Filled with impressive recipes and helpful hints, this is one for cooks of all skill levels and taste preferences.
Feature image credit: Murdoch Books
Every Night of the Week creator Lucy Tweed is a master of simple meals with big flavour, and she serves up more than 90 of them in her latest tome. Tender is all about hearty, bold, and warm recipes that are perfect for those mid-weeknights where your brain can’t function enough to decide what to cook. With winter approaching, this is probably one you’ll want to add to your toolkit.
There’s a very decent range of recipes here, and despite what the title may evoke, you don’t need a slow cooker to pull them off. It focuses on dishes that you might associate with a slow cooker—and many of them are cooked low and slow—but when it comes to required apparatus and even cooking skills, this collection is seriously accessible.
You’ll find sections on beef, pork, lamb, goat, venison, poultry, seafood, vegetables, sides, and even sweets, so there’s something for everyone. But many recipes offer variations in the notes to account for different tastes, so there really is something for everyone. Most recipes kick off with an introduction that provides a little context and might offer a hint into what you can expect from the final product, making the whole thing feel like a love letter to hearty cooking rather than a black-and-white anthology of recipes.
Besides the actual recipe collection, you’ll find notes on common ingredients, flavours, aromatics, herbs, cuts of meat, and golden rules that are relevant to many of the dishes, plus a cheat sheet for those who are truly lost in the kitchen. Matte paper means you won’t want to get spillages on this book, but the instructions are articulated well enough that you won’t have to be chained to the page, reading it again and again to make sure you’re following properly.
Pork and apple meatballs with crispy sage (page 54)
Even without the sauce, these were amazing. The apple brightens the pork flavour and adds something that makes these a little different from your regular meatballs. They did fall apart slightly while cooking, but that’s part of the charm, isn’t it? I used thyme instead of sage, as the thoughtful author suggests for those who don’t like the latter, and served them as part of a sharing banquet so I omitted the sides. But as the notes recommend, these would go down well with pasta or mashed potatoes. The creamy sauce has an element of sweetness that evokes Northern European cooking and is perfect for winter.
Coq au vin blanc pie (page 107)
Speaking of winter, this is my new favourite way to have coq au vin. It has a slightly less sharp flavour than other chicken pies I’ve tried, but the aromatics bring it to life. Plus, you could add vegetables and more cheese if you felt inclined. I used chicken breast for this because thigh gives me the ick — it was still delicious but probably would have been more tender with thigh fillets. The pastry crisped up nicely and together with the sauce was to die for.
Super-Hydrated Focaccia (page 202)
Probably my fault, but this focaccia came out as flat and hard as if it had been dropped from a skyscraper. The flavours were there and it smelled incredible, and if you didn’t know it was supposed to be a spongy focaccia, it probably would have been fine as a crispy schiacciata. But given the expectation vs reality, this one was a total miss. I’d be keen to give this another go and pinpoint where I went wrong — since everything else was superb in Tender, I’m assuming this was my error. Sorry, Lucy!
Reviewed by Vanessa Elle
Instagram: @vanessaellewrites
The views expressed in this review belong to the author and not Glam Adelaide, its affiliates, or employees.
Distributed by: Murdoch Books
Released: March 2026
RRP: $39.99
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