The Weekend Table

This book has been in my heart and my mind for a long, long time.

Many years ago when we could still travel, I had some feedback about what my next project should be from some of my Bali travellers. A family cookbook. A feasting cookbook. A book to enjoy the process rather than just get dinner onto the table.

This idea resonated with me as I always have cooked for my family, extended family, and often friends in great numbers and seen that opportunity as a thing of joy and pleasure. I allowed the idea to percolate through endless other projects until finally I was ready to begin.

The process of creating a cookbook for me has become routine. I write a title. Once I have a title I have the scope and foundation for the book. (Not that the title doesn't then get altered later, just saying!)

Then I write chapter titles and recipe lists. Copious recipe lists. Then we start cooking and experimenting. We keep the goodies. We completely discard very few, the ones that don't make it into the final shoot list are usually used elsewhere in my prolific array of recipe output. Insiders got lucky on a few occasions and scored the outcasts.

The final shoot list moves and evolves through the process as well. It's a slow and painstaking job, but I love almost everything about it.

I decided at one point I wanted West Australian pottery in the book. So I put a shout out onto my Facebook group and I heard back from Jolene Hewison of River Ceramics almost immediately. She had one of my books, she understood the brief and as we were going to be in the neighbourhood on a little weekend down south of Perth we agreed to come together and have a chat. I didn't tell her at the time, but I literally had goosebumps as I was speaking with her and she suggested I speak with her foodie photographer friend Samira who lived nearby. It all came together so quickly after that...well apart from that nasty flu thing that happened.

The rest as they say, is history. We now have progressed through 2 years of covid, the death of both of my parents, the change of publisher not once, but twice, amazing shoot days, recipe testing, re-shooting, endless editing and The Weekend Table is finally here. A beautiful book for your coffee table that you will use in the kitchen again and again as you find those absolute winning recipes your family loves. We learnt a lot along the way, but I do believe this is my last cookbook in print. I have loads of other ideas and projects under way and a cookbook like this is a work of heart as well as requiring a huge amount of creative energy. This book is a great way to finish. You really need it if you are a serious foodie. It is the Tenina 'bible' with a lot of the winning recipes of my last ten years and beyond. Plus it is so gorgeous. You can totally take it to bed for a good read, just don't drool on the pages!