From crisis to cookbook: How we won best cookbook in the world 

By Tim Banister 

WIN 1 of 2 Field to Fook: Second Helpings – SSAA Queensland – Competition closes 31 October 2025

One of the curiosities to come out of the Covid-19 crisis in 2020 was my then-media team won an award for a cookbook. Field to Fork, Second Helpings earned the title of best meat-based cookbook in Australia in 2020 and a year later took out the best in the world at the Gourmand Awards ceremony in Paris. The Gourmand Awards have been compared to the Oscars for film and are inspired by the Olympic Games and their spirit. Previous winners include famous chefs Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson. 

Why do a bunch of media-savvy shooters and hunters make a cookbook you ask? Well, it is to explain one of the main reasons we hunt – for the table. Wild meat is green, lean and generally affordable, depending on how much you have invested in your hunting kit! It is also sustainable, as Australia has an abundance of game animals, birds and ocean life. 

The project was managed by myself and Jennifer Martens, today the co-managing editors of this very magazine. It was the second in the series, with the first Field to Fork cookbook published a dozen years ago. 

Perhaps its time to test the Queensland waters and see if in the future we should publish a local game and wildlife cookbook? If you have a recipe you’d like to share and are happy for us to publish it, send it to news@ssaaqld.org.au 

In the meantime, go in the running to win one of two Field to Fork, Second Helpings in this month’s competition or you can buy a copy from onlineshop.ssaa.org.au for about the price of a kangaroo carpaccio entree and a medium cooked venison steak. Tell them Tim sent you. 

With thanks to media talent Natalie Kuhlmann and photographer Mark Fieldhouse, whose contributions to the cookbook were superb.