BOOKS ARE FOR LIFE

I’m not keen on Nigella’s new book. It’s not that I have any objection to helping people understand how to cook things quickly or easily. But the kind of corners to cut to me are not about buying turkey bits from unknown provenance just to satisfy the requirements of a new recipe. Cookery books should be about helping people to aspire to greater things. To learn that it’s possible to achieve amazing cooking without knowing anything about haute-cuisine. It’s what Jamie does. With that inimitable lippy enthusiasm, he reduces some of the snobbish inanities of foaming velouté reductions to real, ‘food loverly food’. Like all good cooks, his books help the learner discover what’s already there. Nigella seems to me to be turning something upside down and putting it in a new dish, like Mr Pooter’s blancmange reappearing dressed up with jam.

Loving both food and books, my favourites delight and inform. I use them like style or design magazines. Points of departure. Places to turn for reassurance and aid. Stimulation and energy in times of flagging creativity. Under this year’s Christmas tree was F-W’s River Cottage Fish Book. Like his previous Meat, respect for ingredients comes first. In the knowledge that many of us are looking down at the scales right now – no pun intended - fish is the answer for healthy, lean eating. Here with his angling partner Nick Fisher he makes the case for the importance of fish in our diet, lightly informs on aquaculture and sustainability and then clarifies the precarious future of many species without ever being preachy. This forces us to consider what we eat, not just buy what we see.

There are many more species than cod, whose survival are in our hands as consumers; whitebait, skates, rays, monkfish, wild bass, salmon, etc among them. Equally there are many we don’t ask for or know about that are nutritious and great to cook, like pollack, megrim, mackerel and grey mullet. Here the recipes for them abound. And Hugh is at his best simply rippling with enthusiasm for what’s possible. When he’s describing salting, filleting and dressing you don’t feel helpless. He never assumes that we are unable to follow his example. It’s not cooking made simple but food made simply. Different.

Finally he includes a glossary of fish. It tells you all you need to know, whether you should be eating it or not and sends you back to the recipe section with a few alternatives. Responsible, informative and fun. And not once does he make an excuse for anything but the best.

TENDER WORDS

Tender (2009) tells the story of Nigel Slater's love affair with his garden in Islington and the many seedlings he has raised in his box-hedged vegetable patches. It’s a magnificent volume, like a medieval knightly treatise with pictures of his Eden, its produce and many of the recipes he has created from them.

23 May, 2010

FOOD FROM THE HEART

Cooking is a basic human instinct. We’ve been eating, chopping, shaping, flavouring, enticing ingredients into something delicious since time began. But as the way many of us live has changed, the basic skills we require to cook, are no longer valued and it’s often easier to let others take control of what we eat.

21 April, 2010

IN A RIGHT FISH STEW

This week we had sustainable fish stew. It’s a quick and easy way to feed a gang of hungries on a Friday night and doesn’t need much else but some good bread and wine. Like all stews, you need balance, rich liquid and a range of potent flavours steaming from your pot.

15 March, 2010