Danielle Alvarez is an acclaimed chef, cookbook author and passionate advocate for simple, seasonal cooking. Having honed her craft in some of the world’s most celebrated kitchens, including Chez Panisse and The French Laundry, she went on to become the founding chef of Sydney’s much-loved Fred’s restaurant.
With three cookbooks to her name, Danielle has established herself as one of Australia’s most trusted voices in home cooking. Her approach celebrates beautiful ingredients, thoughtful techniques and the joy of sharing good food.
Her latest book, Made Simple, brings together everything she believes about cooking: that delicious, generous food doesn’t need to be complicated, and that with a little confidence and the right guidance, anyone can cook beautifully.
I wrote Made Simple for everyone who is exhausted at the end of the day and wants easy recipes that will get dinner on the table quickly and have it be packed with flavour (which I think is everyone).
Over the past several years I’ve found myself in this position perhaps for the first time ever. When you’re used to working nights in restaurants, the idea of making dinner for family, friends or yourself at home at 6pm is totally foreign. Since becoming a more or less Monday-to-Friday nine-to-fiver, that dilemma of the 5pm hangries hitting and not knowing where dinner will come from is a special kind of dilemma, and I had to be in that spot to really be able to speak to how to solve that problem with ease and grace.
This book has come from a few years of working through it and knowing which ingredients are the most reliable and accessible but still give you something delicious and elegant at the end of the day. No processed food shortcuts here, just whole ingredients.
The main thing I learned writing it was that the world has changed pretty dramatically in the last decade and people have less and less time to dedicate to cooking at home. When your brain is fried at the end of the day, looking at a lengthy ingredient list or even a long list of instructions will immediately put you off cooking. Give people confidence and tell people exactly what they need to know and exactly what they need to make it happen – no faff.
I’ve always written recipes that were about imparting maximum knowledge, maybe rooted in some historical context or about some special technique I had discovered in my career, and I still love all those recipes, but this book is not about that. This book is about helping people feel less stressed at the end of the day. And if people are less stressed about cooking, maybe they will do it more often, maybe they will invite someone over, maybe their community will expand and maybe they will find joy in it. All things that I think good food can do.
If you take one thing from this book, it should be that you really only need a repertoire of about 10 to 12 recipes that are your bread and butter and you will feel like you always have something great on rotation. Luckily there are more than 80 recipes in this book so you can certainly find 10 to 12 that you connect with and will want to make again and again. I have a good list in the book of my 10 and the ingredients I buy every week or every other week to be able to make them whenever I want.
I feel, being a professional chef, I am able to take great combinations that I’ve discovered along the way and distil them down to their essence so they are super easy to follow and delicious to eat.
You return home from a busy day at work. There isn’t much left in the tank. But you want to eat something delicious. You should make the garlic butter broccoli chicken. It’s only about six ingredients and served over rice, it’s so much more delicious than the sum of its parts. So few ingredients: chicken (breast or thigh, you choose), broccoli, garlic, butter and a few pantry staples like soy sauce and mirin, and the combination is magic – a total flavour bomb and much quicker than takeaway.
Cabbage has its own dedicated section of three recipes in this book. I think cabbage is magical because it’s super healthy, you can cook it any way you like or not cook it at all, it’s affordable and it lasts for ages! It’s always in my fridge for slaws, salads and stir-fries. I probably eat cabbage in some form at least once a day because I can find so many places for it. There are three cabbage slaw recipes in the book (one is a bit more Mediterranean with pomegranate and mint and the other two more Asian-leaning, one with coconut, fish sauce and coriander and the other with a lip-smacking miso dressing) but I also encourage people to roast it, char it, grill it or blanch it because all are equally delicious and very different.
I’d also love it if you tried one of the soups in the book. I am a massive lover of soups. I feel they offer comfort and nutrition in a way that almost nothing else can and I always feel really good after eating soup. I suggest the “any time of year minestrone” which is fresh and bright or the tomato and cannellini bean soup which relies on pantry staples. Both always get rave reviews from whoever I serve them to.
If you’re a relatively new cook, give the fennel spiced chicken and potato tray bake a go. As easy as it gets but again it delivers maximum flavour. First you bake the chicken and potatoes with olive oil, lemon, salt and honey and then when they are close to being finished you drizzle them with a fennel-seed-spiced oil that also has oregano and smoked paprika. The combination of flavours is excellent and the deep, burnished colour of the chicken (thanks to the honey and paprika) as it comes out of the oven is so totally appetising. It’s not about reinventing the wheel, it’s just about showing you how easy something really delicious can be – whether you are skilled in the kitchen or not. Serve it with one of the several slaw recipes from the book or my personal favourite with this, the wedge salad with creamy feta dressing.
If you’re looking to extend yourself a bit more, meanwhile… well, there is nothing in this book that is super technical but I would suggest the caramelised leek and cheddar tart. It is so incredibly delicious and it uses store-bought shortcrust to make the base so it’s really easy. I just suggest that because if you’re not used to working with pastry (even store-bought) you may think the filling won’t fill the tart but it will – I promise! A great vegetarian dish for any time of day.
When you’ve finished reading Made Simple I hope you’ll feel like you want to jump in and cook something. I’m not interested in making books that people will read and never cook from so the greatest compliment you can give me is making something from its pages. I would love to see this book splattered with sauce, notes in the margins and dog-eared pages. This is what food and cooking is about for me: sharing. I share all these recipes with you simply in the hope they will bring some joy into your kitchen and I want this book to earn its place on your shelf.
Images and text from Made Simple by Danielle Alvarez, RRP $45.00, out now from Murdoch Books and available at excellent independent Victorian bookstores such as Readings, Books for Cooks and Hill of Content.