What Katie Ate cookbook review

Stunning food photography and easy-to-follow recipes

I bought the What Katie Ate cookbook a few years ago, and made one or two of the simpler dishes before forgetting about the book entirely. Isn’t that always the way? Sigh.

Fast forward to today, now three months into lockdown, and I’ve made over a dozen recipes. Along the way, I’ve rediscovered exactly why I loved this book enough to take it home with me…

Spoiler: the food photography is gorgeous and the recipes produce brilliant food.

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What are the recipes like?

Katie Quinn Davies is a blogger and food photographer, and it’s the photos that first drew me to the cookbook.

Each recipe has it’s own full-page food shot, and you can’t help but be inspired to cook when flicking through.

I love the way Davies plays with light in her photography, creating mood and texture. They’re also printed in a matte finish on thick paper, so you don’t get that annoying reflection when light hits the page. The cookbook is beautifully put together, and is feels both multi-sensory and tactile.

Happily, the recipes I’ve tried out have mostly all completely worked. Here are the deets.

Katies’ extra-creamy scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and spinach

Katies’ scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and spinach makes for the perfect opener recipe to her cookbook. It’s simple to make, glorious to eat, and breakfasty too. These eggs are particularly rich and luscious, and go well with a few thin sheafs of smoked salmon.

Couscous salad with slow-roasted tomatoes, chickpeas and soft-boiled eggs

There are lots of great salads to try in What Katie Ate, but this one is my favourite. It turns out that there is something really delicious about tomatoes roasted under a gentle heat for over an hour. They go soft, but chewy at the same time, and they add this incredible depth to the salad. I’m also loving the cumin and toasted fennel seeds, and the yoghurt dressing pulls it all together.

Roast chicken with lemon cream gravy

This is probably the richest roast chicken I’ve ever made. The amount of butter involved is insane, and there’s cream in the gravy too. But – it tastes so good. Like really good. The recipe is dangerously easy to follow, the ingredients are run-of-the-mill and the result is pure heaven. Worth it.

Eight-hour lamb with Persian feta

Like most Pakistanis, my family are big lamb eaters. But we usually stick a joint in the oven for an hour and a half max, and then whip it out. So I’m interested to see what happens when we leave one in the oven for over 8 hours. Turns out its totally delicious. The lamb falls off the bone with just a little nudge from a spoon. Once it’s been pulled, Davies instructs us to pour over a herby, lemony, anchovy and caper-filled dressing. Game. Changer. If you make just one recipe from the What Katie Ate cookbook, make it this one.

Sticky chicken with sesame and chilli

This is a great bung-it-together recipe that looks like it takes way more effort than it actually does. Winning! The sticky sesame-honey-mustard coating on the chicken is unctuous and rich, almost like a savoury glaze. It’s chock full of flavour too, and goes beautifully with some rice and veggies on the side.

Shepherds pie with roasted garlic and cheesy mash garlic

Another rich dish! It’s delicious and deeply, meatily flavoured. Robust. When reading the recipe I was surprised it didn’t call for any of the usual vegetables (carrots etc)  you’d get in a Shepherds pie filling. This makes the pie even richer, but we balanced it out with a big tray of roasted veg on the side.

The only part of the recipe that I struggled with was the bit about adding slow roasted garlic to the mash. It sounds like a fantastic idea, but our garlic bulbs came out of the oven completely charred. Like burnt husks. So we threw those out and made the pie without. Next time, I’d confit the garlic to soften it rather than putting it in the oven, then add it to the mashed potato topping. All in all though, a very good recipe for a luscious Shepherds pie.

Overall thoughts on the What Katie Ate cookbook

Over the last few months I’ve made over a dozen recipes from What Katie Ate and the majority have worked out perfectly. The recipes are easy to follow, and rarely call for ingredients that would be hard to get. It’s become one of my favourite and most trusted cookbooks on the shelf.

Buy What Katie Ate here.

Have you tried the What Katie Ate cookbook? Do you have any favourites? Let us know :)

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