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Donna Hay inspired a new trend in cookbooks; clear close-ups of food stacked neatly on white plates. This focus on the food has made her cookbooks bestsellers, for although the recipes may seem simple, the mouth-watering photos accompanying the recipes are simply begging to be reproduced in your home.

Hay started her career styling food shots for the Australian Women’s Weekly, moving onto food editor at marie claire magazine. Now she has more than eight cookbooks to her name (with accessible titles like the instant cook, modern classics book 1 and 2, and off the shelf) and her own self-titled food magazine and homewares range. Although sometimes it seems like it is more about Donna than the food, she has made an important contribution to Australian cooking habits, and has even inspired “Hay Hay it’s Donna Day!” – a regular cooking competition conducted on the Internet by food bloggers. Hay’s use of staple ingredients (no insistence on organic verjuice or Ligurian olives) and fuss-free recipes are designed to get everyone cooking. She believes trial and error is the key to becoming a good cook: “basically, you've just got to get in there and do it. Start simple. In fact, there's never any need to get too complicated. Get yourself a good basic cookbook and get into the kitchen.”

Jennifer Miller
Photo: Donna Hay and family