Plated: A lifetime love affair with food - Tina Duncan

Renowned New Zealand cook, caterer and cooking school tutor Tina Duncan has always held a deep love for cooking for others - be it around the kitchen table, at dinner parties, or catering for thousands of weddings and corporate events.

A lifetime love affair with food has finally culminated in this outstanding collection of some of the most delicious plates from Tina's sixty years of cooking. She shares how to prepare, cook and present your food for maximum effect and minimal stress, ensuring you spend less time in the kitchen and more time at the table with guests.

Plated shares Tina's deep desire to teach how easy it can be to break bread in the spirit of a life filled with love, family and friends. Each recipe comes with time-saving tips as to what can be made ahead or kept on standby in your freezer.

Whether you're just starting out, or a confident cook looking for fresh inspiration, cooking just got easier. Let Plated become your new kitchen companion.

• 130 recipes in 8 chapters (Small Bites, Soups & Starters, Meat & Fish, Salads & Vegetables, Desserts, Baking, Brunch, My Essentials)

• Each recipe includes tips on what can be made ahead, stored or frozen

• Photos of every recipe, except My Essentials

• Scattered between chapters are short stories related to food and entertaining, Tina’s life and lessons learnt

• Comprehensive resource section includes advice on catering for a crowd, her favourite kitchen tips, 9 different menu ideas - from a simple family dinner to Christmas Day, conversions and temperatures, and her favourite kitchen tools

• QR codes link to videos of Tina demonstrating some of the techniques used

Born and bred on a Canterbury, New Zealand, farm, Tina’s love for food started literally standing under her mother’s apron strings helping to cook for a family of eight. Most often that meant turning something home grown or reared into a nourishing meal for her parents and five siblings, where family time was almost always spent around the table.

Cooking full roast dinners by the age of ten and dinner parties shortly thereafter, Tina has always gravitated to the kitchen to fulfil not only her love of food, but also to share her love for others. Cooking for Tina is a love language and this book shares her greatest kitchen poetry, the recipes she has used to raise her own family around the table.

After a stint as a dental nurse, Tina travelled to the UK in the early 1970s with her sister, Paula Ryan, where she met fellow Kiwi Grant Duncan and started a family journey of her own. Tina and Grant enjoyed adventure, and their life took them from motor racing to farming, travelling and catering.

When Tina started working for renowned Christchurch chef, the late Michael Lee-Richards, in the 1990s she finally launched herself professionally into a food career. Swapping her house for a catering business over a glass of wine, Tina operated White Tie Catering in Christchurch for fifteen years, creating meals for thousands of clients.

Tina was a founding director of Savour New Zealand, a food masterclass series that brought some of the greatest chefs and food writers in the world to Aotearoa. She then found herself cooking dinner for Antonio Carluccio, Anthony Bourdain, Maggie Beer, Stephanie Alexander and Sophie Grigson, to name just a few.

Tina lives in Christchurch alongside a large family with six grandchildren and still her favourite thing to do is bring them all together around the table.

Hardcover