Menu Planning is an important task every chef has to undertake. So to help chefs when menu planning for Australian events and Australian banquets, both Vic Cherikoff and I first published the Australian Menu Planning Guide ebook back in April 2006. Since then we have sold a few hundred copies and received some really great feedback from chefs and caterers right around the globe (even cruise ships!) who have purchased a copy.

Some of the feedback we received was to provide more information more relevant to Executive Chefs and Chef de Cuisine when planning a la carte menus or set menus opposed to the vast amount of information we provided for banquet chefs. With this in mind we’ve decided to rename it to the Australian Menu Planning Guide. We also found that a great deal of chefs didn’t really understand the term ebook, so we have dropped it, as the title suggests.

The new look Australian Menu Planning Guide provides 50 pages of dishes and concepts for restaurants, hotels, conference, function and venue caterers who are interested in discovering ways to integrate Australian ingredients. The menu planning guide was also to give chefs an idea of what can be done and how far you can push these flavours.

Apart from regular menus, you could develop a series of Australian menus offering including breakfast, morning tea, lunch dinner and cocktail party all with the unique flavours of Australia. Australian ingredients such as Lemon Myrtle, Wattleseed, Alpine Pepper, Yakajirri and Paperbark together with Australian game meats such as kangaroo and emu which have really become popular on menus also.

Additional topics added to the latest version of the Australian Menu Planning Guide are;

• Antipasto
• Australian Meat Pies
• Plank Cooking with Smokeboards™
• Paperbark Cooking
• Vegetarian Dishes
• Ice Creams
• Gelato
• Chocolate Truffles

We have greatly expanded the sections on Soups, Canapes, Potato and Vegetable side dishes.

We felt it was also important to add a resources section which provides links to important articles, tools, videos and websites.Both Vic and I are committed to updating the Australian Menu Planning Guide with the latest ideas and development in Australian native ingredients. As such, you’ll now notice that we have added a version number to the document and a month and year publish date.

When you order the Australian Menu Planning Guide, you’ll receive regular updates and special offers for 12 months. So when we publish a new version, you’ll receive an update within days via email. The Australian Menu Planning Guide comes as a PDF and requires Adobe Acrobat to be installed to be read. This is handy for chefs that travel who don’t want to carry around large and bulky cookbooks.

Order a copy of the Australian Menu Planning Guide, or maybe order a Chefs Hamper which includes the Australian Menu Planning Guide and a range of Australian native ingredients allowing chefs to experiment and plan menus.