato cakes, plum galette and venison pie, the book provides the building blocks you need to continue conscious eating and cooking habits, including instructions for fermenting and preserving.

The Dinner Party: A Chef’s Guide to Entertaining by Martin Benn and Vicki Wild
‘Tis the season for entertaining – and Martin Benn and Vicki Wild, best known for their seminal Sydney restaurant Sepia, are pros at hosting. As its title suggests, this volume is heaving with hot tips for your next dinner party: from prepping in advance, to soundtracks, drinks pairings and the recipes themselves. And nine menus – including fancy feasts, Italian-inspired soirees and more relaxed fare – take the thinking out of what to serve. Chef Benn’s food at Sepia was notoriously beautiful and this book is similarly gorgeous, perfectly evoking those long, heady nights at the dinner table with your closest mates.

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