'MELT!' is an accessible, informative, always entertaining and entirely spectacular cookbook that delivers everything it promises and more. It is the highly anticipated first co-creation from the fertile minds of two of Australia's most respected food commentators internationally acclaimed cheese guru, author, activist, marketer and television host Will Studd and celebrated Melbourne food journalist, broadcaster, television presenter and cook Bob Hart. Studd has long been a major contributor to Australia's developing passion for the great cheeses of the world and an effective campaigner for their approval by our inflexible and often tedious food regulators. He and Hart have shared a lengthy friendship fired by mutual admiration and a shared obsession with fine food - fine cheese, in particular. For decades, Hart has written glowingly and entertainingly of Studd's battles with the food police over his importation of France's Roquefort the king of cheeses and other activities. While Studd recently listed Hart's legendary barbecue bible, 'Heat & Smoke', a national best-seller, as one of his favourite cookbooks. Their literary partnership, therefore, was probably inevitable. And their formidable skills and stores of complementary knowledge and food experiences have long amounted to a joyous joint venture waiting to happen. So now, 'MELT!' - a Hart & Studd book that takes us deep into the world of great cheeses through the eyes of two masters of their crafts, and through a collection of extraordinary and innovative recipes. Try English potted cheese from 1920s London, oysters presented in a Roquefort and champagne sauce, four of the most ingenious approaches to making macaroni cheese ever contemplated and, if you don't mind, Roquefort madeleines which, according to Hart, would have caused Proust to blow a fuse, at the very least. There is also enormous fun in this book which opens with an exquisite parody of a venerable hymn called A Friend in Cheeses, features a flip-animation of a cheese-loving mouse called Algernon P. Nibbles III through the recipe pages, and is written with all the wit and irreverence for which the duo is known. This, in short, is a food book for our times: one which not only shares secrets from our glorious food past but also invites us to elevate the home-cooking of our present and explore some exciting possibilities for our culinary future.
