Hunter Food & Wine, edited by Jenny McElhinney, MAP Marketing, paperback. 2008

With such a wealth of top award-winning restaurants in this premier wine region, you would think that assembling a collection of recipes from almost seventy of them would be almost impossible. After all how do you choose between them?

Yet Jenny McElhinney, the editor, describes it as ‘a gastronomic journey’. In fact she calls the book ‘a romance novel, a tourist guide, a journal of discovery.’

It is also a lovely book just to have on the coffee table. Filled with Geoff Woods’ local landscape photography  and Luke Bennett’s sumptuous food pictures to accompany the recipes, it will whet anybody’s appetite to actually go an see for themselves what it is that makes the Hunter such a very special place.

Just don’t expect to make your assessment on one visit. It’s near enough to Sydney for many excursions, many meals, and much wine-tasting.