Tenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds

This remarkable book is practical, touching, and charming, a tribute to the author’s father who died young but instilled in her a love of good food and especially good produce. It happens to be vegetarian but is one of those genre-crossing books which can easily find a place on the shelf of any adventurous cook.

Hetty Lui McKinnon’s father was an immigrant to Australia from Guangdong, China. He worked in Sydney’s central produce market, and filled his family’s house with the bounty thereof. McKinnon’s passion for produce is inseparable from his presence in her life, even as her creativity leads her to create dishes he might not have imagined.

Beautifully photographed by the author, Tenderheart has 22 chapters on different types of vegetables, from predictable ones like Asian greens, eggplant, and zucchini to celery (16 pages), seaweed (20 pages), and turnip and daikon (22 pages).

Abundance is more than appropriate in a vegetable cookbook, but McKinnon offers imagination as well, linking ingredients and flavors in ways we have not seen before. For example,

• Grilled baby bok choy with miso-gochujang butter and crispy chickpeas
• Charred broccoli Reuben salad
• Brussles-sprouts-instead-of-egg salad
• Fennel and black olive fried rice
• Mushroom and potato coconut chowder
• Pumpkin egg custard tarts

Many recipes are vegan, and for many which are not, McKinnon provides instructions for vegan versions. Similarly, she offers tips for making gluten-free versions of many dishes. It’s all a part of her desire to share good food, which this books helps her do very well.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.