WIN Best Kitchen Basics (Closed)

Rebecca Varidel
6th Mar 2016

** This competition is now closed ** Congratulations to our winners Michelle Ngo and Eimear McKeever.

Mark Best is one of Australia’s best-regarded chefs. His multi-award winning Sydney restaurant Marque has been recognised with three hats in the SMH Good Food Guide for 10 consecutive years. International recognition includes being the recipient of the San Pellegrino and Restaurant Magazine UK Top 50 Breakthrough award in 2010 and named in their Top 100 Best Restaurants in the World in both 2011 and 2012. Marque topped the Australian contingent in Elite Traveller’s top 100 restaurants in 2014. More recently, Best has launched the bistronomy-style restaurants Pei Modern in Melbourne and Sydney, and he is the author of the well-received book Marque (2011). Now, 25 years after his first foray into the world of food, Best has established a place in the pantheon of chefs of international renown.

For Chef Mark Best, the art of cooking is to take a simple ingredient and turn it into something beautiful. With this selection of more than 90 recipes and techniques that he has developed during his 25 year career, he shares how easily this can be done.

Best Kitchen Basics ups the ante on the familiar. Mark’s philosophy is that great cooking is not a question of luxurious ingredients but it’s having the knowledge and wherewithal to unlock the beauty of some of the most basic elements of cooking. He believes a good cook can compose a menu walking through a supermarket. A purple salad onion has its own beauty, for example, and in good hands can be elevated beyond the mundane. Or a parsnip usually relegated to the roasting pan or soup pot can sing as a dessert when transformed with common builder's lime.

In addition to recipes, Mark takes readers on "skills sessions", unpacking some of the building blocks that he believes have been lost. Step-by-step guides will include the art of puff pastry, the perfect consommé, and mastering sourdough at home. Peppered throughout the book are snippets including technical detail, casual observations and stories. He also debunks myths and kitchen lore surrounding ingredients and cooking - such as searing meat to keep the juices in. His verdict - "don't do it!"

Originally inspired by a well-thumbed recipe collection left to him by his beloved grandmother Margaret Hebbard ("Little Nanna"), Best Kitchen Basics is an accessible, engaging book that will prompt cooks to take their skills and mindset to another level.

Publisher Hardie Grant Books and Sydney Scoop are giving two lucky readers the chance to win your own copy of this wonderful book.

For your chance to win a Best Kitchen Basics:

1. Like the Sydney Scoop Facebook page

2. Email (MARK BEST COOK BOOK) rebecca.varidel@gmail.com with your name, phone number and Australian postal address, and up to twenty five words about why you would like to win.

3. Entries close Sunday March 20th 2015 at 11pm.