80 delicious flavour-packed and original recipes, as seen on Saturday Kitchen

Bitter

**AS SEEN ON SATURDAY KITCHEN* | ‘DELECTABLE’ Nigella Lawson | 'A GEM' Rukmini Iyer | ‘LOVELY RECIPES' Georgina Hayden | 'STUNNING AND INVENTIVE’ Ixta Belfrage | 'A CRACKING BOOK' Olly Smith | 'DELIGHTFUL' Marc Diacono | 'EXTREMELY ACCOMPLISHED' Jay Rayner (on MasterChef) 
 
80 flavourful, vibrant recipes to brighten up your table this Spring. 
 
Fearlessly bringing together the best flavours and culinary strategies from around the world, Alexina Anatole will help you use bitter flavours in your cooking to improve the taste of everything you make, whether it's a savoury weeknight dinner or a sweet and decadent dessert - one flavour-balancing technique at a time. 
 
These 80 recipes take classic favourites to a new level and include moreish solutions for every meal, and include: 
<ul><li>Salmon Tacos with Grapefruit Avocado</li><li>Roast Chicken with Beer Butter Onions</li><li>Matcha Basque Cheesecake</li><li>Aubergine with Whipped Feta</li><li>Ancho Coffee Beef Short Ribs</li><li>Negroni Pavlova</li></ul> 
Using ten star ingredients with recipes that demonstrate how to cook with each type of bitterness - from grapefruit and bitter oranges, bitter greens, tahini, beer, walnuts, cranberries, tea, coffee, cocoa, and liquorice - each dish will expand your repertoire and open the door to new worlds of deliciousness.

I may have said this quite a few times, but I feel it bears repeating: bitterness is the most undesirable of attributes, except when it comes to food … My 'bitter tooth' is pronounced … I gravitated greedily towards Alexina Anatole’s book, Bitter

Bitter by Alexina Anatole is a gem of a cookbook - not only are the recipes fresh, fun and innovative, but her well-researched writing on the nature of bitter food is a pleasure to read - knowledgeable and generous. I've come away with ideas to enhance my own cooking as well as a stack of recipes to try out for friends and family. A delightful read.

author of the Roasting Tin series and India Express

A detailed deepdive into the wondrous world of one of the trickiest flavour profiles. Stunning and inventive recipes inspired by cuisines from around the world to make you fall in love with bitter!

So much more than just a cookery book, Bitter is a revelation. Alexina skillfully takes you on a journey through the world of 'bitter', exploring its place in the sphere of flavour, and arming you with tricks and hacks on how to use bitter foods in your everyday cooking. Her recipes are a delight - beautiful, vibrant and packed with exciting, unexpected combinations I can't wait to try.

The cover is beautiful, the photography is gorgeous and it's accessible. She makes bitter into a really gorgeous topic and lovely recipes.

In this delightful book, MasterChef runner-up Alexina Anatole takes 10 ingredients - bitter oranges, beer, walnuts, cranberries, cocoa and coffee among them - and 'walks you through every type of bitterness and how to tame it'. The recipes are varied and compelling - chicory, roquefort and walnut salad, and coffee and Biscoff no-bake cheesecake jumped off the pages at me - but above all, the pleasure here is in embracing bitter flavours and using them to elevate, balance and bring pleasure across a dish.

What I love about Alexina’s approach to recipes and cooking is her thoroughness ... Her debut cookbook, Bitter ... is just the most divine book that celebrates the wonder of bitter flavours and how to use them. I have spoken often in here about the need for balance in cooking and one of the best ways to achieve it is by harnessing bitterness. It offers so much dimension and sophistication to recipes and this is evident in every single one of Alexina’s.

I welcome Alexina Anatole’s debut book ‘Bitter’ with open arms ... In her debut, Alexina aims to show us all that there’s nothing to fear and so much to gain from bitterness. There are many bitter ingredients we don’t tarnish with the fear brush in the kitchen - coffee, tea and cocoa all have bitter profiles that don’t make us panic. Yet, I’ll admit I still have some residual anxiety around bitterness. If you feel similarly, I’m thrilled to tell you that Alexina is a competent and soothing guide.

From grapefruit to walnuts and cocoa to liquorice, this sumptuous cookbook from the 2021 Masterchef finalist is the definitive guide to how to get the most out of beautiful culinary bitterness.

Alexina's ability to take very strong, bitter, sharp flavours and marry them together with majesty is incredible

Alexina Anatole started her career on a trading floor in the City of London, but an obsession with food was always present. In the last year of her twenties she decided - after years of watching the show - that she was finally ready to enter MasterChef. Weeks of competing resulted in her reaching the final of the 2021 season, coming runner up to champion Thomas Rhodes. The competition led her to realise that she might actually have a talent for cooking but, more importantly, it helped her to better understand her philosophy around food and flavour. Having read English at Cambridge, she now finds herself becoming a food writer - and thus coming full circle.

How can you use bitter flavours to make delicious food? Often thought of as an acquired taste, bitter flavours add complexity and depth to a dish - making food incredibly moreish - if, you know how to work with them. 
 
Fearlessly bringing together the best flavours and culinary strategies from around the world, Alexina will help you befriend bitterness - one flavour-balancing technique at a time. Using ten ingredients to walk you through every type of bitterness and how to tame it - from grapefruit and bitter oranges, bitter greens, tahini, beer, walnuts, cranberries, tea, coffee, cocoa and liquorice - each recipe will expand your repertoire and open the door to new worlds of deliciousness, using bitterness in both savoury and sweet dishes to elevate the taste of everything you make. 
 
These 80 recipes include something to suit every taste and occasion. Start with bold breakfasts recipes, like Banoffee Breakfast Bread, Malted Crepes with Lime & Sugar, and Winter Citrus Fruit Salad, then fill your day with light lunches and weeknight dinners like Roasted Aubergines with Whipped Feta, Grapefruit & Hot Honey, Seared Salmon Tacos with Grapefruit & Avocado and Allspice Lamb Chops with Pickled Walnut Ketchup. Then, impress your guests with Ancho Coffee Beef Short Ribs, Duck Confit with Bitter Orange Salsa Verde and Jerk Pork Belly with Grapefruit Hot Sauce, plus decadent desserts such as Negroni Pavlova, Bitter Chocolate Torte with Passionfruit Sauce and Tiramisu Tres Leches cake.

Alexina Anatole

What I love about Alexina’s approach to recipes and cooking is her thoroughness. She researches and researches and makes every effort to understand the inception of an ingredient, technique or dish. So when she comes to use it or cook it she is armed with knowledge, engagement and connection, enabling her to cook thoughtfully and masterfully.

An impressive baking resource for every occasion.

Alexina brings the life, soul and joy of baking and matches it with incredible technical knowledge. Sweet truly is a love letter to the ‘leave room for dessert’ people of the world.

Sweet is packed with everything I love! Alexina has put together such a clever and beautiful book full of recipes that are so well layered and considered. Sweet gives readers both the tools and confidence to balance flavours and make their own delicious bakes. The sweetest addition to any kitchen!

Benjamina Ebuehi, author of 'I'll Bring Dessert'

Absolutely beautiful… the imagery really grabs you and sells the idea that everything is incredibly good and that you should immediately head to the kitchen and bake… The second thing you’ll notice is that the recipes involve a wonderful palette of ingredients and flavours… You’ll feel like a more confident baker after reading and baking from this book, and you’ll have exciting and interesting recipes to boot.

Edd Kimber, author of One Tin Bakes and 2010 winner of the Great British Bake Off

This is not your typical cookbook. Alexina masterfully captures the art of baking, delving deep into the significance of each ingredient. Her inventive recipes and bold flavour combinations leap off the page, inviting you to try something a little different than usual. A personal favourite is her white chocolate, miso, and sesame cookie— a blend of sweet and savory that perfectly sums up her approach to baking.

Sweet is such a joy. Alexina strikes the perfect balance between pleasure, understanding, a little science and really special, inventive, hungry-making recipes.

Mark Diacono, author of 'Vegetables: Easy and Inventive Vegetarian Suppers'

A broad, sweet landscape of 80 inventive and appealing recipes. Even the classics are elevated with typical Anatole flair… Equally rewardingly, there’s just the right amount of science to promote understanding

In need of a foolproof, prep-ahead and delicious dinner party dessert? Enter the matcha tiramisu.

If you’ve used Bitter to cook with then you know how unbelievably rewarding and surprisingly accessible Alexina’s unusual flavour combinations are. Sweet is no less original

Full of knockout deserts and bakes… Expect bold, contemporary flavours such as salted molasses fudge and matcha tiramisu

In this sumptuous book she [Anatole] reimagines many classic teatime treats… The result is fresh, exciting baking for modern tastes

the secret to the best desserts

Sweet

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Praise for Sweet

What I love about Alexina’s approach to recipes and cooking is her thoroughness. She researches and researches and makes every effort to understand the inception of an ingredient, technique or dish. So when s ...

A really, really gorgeous book.

An impressive baking resource for every occasion.

What I love about Alexina’s approach to recipes and cooking is her thoroughness. She researches and researches and makes every effort to understand the inception of an ingredient, technique or dish. So when s ...

A really, really gorgeous book.

An impressive baking resource for every occasion.

What I love about Alexina’s approach to recipes and cooking is her thoroughness. She researches and researches and makes every effort to understand the inception of an ingredient, technique or dish. So when s ...

A really, really gorgeous book.

An impressive baking resource for every occasion.

Books by Alexina Anatole

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