A Year of Practiculture: Recipes for Living, Growing, Hunting & Cooking

Here is a huge book (three pounds) but mostly because it was printed on heavy paper stock. What readers did Australian author Rohan Anderson have in mind while writing A Year of Practiculture? Practiculture is a made-up term. The book is filled with scores of essays, recipes and large photos but what was the focus? It’s uncertain whether it meant to be a coffee table or a recipe book. It failed in both. The author’s idea is to write according to the four seasons, including recipes from his family ranch with chemical-free, unprocessed, nutritious ingredients. Yet most recipes partly rely on store-bought ingredients. The ingredient units are both metric and American, and many are ambiguous (e.g. two onions—but what size?). Many ingredients are unavailable to most: nettle, kangaroo ankles, lamb neck, piri piri spice blend, garden snails. The cooking terms are also unfamiliar to us: rabbit backstrap, glug of oil, tomato passata. Some instructions are inconsistent with quantities in ingredient lists. Instructions are good, easy to follow. The recipes are not particularly interesting. The essays are unexciting, uninspiring — more rambling than foods for thought. The photography is good. The index is cross-referenced though not completely.