A tour through Julie Van Rosendaal's cookbook shelf

In an era when you can find any recipe you want online, printed cookbooks still have appeal. Cooks like to hold them in their hand, read them like novelsand make notes in their margins.

Although there are more cookbooks than ever the list of upcoming titles for summer and fall on Amazon is over a thousand people still buy and use them. The latest crop of spring and summer releases are as beautiful as ever, and one of my favourites is How to Eat a Peach, by award-winning U.K. food writer Diana Henry, who writes for the Telegraph and is on BBC'sGood Food.

Henry started jotting down ideas for dinner party menus in a coil notebook when she was 16. This book, rather than be broken up into dishes (soups, salads, mains) or ingredients (beef, eggs, cheese), has short chapters with groups of dishes that work together practically and as a succession of flavours. They have titles like Bring Me Back to Istanbul, and Too Hot to Cook(which, curiously, contains recipes that look delicious but still require turning on the oven).

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The essays preceding each are wonderful to read, catering to those who, like me, like to read cookbooks.The title How to Eat a Peach was inspired by a night in Italy when the author was in her twenties, and a couple at the next table at the outdoor trattoria she was dining at were served a bowl of ripe peaches, which they sliced into glasses of cold moscato. They'd then sip the bubbly wine, now infused with peach, and eat the peach slices, now imbued with the flavour of the wine.

The book is peppered with inspiration like this ideas and images that change the way you think about food and ingredients.

The unsung pleasures of radish butter

Another such idea came from the chapter Crabs Walk Sideways, where she suggests radish butter spread on pumpernickel bread, topped with salmon caviar, to start a seafood feast. I liked the idea for radish butter a big handful of trimmed radishes, pulsed in the food processor until fairly finely chopped, then worked into a half cup of softened butter along with a pinch of coarse salt, packed into a ramekin and finished with a grinding of black pepper. I used it to serve on the patio with a baguette, although pumpernickel and caviar would be tasty, too.

Steamed leeks

Her recipe for steamed leeks makes perfect use of the thin ones you find at this time of year. They're cut into 1-inch lengths, steamed for 4-6 minutes and tossed (I did this while they were still warm) in a simple vinaigrette of white wine vinegar, Dijon, capers, chives, parsley and olive oil.

It's a recipe she says you'll keep in your repertoire and find other uses for. I imagine it would be equally divine instead of (or along with?) mayo in new potato salad, but I love the idea of cold marinated leeks on a picnic, chopped into a sandwich, topped with soft boiled eggs or served with cheese and charcuterie.

And because apricots are just starting to arrive for the summer, I made her apricot tart, with a ground almond pastry base you blitz in the food processor and a simple frangipane filling (butter, sugar, egg, almonds, flour) you spread in the crust to anchor thick slices of apricot. I suspect it would be a perfect vehicle for cherries, plums, nectarines or peaches, too if you haven't already eaten them all with your moscato.

Apricot Tart

Adapted slightly from How to Eat a Peach, by Diana Henry. (Notes: the original calls for superfine sugar, which I find unnecessary and not commonly kept in home kitchens; I also used salted butter instead of unsalted, and used vanilla in place of the tsp amaretto in the pastry and frangipane, simply because I'm not a fan of amaretto and so don't have a bottle. I also cut my apricots into thick wedges 6 for the large, and quarters for the small rather than halves. Either works!)

Ingredients

Pastry:

1 cups all-purpose flour.

cup sugar.

1/3 cup ground almonds.

Pinch salt.

3/4 cup butter (salted or unsalted).

1 egg yolk.

tsp amaretto or vanilla.

Frangipane:

3 tbsp butter, softened.

3 tbsp sugar.

1 large egg.

tsp amaretto or vanilla.

cup ground almonds.

cup all-purpose flour.

Filling:

1-2 lb ripe apricots, pitted and halved or thickly sliced.

cup sugar.

1/3 cup sliced almonds.

Icing sugar, for dusting.

Preparation

To make the pastry, blitz the flour, sugar almonds and a pinch of salt in a food processor for a few seconds. Add the butter and pulse again until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.

Add the egg yolk and amaretto and blend until the mixture forms a ball. (If it doesn't, see if the mixture holds together when you squeeze it if not, add a couple spoonfuls of cold water and blitz again.) Diana suggests shaping the dough into a salami shape and refrigerating for at least two hours, then slicing the dough thinly to line your tart pan.

I just pressed the mixture, which resembled fresh bread crumbs, into the bottom and up the sides of a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Put it into the freezer while you make the frangipane and slice the fruit. And preheat your oven to 350 F.

To make the frangipane, beat the butter and sugar until light; beat in the egg and amaretto or vanilla, then the ground almonds and flour. Toss the apricot wedges or halves with the sugar.

Spread the frangipane over the chilled crust. It will look like not much, but will puff up around the fruit. Arrange the apricots overtop, fitting them snugly. The fruit will shrink a bit as it cooks.

Bake for 30 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 300 F and sprinkle the top with the almonds and some icing sugar, then return to the oven for 35-45 minutes, until golden and set.

Let cool, and dust with more icing sugar before serving.

Serves: Eight (or more).

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