As the long lunches of summer begin to soften into slower evenings, the kitchen becomes a place not just for cooking, but for grounding, creativity, and comfort.
It’s the perfect time to turn to food books that do more than offer recipes; they invite you into new rituals, new flavours, and new ways of thinking about what and why we eat.
Whether you’re seeking inspiration for midweek meals, dreaming of faraway tables, or simply indulging in the pleasure of beautiful pages, these standout releases arriving this March deserve a place in your kitchen and on your coffee table.
UNFUSSY EATERS CLUB – MANDY SACHER
Australia’s leading paediatric nutritionist, Mandy Sacher, shows you how to raise resilient eaters with this approachable wholefoods cookbook. Say goodbye to fussy eating, sugar-laden snacks and separate meals.
Whether you’re just starting solids or navigating toddler mealtime battles, this 5-step guide gives you the tools to raise a confident, adventurous eater from the very first bite.
There’s a shopping guide based on Mandy’s own Real Food Rating system, as well as meal plans, information on food allergies, a daycare nutrition survival guide, plus ideas for sugar-free birthday parties and on-the-go essentials.
The 100 recipes are all free of added sugars and cover snacks, drinks, breakfast, main meals, staples, and birthday party treats. All recipes include guidance on how to modify them for different preferences and ages, including adults, while icons make it easy to choose recipes that accommodate allergies and intolerances.
Mandy’s delicious, nourishing recipes are designed to feed the whole family, helping you to save time, reduce stress and build lifelong healthy habits, one meal at a time.
HOME FOOD – ELIZABETH HEWSON
Forget perfection! Home Food delivers simple, comforting, sometimes nostalgic, always proudly imperfect family eating – from weeknight ease to weekend pottering.
When being tired and hungry is the default setting of adult life, we crave comfort over complexity. Food writer and columnist Elizabeth Hewson is the master of elegant ease, coaxing maximum flavour from a few simple ingredients, with recipes that have just enough ‘give’ to keep things stress-free.
Home Food is designed for our busy, imperfect lives. There’s something for everyone here, no matter what your week looks like.
If minimal effort is all you can muster? Turn to ‘Throw-together meals’. For familiar flavours with flexible shortcuts, try a ‘Realistic dinner’.
Midweek pastas’ offer quick comfort, ‘One and Dones’ will feed a crowd (and halve your washing up), and ‘Linchpins’ are the simple flavour-bombs that enhance any meal.
‘Pottering’ is for those days you might have a bit more time and want to lose yourself in the rhythm of cooking, and ‘Puddings’ – well, who doesn’t want a little bowl of happiness at the end of the day?
Uncomplicated and reliably delicious, with Lizzie’s recipes, you’ll never be stuck for a reason to stay in.
BAKE YOUR SWEET TIME – TAT EFFBY
20 bakes with variations ranging from ultra-quick through to show-stopping – by a social media sensation who demystifies baking through tutorials and jokes. What do you want to bake? How long have you got?
On a mission to make baking FUN and DELICIOUS, The Caketoonist has written her first cookbook to celebrate 20 classic treats in a variety of ways, featuring over 100 recipes. Using a treat’s classic ingredients and flavours, each chapter features multiple recipes arranged according to the time and effort involved in producing them, so you can fit the recipe to the time you have
. You can knock up a batch of biscuits and still have time to file your tax return . . . or you can fully commit to laminated croissant dough when, happily, the hen weekend of axe-throwing and group tattoos gets cancelled.
It’s quick bakes for a quick fix in a 15-minute lull; it’s mediumlength foolproof recipes for a 90-minute interlude; and it’s all-day, multi-step, big WOW bakes for when you’re lucky enough to take your sweet time over straining, proving, chilling or tempering.
Do you like to procrasti-bake? Then you’ve come to the right place: enjoy the journey and bake your sweet time.
Special Mention – SHE WHO TASTES, KNOWS – DURKHANAI AYUBI
A beautiful, expansive memoir on food as a vital bridge between cultures, from the internationally award-winning author of Parwana.
This is a story of how food connects us all – not only at the table but to each other’s cultures and histories. Durkhanai Ayubi was born in Afghanistan in the 1980s and became a refugee with her family when she was a small child.
She’s come to see her ancestral lands misunderstood as a desolate war zone of helpless people, with no history or culture worth mentioning, when the reality is that they are steeped in rich, complex histories of incredible cultural significance.
Living in Australia, Durkhanai’s only tangible connection to the histories of her homeland was through food, first through cooking with her family, and then as an owner of her much-loved, award-winning Adelaide family restaurant, Parwana.
Years on, following Afghanistan’s systemic collapse in 2021, Durkhanai realised it was time to revisit those histories and tell the previously untold stories that could help shape a more optimistic future.
She Who Tastes, Knows is an expansive history of Durkhanai’s homeland and a vivid, moving story about what it truly means to understand another’s culture.
Consider this your invitation to slow down, cook something new, and let these books become part of your own evolving food story.
