MAGGIE'S TABLE

by MAGGIE BEER

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New large softcover book, first published2001, this edition published 2005, 344 pages

This book is a celebration of the life I share with Colin, our family and our friends in the Barossa. It is centred around our home, the region and its seasons, local farmers and their produce, traditional bakers and butchers who enjoy new challenges, and it is about community. The essence of that life is sharing our table. Here are over 150 recipes for you to share with those you love.

Maggie Beer is a long-time resident of South Australia's Barossa Valley. She is deeply involved in the food culture of the area as a producer, chef and enthusiastic champion of all the Valley has to offer.

Here are recipes and stories that capture the rich flavours and colours of Maggie's home. Season by season, we discover how she cooks with fresh, local produce for simple family dinners and large festive occasions. We travel with her to the local dairy for fresh cream to make ice-cream, to the butcher for smoked meats, and to the neighbouring beekeeper for delicious honey. The large wood oven in the garden is lit for baked lemony chicken and potatoes, a picnic is prepared to take to the local pine forest to search for mushrooms, and we join Maggie's husband, Colin, on a crabbing expedition in order to make classic crab cakes in the electric frypan. Come sit at Maggie's Table to celebrate the art of country cooking and to share the generosity and joie de vivre of one of Australia's favourite cooks – the marvellous Maggie Beer.

Contents include:

• Introduction
• Summer
  • A feast for sixty
  • The wood oven
  • The bakery
• Autumn
  • A vintage picnic
  • The vineyard
  • The kitchen
• Winter
  • A kitchen supper
  • The butcher
  • The pheasant farm
• Spring
  • The jinker trip
  • The beehive
  • The dairy

Maggie's Table is an Australian publication. Measurements are in metric and metric cup & spoon.

About the author:
Maggie Beer was originally a Sydney girl, having grown up in the western suburbs where her parents owned a manufacturing business. She left school at an early age, without a 'proper' education, and worked in a startling number of jobs before finding her niche.Maggie & husband Colin Beer moved to South Australia's Barossa Valley in 1973 and began farming pheasants on their new property near Nuriootpa.
Colin was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study game bird breeding in Europe and America and following their return to the Barossa Valley they opened a farm shop to sell the game birds they were breeding.
This humble shop soon grew into the famed Pheasant Farm Restaurant. The establishment of the Pheasant Farm and restaurant marked the start of a career that now spans farming, export, food production, and food writing.
After 15 busy years they decided to close the restaurant in 1993 and focus on production of their expanding range of gourmet foods, starting with the signature Pheasant Farm pate, a favourite with restaurant regulars, and in growing demand from gourmet food outlets around the country. In 1997 the then premier of South Australia, John Olson, opened Maggie's next major venture, an export kitchen in Tanunda. A state-of-the-art facility, the kitchen was purpose-built for the production of preservative-free gourmet foods for the national and international market. The range of products soon expanded, and now numbers over twenty, including meat and vegetarian pates, olive oil, verjuice, preserves, condiments and desserts. They now export to Japan, UK, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the US.

The pheasant farm was never far from Maggie and Colin's hearts however, and in 1999 they returned to both the site and the original concept of the farm shop, re-opening the premises as Maggie Beer's Farm Shop.
Maggie has written and co-written many well-loved cookbooks, including Maggie's Farm, Maggie's Orchard, Maggie's Harvest, Maggie's Kitchen, Cooking with Verjuice, and Stephanie Alexander & Maggie Beer's Tuscan Cookbook. She was co-presenter with Simon Bryant of The Cook and the Chef, seen on ABC TV, and is also a longstanding contributor of food columns to newspapers and magazines.

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Maggie's Table by Maggie Beer