Book Review - 'Starters' by Shane Osborn
Starters by Shane Osborn, published in hardback by Quadrille, priced £18.99.
With two Michelin stars to his name, acclaimed Australian chef Shane Osborn is a man who should know about customers' eating habits. According to Osborn, who is the head chef at swanky London restaurant Pied a Terre, people are increasingly choosing two starters when dining out and often ordering a selection of small, lighter dishes, rather than the traditional three-course blow-out.
Like many Michelin-starred eateries, Osborn's own restaurant offers a special tasting menu, which has proved popular, and many of the dishes are featured in his first book, appropriately entitled Starters.
"At the start of a meal, appetites are at their keenest and most receptive to new taste experiences," says the Antipodean chef in the short introduction to this surprisingly simple and well-designed collection of recipes.
Cookbooks from Michelin-starred chefs can often be complicated, labour intensive and simply too cheffy, but Starters is an exception to the rule. OK, so dishes such as foie gras parfait with poppy seeds; crab and salmon tortellini in ginger crab bisque; and asparagus tagliatelle with morel cream and chervil may fall into the posh restaurant bracket, but the majority of recipes in the book will look very much at home on the menus of gastro pubs.
Rather than overcomplicating dishes with difficult-to-source, expensive, luxury ingredients, Osborn's dishes are deceptively simple. The quality of ingredients is paramount and it's refreshing to see that he allows them to have a starring role, rather than being crowded out by too many elements on the plate. Although the recipes are for starters or canapés, most of the dishes are easily up-sized to main courses and a useful panel on each page gives instructions on how to achieve this. Osborn's salads are exceptional - I can't wait to try the cep, artichoke and broad bean salad or the warm salad of rocket and lamb with garlic crisps - as are soups such as truffle and white bean or wild mushroom and parsley broth. Other stand-out dishes include oxtail and lentil ragout with root vegetables, seared salmon with cauliflower purée and an open ravioli of rabbit with mustard sauce.
Released in November, Shane Osborn's Starters was slightly overlooked in the pre-Christmas rush, but there are enough timeless recipes in the book to make it stand proud alongside some of its big-name competitors for years to come.
