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I received my first wok as a wedding present, along with a copy of better Homes and Gardens Cooking Chinese. The cookbook taught me basic stir-fry recipes, lo-mein variations, and my personal favorite, potsticker dumplings. I was thrilled to be learning these recipes, because American-Chinese food and I have a history.

When I was quite young, my mother would take my little sister and me to a Chinese restaurant in St. Albans (on Main Street) as a special treat once or twice a year. The food was (in all ways) miles away from the Chun King Chow Mein in the two-part can that I was familiar with.

I have vivid sensory memories of tasting soy sauce for the first time, tempura-battered prawns, blistering egg rolls and orangey, spicy, sweet General Tsos chicken thighs.

I never knew the name of the establishment, and it has long since passed from local memory.

Much, much later, pu pu platters with the flaming center and a scorpion bowl for two would become a date-night favorite for my boyfriend, (now husband) Dan, and myself. The Royal Dynasty (St. Albans, Highgate Plaza) was fantastic all over the board, but it, too, ceased to exist many years ago.

Currently, there are a proliferation of take-away places with wok in the name the nearest only a short drive away that provide all-too-instant gratification for three crispy spring rolls and house fried rice. Anytime. Maybe today.

Convenient, yes, but nothing close to the best Chinese food Ive ever experienced.

So when the fortunate convergence of a pork-dumpling craving and an unusual lull in activity on the farm came to pass, I decided to revisit Eileen Yin-Fei Los The Dim Sum Dumpling Book.

Fourteen years ago, I had made notes in the margins: Steamed Buns, too poofy; Cook and Sell Dumplings, just like they make at Five Spice Cafe; Dumpling Skins, easier to just buy them.

One recipe had appeared very involved but was actually easy: pearl balls (steamed meatballs coated in sushi rice).

It is an interesting technique for pretty dim sum, and the results look as though a truly heroic kitchen effort has been made. Nothing wrong with that at all.

Photo: Domino Postiglione

You might not know their names, but these women createsome of the biggest selling cookbooks in Australia.

For someone expecting dinner guests to walk through the door inan hour, on a week night to boot, Rachael Bermingham is one coolwoman. She’s not even in the kitchen.

Given she co-wrote Australia’s top-selling cookbook, one assumesshe has things under control and, of course, she has. Preparationswere done hours ago. It took 10 minutes. “Darls, I’ve just mixed upthe most beautiful salsa patties and they are just so flavoursome,”she says, happily. “They’ve got Jatz bickies in them, would youbelieve?”

And exactly three other ingredients: lean mince, olive oil andready-made salsa. the equation is the same with her caramelmacadamia tarts, made with shortcrust pastry, a can of readymadecaramel, dark cooking chocolate and nuts. And her watermelon salad:balsamic vinegar, watermelon, cherry tomatoes, pistachios.

The latest theory of gastronomy hailing from Mooloolaba holdsthat, no matter who’s arriving or when, the arrangement of a mealshould be no more complex than two-plus-two.

Bermingham and her co-author, Kim McCosker, self-published 4Ingredients, which has been on the bestseller charts since itwas released in March. At the time of writing, it was third onNielsen BookScan’s non-fiction list, behind The Secret andGerald Stone’s saga about Channel Nine. the women have blitzedmorning television, whipping up stir-fry beef for Kerri-Anne andtangy meatballs for Kochie and Mel, an unfathomable result for apublicity campaign that began with one press release to Brisbane’sNorthside Chronicle. “And here we are, two mums fromQueensland who wrote a cookbook just because we needed it,”Bermingham says. the book has been reprinted 10 times, she says,with sales of more than 100,000 pushing its gross earnings past $1million.

It’s the kind of success expected of beloved icons MargaretFulton and Stephanie Alexander, the humungously famous Bill Grangerand Jamie Oliver, and the dynamo Donna Hay. last year Hay’s booksreaped $4 million, according to Nielsen BookScan.

But a handful of others are bubbling along nicely, too. you maynot know Valli little, Michele Cranston or Pamela Clark but eachauthor has at least one title in the list of top 10 cookbooks soldin the past year. If their names are little known, it is becausethey are often hidden – sometimes completely – behind the bold typeof enormous brands. little is the food editor of deliciousmagazine, Cranston cooks for marie claire while Clark isThe Australian Women’s Weekly‘s kitchen mistress. There’snot a rock-star chef among them and they don’t do jus. Theirmethods are “simple”, “quick” and “easy”, aimed squarely at thetime-poor, experience-rich home cook who has tasted good laksa,organic tomato soup, mezze and tapas and wants to have a go atmaking them.

In other words: fast, healthy, inspiring, low-fat, fresh Mod Ozcafe food for the masses.

“I have to say, I always start each book with a bit of a groan,”says Michele Cranston, author of Comfort, Luscious, Zestand other evocative titles from the marie claire stablethat made more than $1 million in the past year. “But once we workout the concept the fun starts and, hopefully, I just write reallysimple meals that we really eat at home.”

Art-school trained, Cranston was the first chef at Bill’s inDarlinghurst (she put the honeycomb in the butter that goes withricotta pancakes). She’s a slow-food girl with clevershortcuts.

“There are some great roasted dinners you literally throw into apot and walk away from for a couple of hours, so they’re just asquick as anything else,” she says. “But by the third time a recipegets to the bottom of the pile, if it’s too fussy or tootime-consuming, it goes in the bin.”

Cranston tests her recipes in the Annandale home she shares withflower photographer Warwick Orme. Her thing is texture -ingredients that are “fresh and tasty and crunchy” – and sheprefers the Orange Grove growers’ markets to supermarket shopping.”I’d much rather be in contact with people than pushing a bloodytrolley around an aisle,” she says.

On a wet morning recently, Valli little makes her visitor a flatwhite served with a plate of home-cooked raspberry jam biscuits,lovely and glossy and photo ready. Natural light channels into herkitchen where she shoots and tests her recipes. Her smash hitFive of the Best, a sort of greatest hits ofdelicious, was published last November and re-released inBritain in March. lately, however, she’s been tearing her hair outto conceive a fresh summer entertaining menu – mid-winter – to beshot in Fiji. “Mediterranean works so well here,” she says. “Andwe’re over Thai a bit.”

It is a crisis she must face each time she takes out hernotepad, always within reach should the recipe muse strike. Agedseven to 70, her readers are country people who can’t – or don’twant to – get hold of sumac to sprinkle over their chops, and cityfolk who are easily bored with the culinary resources at theirdisposal. All she can do, she says, is “keep things real”.

A British-born foodie, little moved into publishing when a backinjury forced her to close her gourmet food store, Gastronomes, inRoseville in the 1990s. She, too, had a brush with Bill Granger -her first foray into cookbooks was testing recipes for hisgroundbreaking Sydney Food.

Little has been with delicious since it launched sixyears ago. Her recipes are twice-tested – first by her and then bya freelance food economist. Her job is to translate guest chefs’”handfuls” into “1/2 a cup”, to stay ahead of trends and keepthings simple. “Most of our recipes have about half a dozeningredients and they’re not scary,” she says. “If it’s three pages,you just don’t want to go there.”

Half an hour. That’s the limit a cook should labour in thekitchen each night. She’s a great believer in mise en place -preparing and chopping ahead of time instead of the creative-messapproach. Shortcuts are kosher, too. “I’d rather you go out and buya good green curry paste than spend 20 minutes making yourown.”

None of these homecooking superstars would argue. At ACP, PamelaClark has a long association with the Weekly – sheprepared the savoury lamb casserole on the cover of the magazine’sfirst foray into cookbooks in 1970, the original AustralianWomen’s Weekly Cookbook. Today, she is the director of theWeekly’s test kitchens, which generated 28 cookbooks lastyear.

The company estimates its cookbook sales at about 6 million ayear, so Clark – whose name is on about 500 titles – is a powerfulwoman and one who can tell if a cake has been overbeaten in onemouthful.

Her hardcover omnibus, Cook: how to Cook AbsolutelyEverything, has sold 75,000 copies and she has producedcookbooks with a focus on every conceivable exotic cuisine, healthfad and cooking method known to humankind, from 50 fast ChickenFillets to 501 Low-Carb Recipes to Barbecue Mealsin Minutes.

Cookbooks are a bonanza for publishers. Sales of food and winebooks last year totalled $62 million. the top 10 cookbooks alonesold $23 million – up 14 per cent from the year before – making thepublic’s appetite for gastronomy seem insatiable.

“You don’t buy a recipe book if it has something you’ve beenmaking for the last 10 years, you buy a recipe book because youwant new ideas,” says food historian Barbara Santich, who runs thegraduate program in gastronomy at the University of Adelaide. “Butevery year there’s a new market. There’s a new lot of 21-year-oldswho are moving out of home and a new lot of newly marrieds who needto know how to do dinner parties, so the audience keeps reinventingitself.”

The industry has its rules. Barbecues work; salads don’t.Chocolate sells better than chicken. There must be photos.Publishers are constantly looking for their own winning formula,such as Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion, firstreleased in 1996 and still selling – it made $1.8 million lastyear.

With a tin of this, a packet of that, 4 Ingredients isone formula that has worked against all odds, despite its authors’lack of professional culinary experience “in any way, shape orform”.

Bermingham is a motivational speaker and go-getter who spends 11days out of 15 as a single parent while her husband drives trucksat a coal mine in central Queensland. Her childhood friendMcCosker, who lives on the golf course at Pelican Waters, jugglestwo young boys with a career as a financial planner. their book isa collection of recipes from friends, relatives and mothers’groups, tested over weeks in Bermingham’s kitchen.

“We only had a passion for eating – not that we didn’t do greatdinner parties,” she says. “But we don’t like being holed up in thekitchen for hours on end. We have more important things to do -like spend time with our boys.”

And make plans for world domination. their little lime greenbook without pictures is being released this month in New Zealand.And there’s one more thing.

“You’re the first to know about our aim,” Bermingham says. “It’sto have our very own five-minute cooking show broadcast to eachhousehold in Australia before the news.”

It was wrapped in greasy, worn brown paper and shoved inside a box full of cookbooks, gathering dust for more than 100 years.

No one realized the historic importance of the 39-page book until a few years ago. It’s much more than a collection of old recipes. it tells the story of a woman’s struggle to survive in an era dominated by discrimination, slavery and prejudice.

“No one suspected that would have been a cookbook written by a black woman during the Civil War,” said Leigh Cravin, an Amarillo attorney.

“A Domestic Cookbook containing A Careful Selection of useful Receipts for the Kitchen,” by Malinda Russell, is the oldest known cookbook written by an African-American.

Cravin spoke to a group of residents Saturday afternoon at the United Citizen’s Forum about Russell’s story and how her cookbook, published in 1866, has helped change typical soul food stereotypes. The presentation also highlighted the national theme of this year’s Black History Month, “The History of Black Economic Empowerment.”

As the former chairwoman of the Anderson County Historical Commission, Cravin long has been interested in the past.

She found out about the book after reading an article published in the New York Times in 2007. Enthralled by the tale, Cravin obtained one of 100 reproductions and started researching Russell.

Little is known of Russell, who seems to have vanished from historical records after a Michigan newspaper agreed to publish the cookbook.

“We lost her in history,” Cravin said. “We don’t know what happened to her. But she leaves this little 39-page cookbook. A fascinating story of a woman lost in time.”

Experts do know she was born a free woman in Tennessee.

“She was an oddity in the South,” Cravin said.

As a free, widowed woman and mother of a handicapped child, Russell had to be resourceful to support herself and her child. Twice, thieves robbed her of all her savings, according to biographical information published in the cookbook.

Through the years Russell ran a washhouse and a boardinghouse. she worked as a cook and at one point owned a pastry shop.

Those experiences are believed to have inspired her to write a cookbook as she advanced in age and needed a means to support herself.

It’s not known how many copies of Russell’s cookbook were printed or how many exist today.

“If someone were to discover this book in a box, they’ve got a gold mine,” Cravin said.

Cravin said many people would expect her cookbook to be filled with African-American cuisine known as soul food.

But Russell gave the book her own soul.

Instead of spreading the traditional African-American recipes handed down through generations for chicken, collard greens or black-eyed peas, she dedicated 90 percent of the cookbook to pastry recipes, Cravin said.

She also used space to offer advice such as how to preserve eggs for a year, and homemade remedies to cure dropsy and restore hair to its natural color. Russell even published a recipe for “magnetic oil,” a love potion.

Cravin said she hasn’t dared try to reproduce any of the remedies because the ingredients in some, like Borax, are used for cleaning.

“It’s just a fascinating book,” she said.

Bobbi Ravicz is thrilled that her children remember their grandmother’s recipe for angel food cake so fondly that they want to re-create it. Now, all she needs is the recipe that her mother used to make the family specialty.

Ravicz says, “My mother, Frances Kallison, married my father Perry in 1931. her specialty was angel food cake. This was before the (Sunbeam) Mixmaster. I still have the bowl that she beat the eggs in. she would bake the cake in a tube pan, then she would slice it in half and put fresh strawberry filling between the layers and frost it with whipped cream.”

As Ravicz explains it, she doesn’t remember her mother having written directions for the cake on a card or piece of paper. “If anything, it would have come out of the ‘Settlement Cook Book.’ It’s the only cookbook I remember her having.”

Ravicz says her grandchildren are in their 40s and “still lovingly remember” the cake and Brown Cows (Coke and ice cream floats) their grandmother would make for their Valentine’s Day tea parties and other special occasions. “They want the recipe, but not any old recipe. They want to be able to re-create their grandmother’s cake for their special occasions,” she says.

An online search turned up two recipes for angel food cake from the 1921 “Settlement Cook Book.” I spoke with Ravicz about the recipes, and she agreed that the first recipe, which is flavored with vanilla or almond extract, sounds like the correct one.

“My mother was not noted for her cooking, but this cake was her specialty,” Ravicz says.

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