Top 25 cookbooks

Last week, the Observer Food Magazine published its top 50 cookbooks. This week, Joanna's Food presents its own top 25. Very difficult indeed to choose - in the final cut, I lost Elisabeth Luard, Michael Smith, Sarah Raven, Claire Macdonald of Macdonald, Ballymaloe and Pomiane. AND I've had to cheat by including more than one book by some people. Also, the order at the bottom end is a little haphazard. And, yes, I know there's no Chinese food (Fuschia Dunlop? Kenneth Hom?) or Indian (Madhur Jaffrey, obviously), but we don't eat them often enough to justify a whole place in the top 25.

I'm surprised that there are (I think) four telly chefs, although only one (HFW) was discovered by me through the medium of television, and I haven't seen all of them on TV. More than half these books have no or very few photographs.

25. Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake Book. This actually belongs to Eleanor, but she has abandoned both it and cake-making.

24. Tamasin Day-Lewis, Tamasin's Kitchen Bible. She can be annoyingly prescriptive about stuff that is none of her business (I neither want nor can afford wild salmon at all times), but this book lives up to its name. The quiche lorraine is to die for.

23. Anna del Conte, The Classic Food of Northern Italy. I was brought up with this food in England in the 1950s and 60s because my grandparents, who had met in Italy during WW1, had a succession of lovely Italian cooks.

22. Pam Corbin's River Cottage Preserves. If you're making jam, this book is so much better than the rest (about 10 in this house) that I'm going to chuck out most of them.

21. Robert Carrier, Great Dishes of the World. In my early 20s I lived in Pimlico, close to an Italian deli that was our late-night corner shop. Carrier's book - the height of 70s sophistication - was very useful for unfamiliar ingredients. I wowed many with the taramasalata - utterly unknown then, before the advent of that pink stuff supermarkets sell. And I had to make the pitta, too.

20. Diana Henry, Cook Simple. The inspirational Crazy Water Pickled Lemons is the more obvious choice, but Cook Simple is the one I actually refer to, particularly when I'm in a hurry.

19. Frances Bissell, The Scented Kitchen. Flowers in your food. Way beyond a few pansy and nasturtium petals in the salad. Utterly lovely.

18. Elizabeth David, Summer Cooking. VERY hard to choose. I have all her books, and consult them frequently, mostly for reading pleasure and history. This is the one with the food stains.

17. Jane Grigson, Fruit. But let's be clear, I also want The Vegetable Book. And probably the one about charcuterie too. The only reason it's not English Cookery is because of my 7th choice.

16. Rick Stein, English Fish Cookery. I think my copy says it's by Richard Stein. Anyway, it predates his telly work, and, these days, you have to use it in consultation with Marine Conservation Society lists of endangered fish.

15. Yottam Ottolenghi, Plenty. So delicious, so glamorous.

14. Michael Pollan, In Defence of Food. I know it's not a cookery book, but cooks can no longer ignore the bigger picture. Although the specifics are American, Pollan writes about real food with more immediacy than anyone else. And besides, at the end, he gives a very useful recipe for good eating: "Eat Food. Not too Much. Mostly plants.

13. Claudia Roden, The Book of Jewish Food. And Arabesque. Both full of things you want to eat. The now ubiquitous orange/almond cake originated here; it's one of my winter staples. It's also one of the best history books in the house (and there are significantly more history books here than cookery books).

12. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Meat. I live amongst carnivores. My copy falls open at the gravy-splattered section on roasting.

11. Caroline Blackwood & Anna Haycraft, Darling you shouldn't have gone to so much trouble. This was a life-saver when my children were tiny; if it's out of print, it shouldn't be, as it hasn't dated. The Earl of Gowrie's fowl is typically delicious: you put Boursin in the cavity of a pheasant and roast it. The sauce makes itself.

10. Paula Wolfert, Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking. Better than all her others (Morocco/Gascony), and that is saying something. History, technique, original research, delicious food.

9. Jennifer Paterson, Feast Days. One fat lady, her pre-telly columns from The Spectator, full of prejudices and non sequiturs, larded with saints, as good to re-read as they were in the first place. Lots to cook, even if her infallible method for poached eggs (say the Hail Mary) turns out to be useless.

8.Felicity and Roald Dahl, Roald Dahl's Cookbook. One of the few "lifestyle" books in the list. Mrs D's stunning woodcuts, photos of the garden (which I have visited and which really does look like that) ... and lovely, lovely food.

7. Caroline Conran, British Cooking. Ignore the fact that this is a Marks and Spencer book. Comprehensive, clear, CC really knows her stuff. The photographs have that 1970s brown quality - but the food doesn't.

6. Fergus Henderson, Nose to Tail, I & II. It's only polite.

5. Ann & Franco Taruschio, Leaves from the Walnut Tree. The only thing I dislike about this book is the lingering regret that I never ate at the Walnut Tree while it was run by the Taruschios.

4. Patience Gray, Honey from a Weed. Rather more likeable than Elizabeth David, perhaps because she reveals more of her slightly rackety life in the Mediterranean. But only slightly - this is no kiss and tell memoir.

3. Nigella Lawson, How to Eat. My copy is dropping to bits. And when it does, I will go out and buy another.

2. Andrew Whitley, Bread Matters. I should throw out all the other baking books, really. Superlative.

1. Geraldene Holt, French Country Cooking. I've cooked more from this book than any other. I've learnt more from Geraldene Holt about cooking, baking, gardening, living well (not just in a material sense) than from all the others on this list. Memorable dishes: creme bachique, the shaken pastry, a good daube, faux-filet with Roquefort, delicious braised leeks ... and now I've found a courgette and sorrel recipe which will be good with the chicken roasting in the oven for today's lunch.

Food books of the decade?

The Guardian has made a list of the best food books of the decade. Interesting overview, and, of course, there's always room for a few more decent cookery books (especially if I cull some of the second-rate ones).

Some are staples here ... Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail Eating; Michael Pollan's two food books, In Defence of Food and The Ominivore's Dilemma; Elisabeth Luard. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Meat is much consulted here, although I'm not so keen on Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries. Like Jay Rayner (never thought I'd write that!), I'm more likely to read Moro than cook from it, and wouldn't ever bother with Heston Blumenthal's cookery books, because foam is not my thing (although I like dipping into Harold McGee, who might have started the trend for techno-cooking, or whatever it's really called).

There are a few I own, but which I haven't properly used for one reason or another. These deserve another chance: Culinary Pleasures by Nicola Humble; Salt A World History by Mark Kurlansky; The Taste of Britain, by Laura Mason and Catherine Brown.

These are the books from the list that I don't have that may be hard to resist:

• British Regional Food by Mark Hix
• Trifle by Helen Sabiri and Alan Davidson
• Forgotten Skills of Cooking by Darina Allen
• Food in Early Modern England by Joan Thirsk, recommended by Tom Jaine, which makes it doubly alluring
• The Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook by Fuschia Dunlop
  

PS just ordered three from Amazon; two of them were cheaper than the postage, which I find irresistible, no wonder my house is so cluttered

Supreme de poulet aux morilles

Last night's dinner was supreme de poulet aux morilles. Except that it wasn't, because there were "only" porcini in the larder. And although I was notionally following the recipe in Raymond Blanc's A Taste of My Life, I don't think he'd have given me the keys to a restaurant, because I couldn't help but disobey some of his orders.

The recipes in A Taste of My Life are fully explained; on top of that there are notes giving details of the science, the art, the prejudices of cheffing. Enough to intrigue.

Well, this was good, but we both agreed the sauce would have been better poured over a little pork. Lucius thought it should become part of my standard repertoire. That good. Also pretty simple, shorn of some of M Blanc's strictures.

I did, however, follow this guidance (given again and again): I like to boil wine before adding it to the dish. It intensifies the desirable flavours and removes the alcohol, which can leave an unpleasant flavour in the mouth. If you over-reduce the wine, however, you will lose the freshness and acidity.

Chicken breast with porcini & manzanilla sauce

30g dried porcini, soaked in 150g hot water
4 chicken breasts
a little butter
120g button mushrooms
120ml manzanilla, reduced a little
double cream (RB says 400ml, but I didn't use even half that)

Soak the mushrooms for as long as you can. RB says at least six hours for morels, but porcini rehydrate in less than half an hour. At the same time, bring the sherry to the boil in a small pan, and keep on the heat for a couple of minutes.

Brown the chicken on both sides in the butter - RB says two minutes each side. Put the meat onto a plate while you make the sauce in the same pan. Add the sliced fresh mushrooms and the drained porcini. After a few minutes, add the soaking water and the manzanilla, stir, then add the cream. Put the chicken breasts into the pan, cover and cook. RB says that 180g breasts will take six minutes; although I didn't weigh the chicken, I found this timing spot on.

Plate the chicken, then reduce the sauce a little further.

Deborah Madison's sorrel and lentil soup

This is the early-morning view from my kitchen window .. not surprising that we're no longer eating much salad, and that I'm thinking of braising vegetables and making soups.

I'd never heard of the American food writer Deborah Madison until my sister (who is now an American) gave me Local Flavours, a celebration of farmers' markets. Even then, I didn't twig that it's a vegetarian book (I'm still not sure whether DM herself is a veggie). Whatever, she's got serious style.

Two links, the first to Deborah Madison's potluck dinner - the best tableware, Julia Child boeuf bourgignon, fabulous bread, pears poached in wine and gilded with gold leaf, a grape galette, good wine ... and then, as if all that wasn't enough, with half an hour to go, DM thought she'd make an amuse-bouche of sorrel and lentil soup, which is the second link (although the quick I'm-doing-this-at-the-last-minute method is probably the one to go for, assuming you have a pressure cooker, which I no longer do).

Local Flavours is a good read, although I've never followed any of the recipes, because it's all in imperial measurements and cups, which is tricky for a European metric cook. I am, however, seriously tempted by the braised root veg with black lentils and red wine sauce ... it's one of those dishes that takes most of the day, although not much input from the cook. And now that I look at the detail, there's not a cup in sight. No excuses, then.


If you're not sure what sorrel is, here's a link to a post I wrote a couple of years ago about growing and cooking with sorrel

Digestive biscuits

Cricket club committee meeting last night. Three-hour marathon (yes, I know you'd think 22 people just turn up for a game of cricket, but, believe me, a lot goes on that most of the 22 haven't begun to get to grips with). I took homemade digestives and someone asked for the recipe. It's from Hugh FW's new book, Every Day, and it's the first thing I've tried.

Two things: the instructions say to chill the paste before rolling out, but it's much more malleable when it's warm, so I think I'd leave this step out another time, perhaps chilling it after cutting the biscuits. ALSO it's best to make fairly small biscuits, as they are very short and crumbly.

These are good on their own (with a cup of tea) or with cheese. But I think I'd make half the quantity another time, this is a lot of digestives.

Digestive biscuits

250g wholemeal flour
250g butter cut into cubes
250g medium oatmeal
110g soft brown sugar
pinch of salt
2 tsp baking powder
about 1 tbsp milk

Pulse the flour and butter to breadcrumbs, then add all the other dry ingredients. Add the milk drop by drop, you really only want as much as will bring the paste together. Press it into a disc (perhaps put it into the fridge for half an hour), and roll out thin. You'll need to dust it with flour, as it's very sticky. Cut into small rounds.

Put on a baking sheet (they can go close together because they don't spread at all) and bake for around 10 minutes at 180C. You should check them after about 7-8 minutes, as they burn fast, and will be ready much sooner if they are thin. Cool on a wire rack.


They're good, but the oatcakes I made the other day are cheaper, simpler to make, and don't have so much fat. Although I suppose they'd improve by being dipped in a little chocolate.

Roast grouse with bread sauce

Last week, looking at the butcher's display, I realised I have never cooked grouse. Now, it will be hard to resist ... delicious, an easy treat ... but, of course, ruinously expensive. Cheaper than a restaurant, and much much nicer - I've been off restaurants for years*, really. It began, I think, when I saw Gordon Ramsay making something on telly with a slice of processed "bread" from a plastic bag. How do you earn Michelin stars if you don't know anything about bread? The prejudice was confirmed at the gastropub where my daughter worked all last year - fabulous food, except that it was all always thoroughly oversalted.

Buying two young grouse was the easy part. How to cook them? I thought Lady Maclean's Cookbook would be a good place to start, but she and her upper crust Highland friends all assumed you knew how to roast a grouse, and were full of suggestions for what to do when you'd got fed up and wanted a change: grouse salad, anyone? perhaps a little devilled grouse? So I read everything Hugh FW wrote in Meat, and then followed the cooking (but not preparation) instructions given by Norman Tebbit in his wonderful new The Game Cook.

Of course, if you're eating game birds, then you've got to have bread sauce, which is a doddle providing you have proper white bread on hand. You just peel a shallot or two (or an onion), put it in some milk with a couple of cloves and some bay leaves, heat it up a little and leave it to steep. You do this early in the day. When it's nearly dinner time, you strain the milk and chuck in your white breadcrumbs, let them expand, then check the seasoning. Another of those things which is not much more difficult than the processed equivalent, yet 100x better.

As for the grouse, it roasts quickly with a minimum of fuss. I cooked ours during the first half of the England match, and we ate it at half time - well, actually, we missed a bit of the second half. And when the match was over, we had a little cheese with the last of the oatcakes I made the other day.

Roast grouse

one grouse per person
one apple per grouse
streaky bacon
a slice of good white bread per bird
paté de foie gras (in the absence of grouse livers)
oil
wine and stock for the gravy

Heat the oven to 190C.

Cut the apples and put them into the grouse. Cover the birds with streaky bacon (stretch it first on the back of your knife; it will crisp quicker). Roast on a rack in a tin, if possible. After 20-25 minutes, take off the bacon, then return the birds to the oven for 10 minutes to brown. Let them stand for 10 minutes before eating.

While they are standing, fry the bread in hot oil, and spread with the foie gras or fried grouse livers (we were not lucky enough to get any giblets with our birds). At the same time, make gravy with some fortified wine and good stock - I used some homemade trotter gear, which makes everything it touches silky smooth and flavoursome.

Serve with redcurrant jelly, watercress or steamed cabbage, and some little roasted potatoes. On hot plates. Make sure to save the bones for stock. That's today's task.




*I'll make an exception for Leon, where the food is always exactly what you want, and Pizza Express, Alfred's favourite; both serving proper food at decent prices. But that's lunch, not dinner. Actually, I'm not really that bah humbug, I enjoy a meal out as much as the next cook. It's just that I think we mostly do rather better at home. And definitely last night.

Beef salad with capers and parsley

I've decided this year to cook my way through Elizabeth David's Summer Cooking, and I've started with this very good cold beef salad, which we ate last night for supper. ED gives this as the best use for the little bits left over at the end of a baked brisket, but I used the remains of a roasted silverside.

As she says, better made into a salad rather than reheated in a hash or rissoles - but who does that nowadays, anyway?

Elizabeth David's beef salad with capers and parsley

Slice your beef into ribbons. Make a vinaigrette dressing with finely chopped shallot, crushed capers, chopped parsley, red wine vinegar, olive oil and seasonings. If you are using curly-leafed parsley it should be finely cut, if flat-leafed, you can chop it quite roughly. Combine everything and serve.

Five frugal cook books

Left Over for Tomorrow, by Marika Hanbury Tenison.

I bought my copy in a sale at a wholefood shop in Bristol when we were first married, and, two decades later, it's well worn. This is a really good reference book for anyone wanting to make the contents of their fridge go further. Only this week I consulted it to see what to do with a tiny bit of hard cheese. Answer: grate and store in a screwtop jar in the fridge, then add to soup, pastry or vinaigrette.

The Pauper's Cookbook, by Jocasta Innes.

I bought this soon after I got my first job, and was living in London on not much more than fresh air. I haven't used this so much in recent years, although leafing through it, I can see why I loved it so much - loads of interesting things to do with cheaper cuts of meat and the sorts of fish my grandmother used to buy for her cat.

Poor Cook, by Susan Campbell & Caroline Conran

I graduated to this when I realised how much I enjoyed cooking. It's a quirky '70s book, and the recipes have stood the test of time better than, say, Diet for a Small Planet (I can no longer find anything I want to eat there). I still vividly remember the oxtail stew I cooked for the first time, decades ago now, and recently bought a replacement copy of this in order to recreate it. And, yes, it's just as good now as it was then.

Budget Gourmet, by Geraldene Holt

I bought this in the mid 80s, and it's the most adventurous of these five. Geraldene Holt is a wonderful and inexplicably underrated cookery writer. The green herb tart, the koulibiaka, the mackerel cooked in tea. My copy is literally falling to pieces. (Here's a gratuitous link to her butterless pastry.)

English Food, by Jane Grigson

This is not specifically about frugal food, but traditional English cookery encompasses the idea of thrift, so there's lots of frugality here: leek pie, brawn, pease pudding, herrings in oatmeal, gooseberry sauce for mackerel - to find a few at random. Grigson's recipes always work, and she always has something interesting to say about the origins of the dish she's describing.

It goes more or less without saying that the most frugal way to buy these books is second hand.

A cold day - let's read some recipe books while the going's good

There's a deep frost here - the Mahonia has given up scenting the garden, which those yellow flower buds normally do pretty effectively in the weak winter sunshine. I'm planning to stay indoors as much as possible, and read Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking, a very ace Christmas present. And perhaps do a little more cooking from Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail. And trying not to get the cough which has been plaguing this house for a week or more.

A Mitford Mess

I'm reading the letters of the Mitford sisters at the moment (slightly tiresome, but I'm only as far as the 1930s at the moment, with all the ghastliness of Diana Mosley's and Unity's Nazism), and was amused to come across this from 17-year-old Debo (later Duchess of Devonshire):

We arrived here (The Mill Cottage, Swinbrook) yesterday for the first time and it is really very nice if very cold. The fishing is terrific, we caught five trout last night. As Muv and Farve are always going on about how they love housework I leave it all to them to serve them right. All I have done so far is to make a Mitford Mess - tomatoes and potatoes fried in oil - which is the only thing I can cook and it is delicious.

No mention of a Mitford Mess or anything like it in the Chatsworth Cookery Book, published about five years ago under the Duchess of Devonshire's name "with the help of the chefs at Chatsworth" ... although to give her her due, she does start by saying: I haven't cooked since the war. I hoped this would be the title of this book but it was not well looked on by others. However, it is true and I am all for truth.

Now, of course, I've been browsing through the book, and found this:

Bread was a passion of my mother and her siblings. In Mrs Alhusen's book there is a long receipt for bread made of English stoneground wholemeal flour, including detailed descriptions of the utensils to be used. My interest quickened when I turned the page and saw the name of the contributor - Mr Geoffrey Bowles.

He was my uncle and a true eccentric if ever there was one. He never married and lived alone in one of those delectable houses in Catherine Street, Westminster. Visitors were not allowed. Should you be bold enough to ring the bell, he opened a flap in the door to tell you to go away. His sister, my aunt, lived near by. When they were old and she hadn't seen him for a long time, she thought she would like to do so and wrote to suggest that they should meet. 'But we have met,' he replied. For years Uncle Geoff lived on nothing but chocolate, which he bought at Fortnum & Mason, and bread, which he made himself. 'The perfect diet,' he said.


Whatever, I quite like the sound of a Mitford Mess for supper, with the addition of a little onion. And there's a very good recipe for water biscuits which I'll try just as soon as I've got a moment.

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Mount Athos potato and artichoke
Onion bacon and potato hotpot
Savoury chicken with roasted onion and potato
Potato gratin with thyme and tomato AKA duck and delicious potatoes

Which are your favourite British cookery books?

A couple of weeks ago my sister - who has lived in the US for the best part of 20 years - asked me about British cookery writers. I mumbled a bit, and the conversation moved on. But her question has got me thinking: I'd like to buy her a couple of British cookery books to thank her for having my son to stay (our house has been very quiet, hers probably hasn't) ... and I can't decide which.

So ... which would you recommend? Nigel? Nigella? Moro? River Café? Yotam Ottolenghi? Hugh FW? And then there's Skye Gyngell's lovely book, Tamasin Day-Lewis, Diana Henry - and Sarah Raven's lovely Garden Cookbook. I'm aware that this list is not exhaustive, and does not include a number of my favourite writers (Geraldene Holt, Claudia Roden, Patience Gray, etc etc). Quite a lot of these people have written several books, in which case, which to choose?

Which books do you think represent the best of British cookery at the moment?

Related links

Nigel Slater's top-10 recipes
Honey from a Weed
Ann and Franco Taruschio's Leaves from the Walnut Tree

Book meme: Honey from a Weed by Patience Gray

Like Fiona, I'm subverting this meme. You're supposed to pick up the nearest book (and in this house, I'm rarely further than one foot away from the nearest teetering pile); you can't do that if you decide to give the meme a culinary flavour, because the next instruction is to open it at a particular page and post three particular sentences.

1 green and 1 red pepper. 6 tomatoes. 1 large garlic clove, skinned and chopped. Great, that's got you all running off to consult Claire Macdonald. So I had a think, chose Honey from a Weed by Patience Gray, and, amazingly, found it on a shelf. This is what I found:

You eat the delicious but bony fishes with your fingers and mop up the liquor with bread. Is this infanticide? Are these rosy scorpion fish of a dwarf kind like the brownish scorpaena notata (see Mediterranean Seafood p 146) which also appear on the fishmonger's platter or, if left in the sea would they grow up?

This comment comes after a recipe for a soup of little rockfish, and, although it sounds strikingly like the sort of breast-beating you might expect to find in the current copy of The Observer, Honey with a Weed was a lifetime's project, 20 years in the writing and first published in 1986. Anyone with a serious interest in the food of the Mediterranean, or slow food, or delicious eating, should read this erudite and entertaining book.



PS the real instructions for the meme are below, although it would be much better if you chose a cookery book, opened it at p 123 and then chose three consecutive interesting sentences (which is what I did). I tag (no pressure):

Riana at Garlic Breath
Tanna at My Kitchen in Half Cups
Francois-Xavier at FX Cuisine
Kate Hill at A French Kitchen Adventure
Nicole at Farm to Philly, who is organising this year's One Local Summer, and I hope you will all join in.




1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Thanks Fiona!

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Bread and butter pudding

There's a lot of leftover bread in this house this week ... most of two loaves of bread gets eaten at breakfast by ten oarsmen, which leaves a couple of slices. So, bread-and-butter pudding for dinner. Quick, easy, delicious - all the virtues.

This story is about the perils of following a recipe. I got out Tamasin Day-Lewis's Kitchen Bible. Very rich: 600ml of cream and full-fat milk with eight eggs. Eight! Diana Henry was more down-to-earth with two eggs to 600ml. I can't remember which of them thought that 300g of sultanas was a good plan for the 12-slices-of-bread + 600ml of custard. The sultanas needed soaking (in the leftover tea, ordinary strong Indian tea), so I measured 300g, then remembered I was doubling the recipe, added 300g more, thought it looked too much, glanced back at the recipe, and, reassured, got on with it.

Well, I could have made four b&b puds with that many sultanas! I put more than half of them in, but couldn't fit in any more. Fretting about this, I forgot to put any sugar in the custard (and only realised when I woke up this morning). But none of this imperfection seemed to matter: it was all gone in moments.

Bread and butter pudding, for 6-8

Soak a handful or two of raisins - I used tea, but you can use alcohol. Butter stale bread (trim off crusts), and arrange it in a gratin dish. I used a mixture of white and wholemeal. Sprinkle the raisins over, and some finely grated lemon zest.

Mix two or three eggs with 600ml of milk and as much cream as you'd like. Add a little vanilla essence. Also some sugar to taste (!). Pour this mixture over the bread, and let it stand for a while (perhaps a quarter to half an hour). This takes care of last-minute panic when you're feeding a crowd.

Bake in a moderate oven for about 25 minutes, until the custard is set. Both the recipes used a bain marie (although they avoided the word, as it frightens people), but I have never bothered, without detriment. However, I did cover the puddings loosely with greaseproof paper so that the sultanas didn't burn.



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Home-made vanilla essence
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Simplifying a roast beef dinner

For all my married life and longer, I have read The Spectator every week. The political articles are good, the book pages are better, and the home life columns used to be the best, but, alas, some of the columnists are no longer with us, and, recently, editors seem to have deemed home life to be of little interest. One of my favourites was Jennifer Paterson, the Spectator's cook, who wrote a cookery column like no other, and later became a TV cook, one of the Two Fat Ladies (the one with the motorcycle).

She lived for the moment, and didn't go in for journalistic tricks, so she didn't bother to anticipate an occasion which would crop up in the lifetime of the magazine (thus no dinky ideas for Valentine dinners), and she certainly didn't give Delia-ish instructions for Christmas cookery. She cooked no-nonsense food, and made it clear that, although decent food was important to her, she had other interests - for instance, she was very hot on obscure saints. This is a typical example of the sort of writing you'd get:

I am so unnerved by the announcement that a bird-eating tarantula has given birth to 700 babies in London Zoo that my mind has glazed over and I can think of nothing else. What about next year when all those babies do the same thing? They are bound to get out or be let out by anti-something or other people, and life will be far more dangerous than having attacks of lysteria hysteria. Any spider that can eat a bird is worthy of a lot of terror. However, on we must go.

JP's novel method for roasting beef first surfaced in the Spectator in 1987, and I remember thinking it was an interesting idea, although I never did anything about it. Years later, I bought a copy of her collected Spectator columns, and there it was. Again, I did nothing about it. Now that I have - for Lucius's birthday celebration last night - I cannot think why I let all that time ... TWO DECADES ... go by without roasting beef in this markedly effective and simple way.

Here is help for anyone unnerved by the last-minute titivation required for a roast dinner; for those with one oven; for those who like a simple life; for those who wish to talk to their dinner guests; for those who like to prepare ahead.

What is this wonderful recipe? You cook the beef up to 24 hours in advance, keep it out of the fridge, and serve it on the hottest of hot plates with the hottest of hot gravy (which you can now also make ahead). Astonishingly, it is just as if you had cooked and rested it in the more usual manner. She says it also works with lamb.

Yesterday was busy: visit to the butcher, young to fetch from the station at various times, tea for a neighbour, a four-course dinner to prepare, an early-evening real tennis match to watch. The perfect opportunity to use this method. I cooked the beef at tea-time. While Lucius and I were out watching Horatio play his semi-final match (he won, although he nearly threw it away), Lettice made gravy and roasted potatoes. We have only one oven, and this method meant that it could be at the perfect temperature for both meat and potatoes (normally it's a bit of a fudge).

I can do no better than let the lady herself explain the details:

I have discovered that if you are going to have some roast beef or lamb for some meal there is no need to do it just in time. I do it the night before, thus obviating all that last-minute sweating over the oven and leaving nasty greasy oven pans in the sink when you need them most. It doesn't matter whether you are serving the meat as a hot repast or a cold one, the meat will taste much better, having saved all its juices within rather than pouring them out on the carving board. It will be easier to carve and the leftovers will be as good as the original. There is nothing more depressing than the sight of an old joint that has been carved when hot then left to grow sad and grey in the larder. If you are intending to serve it cold, well and good. If hot just pretend it is. Served on hot plates with the accompanying hot vegetables and gravy made from the deglazing of the oven pan (also done the night before and kept up your sleeve) no one will notice. When you consider that a hot joint should have 'rested' 20 minutes before serving and then all the time taken in carving and serving, the actual meat is never all that hot anyway.

These are the instructions for roasting the beef (although you can perfectly well use your own usual method):

Put the meat on a grid over a pan. Smear with oil if you like (I don't bother). 250C for 15 minutes. Turn the oven down to 185C, and roast for 15 minutes per pound. I no longer cook in imperial, so my 2.3kg (ie 5lb) sirloin got 15 minutes at the higher temperature, then one hour at the lower. Perfect, pink.

If you are roasting lamb: Use the above instructions, and add a further 15 minutes at the end (ie at the lower temperature), for a rosy finish.

Really really worth a go. So long as your plates are very hot (and therefore not made of pottery, which will crackle). Amazingly, it works. Just don't put it in the fridge once you've cooked it.

The full menu, decided by the birthday boy (our family tradition):

avocado
one baked scallop (each!)
roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, peas, and gravy
apple crumble

Related links

Fillet of beef
Birthday celebrations last year (v similar menu)

Grilled trout with rosemary stuffing

Cooking with decent ingredients means that you don't want to waste them, however lowly they may seem to be. Something that has crept up on me is finding ways of using up every last crumb of the bread I bake. It's the sort of thrift I was brought up to, but which doesn't work if you're eating Mother's Pride.

At the fish counter yesterday, I was very aware of Ed Bruske's gentle admonishment:

I love monkfish. However, I've stopped buying it because it is listed as "avoid" by the Monterey Bay Aquarium's "Seafood Watch" program. At least in the Atlantic off the U.S. coast, monkfish (a bottom feeder that used to be thrown overboard as trash) has been overfished. Also, the means of catching it usually involves trawling, which seriously damages the ocean floor. I wonder how your British stocks are doing.

Well, this information turns out to be very hard to access. The Marine Conservation Society has just redesigned its website, but not enough to make it easy to find the information most people would want: a list of fish that's best to eat, another of endangered fish that should be avoided. It wasn't obvious, either, where they keep the search facility they've opted for instead (why not BOTH?); you need to have heard of their sister organisation FishOnline. The search facility is not entirely straightforward to use, and I had to track back to find out what the numbers meant (is a high number good? or bad?). And all the time, a disembodied voice kept saying, I'm Kate Humble and .... I HATE websites that noise at you without your say-so. It shouldn't take an hour to find this information, and I STILL don't have any clear idea about any other species than monkfish (don't eat it).

No longer on auto-pilot, I found three fat brown trout, speckled just exactly as if they'd been caught in the burn that ran past the home field of my grandfather's Fife farm. (And, yes, I do know that there are problems with farmed fish, but you've got to start somewhere, and yesterday, I was saving the monkfish.) When I bought them, I thought I'd cook them in the Scots manner, dipped in egg and oatmeal. But then I started browsing the recipe books ...

I rejected Michael Smith's recipe (in his excellent Fine English Cookery) for trout and almonds; there was the faint reminder of dour restaurant meals taken on the last night of the school holidays before incarceration (that really is the right word) at my isolated Dorset convent boarding school. Instead, I chose grilled trout with herb stuffing from Ann and Franco Taruschio's Leaves from the Walnut Tree.

I've only recently acquired this seminal book, and this is the first thing I've cooked from it. The Taruschios ran The Walnut Tree at Llandewi Skirrid from 1963 to 2001; it was Elizabeth David's favourite British restaurant; Jan Morris says she would happily go there for a plate of scrambled eggs. The subtitle of their book tells you everything you need to know: Recipes of a Lifetime.

Here's Jan Morris's description of Franco Taruschio's cooking: With herbs from the garden behind the pub, fruits and vegetables from local growers, fish and meat from a supplier down the road, the victuals at The Walnut Tree are, like the restaurant itself, a fascinating blend of the worldly and the simple, the plain organic and the exquisitely invented. This way of cooking is exactly of the moment: the Taruschio's - like, say, Alice Waters - are trailblazers.

This stuffing is a very good example: it's similar to the sort of thing my grandmother might have made to stuff a trout, but she wouldn't have used chilli flakes (even though she was a daughter of the Raj, and knew all about curry). It can be put together in moments - but is only worth making with really good bread. And if you habitually keep or make really good bread, then you'll be on the lookout for recipes which use up the last crumbs. This is one of the best I've found.

Grilled trout with rosemary
for 3-4

3-4 prepared whole trout
2 tbsp finely chopped parsley
1 tbsp finely chopped rosemary
4 tbsp fresh breadcrumbs
dried chilli flakes
a lemon
olive oil

Mix the herbs and breadcrumbs. Add a pinch of chilli flakes, the zest and juice of a lemon, four tablespoons of olive oil, and pepper. Use this to stuff the fish. Lay them on an oiled grillpan, lightly oil the fish, and sprinkle with Maldon salt. Cook for four minutes under a very hot grill, then turn, drizzle with oil and lightly salt, grill for 3-4 minutes.

Other things to do with old bread

Baked scallops
Panzanilla
Anchovy toasts


Related links

FishOnline
MCS
The Slow Cook, Ed Bruske's blog

Moro monkfish with ginger and saffron

This delicious smokily-spiced fish and potato dish would be just as good without the fish, in fact, next time, I think that's how I'll make it. And any white fish would do, rather than overpriced monkfish, as what you're after is a contrast between the white flesh and the smoky-dark sauce - both in taste and in colour.

The recipe comes from Moro East, Sam and Sam Clark's book about cooking inspired by their allotment at Manor Gardens in Hackney, East London, now, shockingly, bulldozed to make way for an Olympic footpath from carpark to stadium.

In case you're wondering how an allotment book comes up with a fish dish, I should tell you that the inspiration for Moro East came mainly from the cultural diversity of fellow allotment holders - their produce and, most importantly, their ways of cooking. Thus Moro East broadens out from the Clark's original books on the Moorish cookery of Spain.

Introducing this dish, S&S write: shut your eyes, taste, and be transported to Morocco. For me, this food evokes Sicily (the sweet note of the sultanas in a savoury dish) and Cornwall - the taste of saffron takes me right to the Penzance bakery every single time.

One of the best things about this recipe is that it's a two-step process: I made the sauce on Thursday while I was cooking supper. It was hardly any extra trouble, and made preparing dinner last night much quicker ... a huge help as I didn't get home until nearly 7 o'clock after a busy day.

Monkfish with sweet onions, ginger and saffron
for 3

Monkfish (or not)
olive oil
3 onions
2 cloves of garlic
120g sultanas
1 tsp ground ginger
a big pinch of saffron (about 30 strands)
1 tsp turmeric
2 tsp cinnamon
400 ml water
400g diced waxy potatoes

Slice the onions thinly into rounds, and fry gently in a lot of olive oil (S&S say 6 tbsp). Stir frequently. When the onions are just golden, add finely chopped garlic and sultanas. Cook these for about 5 minutes to give the sultanas a chance to swell up in the oil. Add the spices, warm through, then add the water. Simmer for five minutes. At this point you can stop. Or not.

Heat the oven to 230C. Pour the warmed sauce into a large roasting tin. Arrange the potatoes on top in a single layer. Cover with foil and put in the oven. Once the sauce is simmering, the potatoes will take half an hour. You therefore need to time the addition of the fish depending on its size. Here is the Moro East guide to cooking times: a large (1kg) monkfish tail will also take 30 minutes or so, and should be added as soon as the potatoes are hot; 2 smaller tails will take about 20 minutes ... portion-sized fillets or steaks will take only 10-15 minutes.

Smear your fish with oil, and a little salt if you like. Lay the fish on the potatoes, re-cover, and cook for most of its timing. About five minutes before the end, turn the fish over and finish baking uncovered.

I served this with plain couscous. S&S say that you can sprinkle the dish with orange blossom water ... which makes me think that another time, it would look and taste good with a scattering of orange zest.

Would you like me to give you a Nigel Slater book?

Would you like me to give you a recipe book?

I think I must have put you all off ... amazingly, not a single request for the latest Nigel Slater. I noticed piles of Eating for England in the bookshop at the weekend, but they haven't started remaindering it yet. I'm not NS's greatest fan, & this is not his best book ... but someone must want it, surely?

I've already given away two books (I got loads of requests for those), and would like to give this one away to a reader. Otherwise it's the Oxfam shop, probably on Thursday, when I go to the market.


The usual "rules" apply: just email me (joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk) and let me know why you'd like it, and I'll pick a winner, and post it off. All I'd like you to do in return is write a post about the book, linking back here. A book and a link - what's not to like?

Related posts:

Would you like me to give you a recipe book?
Real Fast Food + lentil stew
Nigel Slater's Eating for England


Related links:

The Joy of Fish

Nigel Slater's Eating for England

Would you like me to give you a recipe book?

Actually, this week it's not a recipe book, it's a memoir by Nigel Slater, the one that came out in time for Christmas. It was my Christmas present to myself. A fun read, but not one I'll want to go back to and re-read.

The idea of this book arose when an American radio reporter asked NS to describe British food.

Do I tell them about the meltingly tender lamb from North Ronaldsay, the famous apple hat pudding with its tender suet crust, or the northern teacake known as the fat rascal? Do I have time to enthuse about the joys of medlar jelly, damson gin and the unpasteurised cheeses made down long leafy lanes in Dorset, Devon and Dumfries? Perhaps I should wax eloquent about Wiltshire bacon, sherry trifle, Christmas pudding, or steak-and-kidney pie with its crumbly pastry and dark and savoury filling? Will there be time for name-checks for Scottish heather honey, toasted teacakes, gooseberry fool and Caerphilly cheese? And will they let me squeeze in the glory that is a decent haggis, Welsh rarebit or Cornish pasty?

Or do I tell them the truth? That for every Brit eating our legendary roast beef and jam roly poly there are a million more tucking into Thai green curry and pepperoni pizza. That more people probably eat chocolate brownies than apple crumble and custard, and that it is now easier to find decent sushi than really good roast beef.

The main thrust of this book is Sweets-I-have-loved, Biscuits-I-Wish-They-Still-Made. Amazing, really, that his palate is still intact. There's a lot of dissing English cookery, some of it called for. There's a not-very-nice story about taking his elderly aunt out for lunch. So all my prejudices are intact (although I'd like you to know that I'm probably not going to give away my copy of Kitchen Diaries, at least, not yet). The mix of - to me - irrelevance and negativity means I won't want to read it again. But I'd welcome another view, so I'm giving it away.

Would YOU like it? The usual rules: just email me (joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk) and let me know why you'd like it, and I'll pick a winner, and post it off. All I'd like you to do in return is write a post about the book, linking back here.


Last week, I said I'd give away my duplicate of Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food. It's going to Anke at Vegan Bounty. She posted some great recipes for this month's Heart of the Matter on soup. And she's a fan of Nigel.

I posted off a spare copy of Jane Grigson's Fish to Helen at A Forkful of Spaghetti ... and here's her post, her first take on this excellent book.


Related links:

Would you like me to give you a book?
Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food

Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food + lentil stew

Would you like me to give you a recipe book?










There are too many recipe books in this house, so I'm giving some of the surplus away to readers of this blog, one by one, to ease the pain. Last week, I asked who would like my spare copy of Jane Grigson's Fish Book. I'm giving it to Helen at A Forkful of Spaghetti, a new London-based blog. It was really hard to decide (although not quite as hard as deciding on this week's book), and in the end I thought I'd give it to someone in England, because I thought people from other places might have trouble sourcing some of the fish, and you know how we're all locavores now.

This is what Helen said:

When I was 'getting into' food in my late teens, I used to read Jane's columns and recipes in the Observer from time to time until she died. I always liked her clear style of writing, and her evident enthusiasm for food - and her equal enthusiasm for sharing her amazing knowledge.

For reasons I can't now remember properly, I never got around to buying any of her books - I think it's probably because I was moving around a lot in those days, and was trying to keep my 'baggage' to a minimum.

All these years on, and speaking as someone who adores fish, it's fantastic to see fish making a 'comeback', championed as it now is by the new breed of celebrity food writers, such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

But Jane got there first, didn't she? Quite simply, I would love this book because I love fish, and even now, I can't think of many people who wrote better on the subject than Jane. Since I don't have any of her books, this would fill a very shameful gap on my kitchen shelf!


This week's book is another duplicate - and I'm horribly afraid that every single one of you already has a copy, because it's a real classic, hugely popular, and this particular copy was a magazine giveaway. I can't do better than to quote from the blurb on the back:

Real Fast Food contains over 350 recipes and suggestions which show that food in a hurry can be creative, delicious and nourishing ... all the dishes can be ready to eat in 30 minutes or under - less time than it takes to heat up a ready-made supermarket supper.

Real Fast Food was Nigel Slater's first book, a huge bestseller despite the lack of pictures. It's hard to remember now what a sensation it caused in 1992, because it was so influential. I'm not very keen on Slater's later books, but this one is fantastically useful: there are everyday ingredients (no problem about things in cans), there are endless variations on a number of themes (eggs, canned fish, bread etc), there's a strong can-do feel about it, you don't have to be an expert to make a good supper out of what there is in the fridge.

This is what I'm going to cook for lunch (p 207):

Lentils with tomatoes

100g brown lentils
1 bay leaf
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 chopped onion
1 chopped fresh red chilli pepper
400g tin plum tomatoes

Wash the lentils in a sieve under running water. Cook them with the bay leaf and a tablespoon of the oil in boiling salted water for 15 minutes. Drain them in a colander.

Meanwhile, fry the onion in the remaining oil for about 5-7 minutes, until soft and golden. Add the chilli and cook for a further minute or two. Add the drained lentils and the tomatoes with all their juice, salt and pepper. Simmer gently for 10 minutes and serve hot.

Once associated with slow-cooking, the lentil, which cooks to perfection in 15-20 minutes and sometimes less, is good snack material. Sometimes I boil them with a bay leaf and a little oil, then just drain them and smother in soft butter and black pepper. How to feel indulgent on 30p

That last paragraph is typical: first a recipe, then a fuss-free way to vary it.


So, if there's anyone out there who doesn't have a copy of this excellent book, email me (joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk) and let me know why you'd like it, and I'll pick a winner, and post it off. All I'd like you to do in return is write a post about the book, linking back here.

Related posts:
Would you like me to give you a recipe book?
Pasta with braised lentils
Lentil soup with ruby chard
Beetroot and lentils
Dhal
Lentil salad with homemade cheese

Lady Westmorland's soup

This is a recipe to challenge your definition of luxury, however frugal you are. It's from Florence White's Good Things in England, first published in 1932 with the idea of preserving six decades of traditional English methods of cookery. This particular recipe proves that there is nothing new under the sun; it could hardly be more pared down, more minimalist (if you can have more minimalism).

Lady Westmorland's soup

This is nothing more than the water in which young cabbage has been boiled according to the directions given on page 208 ... It is extremely good and delicate and tastes very much like chicken broth. It is not merely an economy but a luxury; one of the best of health and beauty drinks.

The instructions given on page 208 are headed The Right Way to Cook Cabbage. These instructions are a culinary operation that has been dealt with scientifically by Dr Ellen Marion Delf (Mrs Percy Smith DSc) whose name is known all the world over in connection with the scientific tests she made for several years with various fruits and vegetables (particularly with orange and swede juice, cabbage and tomatoes) to discover their vitamin value and the best method of preserving it when they were cooked.

This is what you do to Cook Cabbage the Right Way: wash the (young) cabbage (old cabbage should never be cooked at all: it is worthless), cut it into quarters, remove old leaves and cut out tough stems. Put the quarters into rapidly boiling slightly salted water. Boil rapidly with the lid off for 10 minutes, and absolutely no longer than 15 minutes. Lift out, drain by pressing slightly. If you have cooked it properly it will be slightly crisp, and not saturated with water. If you want it chopped, now is the moment to chop it. Cabbage should not be kept waiting; it should be cooked and served immediately.

I haven't yet cooked Lady Westmorland's Soup - first of all the cabbage in my fridge could really only be described as old, so I thought it was better not to risk Dr Delf's wrath by cooking it. And secondly, I have a problem with this: if the cabbage can't be kept waiting, then we'll have to eat the vegetable course before the soup. Or reheat the soup, which probably isn't very good for the vitamins, especially the fugitive delicate Vitamin C, as Florence White calls it.

All the same, this is my entry for this month's Heart of the Matter: soup is this month's theme. It's undoubtedly heart-healthy, it's certainly frugal, and is, I suppose, luxurious in the sense that it's very very good for you, rather than in the sense of let's-spend-all-the-money-we-haven't-got-in Harrods/Armani/Gucci/Jimmy Choo/etc etc

I'm sure many of you know the HotM "rules" by now, but here's a recap: all you have to do is to send me the link to your entry at joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk by 24 January, make a link to Joanna's Food and to the HotM blog as well if you like. I'll post the round up on both blogs. In order to keep this focused on heart health we ask you to consider this as a one-entry event, i.e. we prefer that you don't use your post for other events as well.