Jeanette Winterson – Christmas Days : 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days

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12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days, Book Review, Christmas Days, Jeanette Winterson

Sweet, charming, heart-warming, festive, scary…..and possibly delicious

Jeanette Winterson has here created a pretty perfect gift-wrapped 12 days of Christmas present. The wrapping is the beautiful presentation of the book, with its smart dark blue cloth cover, all decorated with stunning illustrations by Katie Scott, who has also provided the equally gorgeous patterned facing pages at the start of each chapter, not to mention manuscript style decorated letters to start the chapters, and tiny confetti style occasional type sized symbols – hearts, flowers, stars, a little dog. These are not random, but keep an eye out for them as you read, they are like little exclamations on the story you have been reading.

But, gorgeous as all this is, it just serves to enhance and package the delectable present of Winterson’s writing.

Soot Town had paid for the dinner, in honour of the day, and in charity towards the poor, parentless children who had taken shelter under Mrs Reckitt’s ample wings.

Had she been a bird it is unlikely that Mrs Reckitt could have flown far – or indeed flown at all – for in most respects Mrs Reckitt resembled a giant turkey. Not a wild turkey. No. A bred bronze bird with a substantial breast, a folded neck, a small head and legs……If in most respects the lady resembled the celebrated bird of the Christmas feast, in one singular respect she bore another resemblance.

Mrs Reckitt had the face of a crocodile. Her jaw was long, her mouth was wide. Large teeth lurked inside it

Twelve quite different stories, and all quite proper for the season itself, so we have the heartwarm of rewarded virtue, and celebration of love itself, in all sorts of different forms – whether of a poor child for a glorious snowman, which is, in fact, a magical and funny Snowmama, a bereft adult grieving for their dead lover, the nativity donkey touched by the birth of the Christchild, or a couple of looking-for-love New York lonely hearts. This is, after all, a symbolic time of change and new beginnings. There are proper Dickensian, type stories of wicked capital and the virtuous poor, and the wicked get the comeuppance they deserve. It is also a time more closely linked to pagan festivals, the shortest day, and the veil between the worlds of life and death.

So there ought to be dark stories, ghost stories, most frightening and powerful, to raise shivers in the reader. And, there are…some properly frightening ones.

It is the custom here that the husband provides the wedding dress; white, but with a small red stain placed where he chooses to mark the loss of a maidenhead. The maid came to dress me for the wedding. She wished me happiness and health.

‘Is he a good man, my husband?’ I asked as she fastened the dress tight.

‘He is a man’ she said. ‘The rest you must decide for yourself.’

I was dressed and I looked at myself in the silver mirror,. The maid had a vial of blood. ‘For the stain.’ She said

She dabbed the blood over my heart.

Just as well Winterson’s overall mood and desire is to bring cheer, and so she revives us with the other gift of Christmas – the festive connection of shared food and celebration.

There are 12 stories, the fictional inventions of Winterson’s imagination and writerly craft, and there are 12 recipes which have some link in memory to her past, and her present – things prepared by others for her, things prepared by her and others, things prepared by her – all part of festivities past and present.

I say possibly delicious because many of them are not vegetarian friendly, so I can only appreciate the lovely real stories she shares along with them, and some of them, particularly recipes from her childhood, might not be as appetising to a reader who doesn’t have a childhood memory to make them tasty (I was never a fan of tinned fruit salad!)

If I had to find one word to describe Jeanette Winterson’s Christmas pot-pourri, it would be that it is a kind one. And, kindness, surely is something which can sometimes seem in very short supply.

I was delighted to be offered this by Amazon Vine UK, and snapped it up eagerly. Alas, I intended to read just ONE story per day, but presented with a whole box of delectations and delights I ate/read one after the other. Delicious and satisfying and not an inch added to the waistline. Though, if I make the cheese straws (these I can eat), I might not be able to say that for much longer…………

Christmas Days Amazon UK
Christmas Days Amazon USA

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Diana Henry – Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons

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Book Review, Cookery Book, Crazy Water Pickled Lemons, Diana Henry

Lyrical, seductive writing about food; delicious dishes

In many ways, as a vegetarian, I should not be reading this book; not with practical intent. Many, perhaps most, of the recipes are not ones I am ever going to make, so cannot judge, too much, how practically tasty and workable Diana Henry’s recipes are.

Crazy Water ( a Italian recipe for sea-bass) and Pickled Lemons is Diane Henry’s journey around ‘enchanting dishes from the Middle East, Mediterranean and North Africa’ – regions which produce wonderful tastes, flavours, inventive combinations using seductive combinations of real food, whether it is the stuff I don’t eat, fish and animal flesh based, or the stuff I do – a rainbow of succulent sun bathed fruits, vegetables, spices, cheeses, yoghurts, mouth-watering ways with grains and pulses. This cuisine, though meat and fish are of course a central part of food celebrations, is very different from cuisines where meat is the star turn, and vegetables a kind of afterthought accompaniment. So there is a lot to delight a vegetarian, and all these countries have many vegetarian or vegan dishes which can be relished as stand-alone main dishes as well, as, for omnivores, accompaniment to the stuff I will avoid.

I must admit though, that it was Henry’s writing which lured me to the book, as much as the gorgeous recipes I will indulge in. This is as much a book for reading, evoking memories or imaginations of place through sensual writing, as it is a book for doing, in order to evoke the memories or imaginations of place through eating

How could writing like this be resisted :

Places, as well as tastes, are locked up in food. The clear perfumed stillness of a bottle of flower water, the sexy, velvety skin of a fig, the sunburnt blood colour of a jar of cayenne. Our love of foods has as much to do with what they represent as what they taste like

Tearing myself away with difficulty from Henry’s loving evocation of these gorgeous cuisines, I can do what Henry suggests

experience the otherness of places by cooking and eating..go on journeys with.my tastebuds and my mind … the magic of the exotic is there, right beside the everyday stuff, for you to bring into your kitchen

Her chapters are structured around ingredients: collections of warm spices; herbs we might cook with; herbs eaten raw; the classic marriages of the produce of the olive tree and garlic; the sweet sour combinations of honey and vinegar; store cupboard delights of seeds and nuts; sensual, sexy fruits; cheeses (especially from sheep and goats) and yoghurts; the breads of the region; those vibrant citruses; and, finally, ‘Heaven Scent’ – flowers and flower waters.

Photographs are gorgeous, instructions are clear, type face is easily readable. Unlike some more regrettable and trendy cookbooks I’ve come across recently where someone decided that rainbow coloured pages and distressed typefaces would be cool and edgy, Henry, despite the beauty of her descriptive writing, is most anxious that you get into the kitchen, and, well .. prepare stunning food. And then, of course, delightedly eat it. And some of the rather extraordinary dishes are also incredibly simple.

For example, a chocolate and rosemary sorbet, has just 4 ingredients :
2 sprigs rosemary, 7 oz (200 g) caster sugar, 21/4 oz (60 g) cocoa powder, 18fl.oz (500 ml) water.

Henry instructs : bruise the rosemary ‘bash it with the back of a wooden spoon’ and put it into a pan with the rest of the ingredients. Heat gently to help the cocoa and sugar to melt. Bring to boil, boil for 1 minute, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat, leave to cool. Remove the rosemary and either churn in an ice cream machine, or still freeze – put it in the freezer, removing a few times to beat the freezing mixture. And…wow, eat. She suggests serving with double cream mixed with sweetened Greek yoghurt and raspberries.

The recipe, she says, serves 4 to 6. Hmm, not sure I believe that upper figure!

Those who rightly will want to know in more detail some of the other recipes, can look at the index on a look inside – selections of the region’s fish, lamb, chicken are all there and the vegetarian amongst us might be inclined to try some of these recipes with tofu, though there are plenty of the region’s pulse, grain and vegetable recipe delights to follow without the need for trial and error substitutions.

I was immediately tempted by the Persian starter dish of Sabzi Khordan – again, a simple recipe, packing a fine taste-buds punch, not to mention deliciously healthy – fresh herbs, mint, tarragon, coriander, basil, a big bunch of radishes with their leaves, feta broken into chunks, peeled red onion in wedges, flatbread (recipe to make your own, or use pitta breads) optional olive oils and wedges of lemon

Up to you whether the herbs are torn up like a salad, or left in individual bunches. Put everything attractively on a plate, and serve with the warmed flatbreads – a pick and mix kind of antipasti. This is eating, and cooking, to celebrate the pleasures of the table, and of company.

Though some of the making is fast, the eating deserves to be slow and joyous.

It is a million miles away from food constructed in a lab, to be slung in a microwave and gobbled down as some kind of punishment to be got through and endured

I received this as a copy for review purposes from Amazon Vine UK, where it is re-published in paperback format. Lucky denizens of these isles can get it easily. Alas, in the States it appears just as mainly used, marketplace, in prices rating from the affordable to the – probably not. Perhaps her publishers will bring you a reprint soon!

Crazy Water, Picked Lemons Amazon UK
Crazy Water, Picked Lemons Amazon UK

And especially for those in parts of the world where your only chance of trying the recipes depends on a second hand bookshop, and a copy with not too much evidence of well-thumbed and sauce-spattered usage, I discovered that Diana Henry has a blog, and on that blog are some recipes for your (and my) delectation and delight I took you STRAIGHT to the recipes pages

However……….I am cheekily claiming this for READING (Northern) IRELAND month – Diana Henry was born in Northern Ireland -, so despite cooking the world, she is an Irish cook. And as the month was a celebration of Ireland…………celebrations need food!

Now, I hope Cathy at 746 is not going to call me a cheeky spalpeen

Bee Wilson – First Bite: How we Learn to Eat

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Bee Wilson, Book Review, First Bite : How We Learn To Eat, Food politics

Food from cradle (and before) to grave

I first encountered social historian and food writer Bee Wilson through her brilliant book, Consider the Fork, which looks at history and much more through examining the evolution of cooking, and the implements needed for this.

Wilson is my favourite kind of writer or non-fiction – extensive in research, meticulous citing to enable the interested reader to search further, and, most important of all for me – a gifted weaver of words. However erudite a writer, I need the skills a good novelist possesses – how to tell the story. Essential that this is done in non-fiction as much as in fiction, I think. Bee Wilson knows how to tell the story.

First Bite: How We Learn to Eat is a more personal, different kind of book, though all the strengths of Wilson’s writing, as detailed above, are as impeccably in place. This book takes a long and cool look at the origins of our often disordered eating habits. It is a more personal book because Wilson herself, as she explains, was a disordered eater, tending towards weight gain, attracted to the sugary, struggling with this and that diet. Meanwhile her sibling had another kind of eating disorder.

Food, in lands of plenty, has become a huge problem for man. Fashions in advice for how to change, in the developed world, the curious mixture of obesity and malnourishment which is endemic, is endlessly written about, and the legions of diet gurus all grow fat (metaphorically, one assumes) on the proceeds of the over-fed’s obsessions.

Bee Wilson’s book is not a ‘how to eat more healthily and lose weight’ diet advice or recipe book, though, if that is what a reader is looking for, there is lots of sensible advice to be found within the pages. Rather, what she does, as in earlier books, is to look at a variety of disciplines, from the medical, through to the politics of the food industry, psychology, neurochemistry, culture, sociology, scientific studies and much, much more and blend them together into a remarkably tasty, nutritious, beautifully presented casserole which will leave the reader (well, it did so for this reader), energised, with a feeling of satiety but not over-indulgence, left pleasurably digesting ideas when away from the book, and ready to come back for another meal-read.

Roasted Brussels – Learned Bitter Taste Delight Flicr, Commons Mackenzie Kosut

The book is brimming with all sorts of fascinating facts and ideas. For example, one of the reasons that so many ‘won’t eat their sprouts’ is because we are hard-wired to be alarmed by ‘bitter’. This goes back to our days as omnivorous foragers – bitter tasting plants are more likely to be ones which may be toxic to us – and some plants have evolved ‘bitter’ to deter being eaten, too. Wilson explores, however, the fact that food tastes and fads are a mixture of genetics and nurture. We each have differences in the number of papillae on our tongues, and there is no doubt that there are tastes and smells which some people perceive with ultra-sensitivity, and some cannot perceive at all. Of course, we also learn tastes in the high chair (and earlier) Forced too quickly to eat tastes we don’t like – or, perhaps, not being exposed to a wide variety of tastes during the window of opportunity when ‘new tastes’ are not experienced as threatening, and if, perhaps, we are an individual hypersensitive to ‘bitter’, an aversion to the dark green leafies may be on its way.

                               Later learned bitter delight

I was fascinated to read how recent (and, again, how specific in many ways to the developed Western world) the idea of ‘special food for babies’ is. There are many cultures where the weaning baby eats what the adult eats. And sometimes this includes food we might consider unsuitable for a baby – garlic, for example. And yet – one of the fascinating benefits for breast-fed babies is that the taste of breast milk is never the same, feed to feed, as breast milk will taste of what mother eats. Garlic eating cultures will have garlic habituated babies from the off!

Bee Wilson is a mother of three, and the book has a lot of focus on the developing of food likes, dislikes, disorders and orders, back from not just babyhood, but in-the-womb. A neat experiment was done with a group of mothers who were due to have an amniocentesis. They were asked to take a garlic capsule 45 minutes before the procedure – and those who had taken the capsule had amniotic fluid which smelt garlicky. The baby in the womb is already ‘tasting’ the food mother eats. Other experiments have verified these findings.

       Loving my sprouts early – the other pay-off – bitter dark stuff heaven 
(For the curious William Curley Chocolates So good, so expensive, so luxurious one chocolate is enough rare treat, and satisfies, when savoured)

Wilson was also very interesting about how there are cultural perceptions of different foods being suitable fare for boy children and girl children – and how damaging this is to both boys and girls. Boys are less likely to be pressured to eat up their greens than girls. Meat (and larger portions of meat) is more often given to boys. Salads and sweet things are seen to be more suitable for girls. However – from puberty, girls and women are more likely to be anaemic than men, so actually, girls could benefit from iron rich foods – eg steak, and boys should really learn to be more like girls in their ‘eating up their greens!’

I could go on and on and on about this book. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the politics of the food industry, health, children’s health, – or in the collection of fascinating facts to astound your friends with!

Highly recommended

I was lucky enough to receive this as a digital review copy from the publisher, Fourth Estate, via NetGalley

First Bite : How We Learn To Eat Amazon UK
First Bite : How We Learn To Eat Amazon USA

Julia Thomas – Free-From Desserts

Tags

Book Review, Cookery Book, Dairy Free, Free-From Desserts, Gluten Free, Julia Thomas, Novak Djokovich, Wheat Free

Sweet things for the food allergic and intolerant; others will happily join the feast

What a delightful and warm-hearted book this is! Julia Thomas had a personal journey in creating these recipes. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in her early forties, early in pregnancy. Hugely influenced by Professor Jane Plant, and the book she wrote, Your Life In Your Hands, she embarked on radical dietary changes, and cut out dairy from her diet; she also went wheat and gluten free.

As she explains in her interesting introduction, 20-30% now believe they have a food intolerance, 2% have diagnosed food allergies, and many people just want to make healthier choices.

Thomas succeeded well in her dietary changes, but missed, really missed puddings. So she set out to explore the possibilities of the well-loved puds from childhood without dairy, wheat or gluten – the wealth of dishes made from varieties of sweet pastry, the steamed puddings, the ice-creams.

What I love (amongst many things) about this book, is that this is indeed ‘home cooking’ rather than over fussy, over fancy stylistic twirlery, but it is tried, tested and achievable home cooking of excellence. The reader benefits from the trials and errors Thomas went through. She was clearly an excellent maker of puds using traditional ingredients, but now needed to explore the possibilities, of, for example, pastry making with other flours, with the challenges imposed by the fact that those other flours lack the elasticity which gluten gives, and which is needed for pastry.

Thomas guides the novice free-from pudder through all the alternatives for her free-from ingredients, including pointing out hidden ingredients to beware of – for example, not all baking powder brands are gluten free – and advises on brands and sourcing of ingredients.

And, for those who do not need to avoid dairy, wheat or gluten, for themselves or their friends and family, she sensibly points out that you can use the recipes with dairy, wheat and gluten versions, and tells you which added ingredients you need to avoid – mainly, xanthan gum. Xanthan is a natural ingredient made from the fermentation of corn sugars, though the microorganism which carries out the fermentation removes all the sugars in the process. Xanthan gum gives the ‘stretch’ needed for pastry to wheat free flours

So, then we come to the recipes. Now, they are not ‘healthy’ in terms of the fact that they do contain sugar, even though in many recipes Thomas is using less refined version – but these are, after all, rich treats and possibly not for daily consumption. Vegans should also note that eggs are prevalent in many recipes.

Many of the recipes will provoke longing, from old favourites such as sticky toffee pudding, lemon meringue pie, apple tart, treacle tart, to more ‘modern’ sweetnesses such as Tiramisu, a wide variety of cheesecakes, chocolate fondants, crème caramel, pots au chocolat (a version with prune and Armagnac cream. Yum). Then there is a glorious range of ice-creams . I’m rather tempted by a very grown-up sounding Merlot Gelato. Not to mention a sorbet – of chocolate (swoons) And a selection of sauces, creams, ripples and the like to further adorn your pudding feasts.

Even the Number 1 tennis player in the world at the moment, and recent Wimbledon winner – yes, that’s Novak Djokovich – ascribes his improved stamina and fitness to the fact that he went gluten free in 2010,. He was following the advice of a kinesiologist and nutritionist Dr Igor Cetojevic, who believed that the mid-match fatigue crashes Djokovich was experiencing was due to wheat and gluten allergy. Djokovich became a wheat, gluten and dairy free zone, and saw the difference in his fitness. But I do hope that the gluten-free diet hasn’t done anything to dull Djok’s clear comedic abilities, as shown in the above video. When he eventually hangs up his racquet (by recent showing, not for many, many years), perhaps another career awaits on the stand-up circuit.

Though clearly there are significant dietary properties in the Wimbledon grass, which also play their part (you have to watch Djokovich’s final matches, 2011, 2014, 2015)

(Ends digression on Novak Djokovic)

Now, for those who would impatiently rather have a recipe or four than a side-step into tennis, I’m afraid that the ‘look inside’ stuff for easy cut and paste was copyrighted and I was too lazy to laboriously type out a recipe by hand. But you can mosey over to the Amazon’s and take a look inside, and will find 4 or 5 ‘free-from’ pastry recipes, information about ingredients and an index to make your mouth water

Should you live in the UK and want gluten free cakes but not want to make them, I discovered when trying to find an author photo (nothing outside copyright) that Julia Thomas’s business offers mail order goodies Julia and son And for those of you outside the UK, you’ll just have to do your own baking

This gorgeous sweet collection of heaven for ‘free-from’ pud yearners is published by Quadrille. And I’m delighted to see that the photos are gorgeous, but, more importantly, the pages are traditionally white and the type-face clearly set out, spaciously arranged, and, above all, legible. Which might seem peculiar to mention, except another recent recipe book from Quadrille (which didn’t make the grade and get reviewed on here) was rendered incomprehensible by every page being a different colour, fonts being ‘distressed’ and often set on a slant. Clearly designed to be read by cooks one over the eight working at a tipsy leaning angle!

Thomas’ book is a delight all round, and of course, especially for those who have been longing for ‘free-from’ puddings to make at home

Meanwhile, I hope Julia sent Djokovich some cakes during his sojourn on the grassy lawns of SW19

I happily received this as an ARC from Amazon Vine. Unfortunately they did not send me any cakes
Free-From Desserts Amazon UK
Free-From Desserts Amazon USA

Izy Hossack – Top With Cinnamon

Tags

Baking, Book Review, Cookery Book, Izy Hossack, Top With Cinnamon

Enchanted by Izy (beloved by dentists!)

I have been bowled over by Izy almost against my will. YES this book is not going to be one of the cookbooks in daily use, mainly because it is really a sweet and sticky bakes and desserts book, with a few main dishes and savoury (and LOTS of sweet) snacks thrown in for good measure.

BUT Izy is 18, bubbling over with enthusiasm, loves cooking, loves eating, and just expresses such joie de vivre and desire to SHARE the pleasure that it would take a harder-hearted, surlier cynic than I would ever want to be, NOT to roll over, surrender and say, ah, bless, good on you, and……mm let me into the kitchen and attabake NOW

This would particularly be a fabulous book for other young chefs or would be chefs. She is refreshingly ‘hey, this is FUN!, this is COOL! This is EASY!’ and though at times I squinted at the text (tiny, tiny) and thought there might be an overkill of photos and not QUITE enough recipes, I felt a churl for even thinking this.

As a vegetarian some of the (Not that many) main dishes are of course NOT FOR ME, so we will draw a veil over them, and those that want to see can look at the index on a ‘look inside’

This is a very helpful book for the utter novice cook, as Izy shows and tells how to make such staples as bread dough, pastry, not to mention how to prepare and line cake tins and roll-out and prepare pastry in a flan tin, and how to make various staples she uses a lot of such as chocolate and hazelnut butter and chocolate ganache.

But how can a fellow chocolate lover NOT surrender to Izy, a serious chocca young lady if ever there was one – Chocolate Chip Amaretto Torte, Swedish chocolate cake, boozy mocha Coconut Layer Cake (sandwiched with that chocolate ganache yum) and the like.

You can keep your surly bad tempered chefs who dishearten the rest of us with complexity. Izy Hossack is infectiously joyous, as are her recipes It must be a surfeit of endorphins from all that chocolate.

AND should you decide you would like more Izy recipes, there is her blog, surprisingly entitled Top With Cinnamon.

A picture for Coconut Bostock – recipe on her site Top With Cinnamon

Very helpfully, Izy who lives in the UK has an American Italian mother, so she covers every single base on the measurement, – the weighted ones, Imperial and Metric, and those frankly WEIRD (to a Brit) Stateside volume ones, for her baking recipes, so meaning her book can be happily used by all!

Izy’s other enthusiasm is photography, so the visuals, as well as the food (and no doubt the choice of that tiny text!) is also testament to her creative skills

Second edition, maybe she’ll turn the font size up! (Okay, that’s the advantage if you get this in eread, but then..losing those lovely photos!)

I happily received this from the Amazon Vine UK programme as a review copy

Top With Cinnamon Amazon UK
Top With Cinnamon Amazon USA

David Bez – Salad Love

Tags

Book Review, Cookery Book, David Bez, Salad Love

Vegetarians, Vegans and Raw Food Eaters can happily frolic through these pages. Others are also welcome. Five Yums Rating!

David Bez’s jolly book encouraging healthy, inexpensive, quick at-your-desk made lunches is really well thought out.

Bez is, as he tells us, not a chef, but he is from Italy, loves food, and works in ‘creative’. He is also a father, and cares about eating fresh, in season, delicious quality food. And he has limited time for lunch, taken at his desk. He has chosen the option to prepare a variety of fresh salads, which can be quickly put together in less time than it takes to queue in the local supermarket for a sad sandwich

His art director background is written all over the great presentation, and excellent design of this book.

The recipes are divided into the four seasons, and what is easily available. Some of it involves being a little thoughtful the night before, and cooking a few extra vegetables, grains, pulses (or, okay for those of you that eat the other stuff, putting aside some of the dead flesh) to become part of your lunch salad.

Forget lettuce, tomato cucumber; tomato, cucumber lettuce; cucumber tomato, lettuce and on, and on, Bez will have you happily assembling all sorts of goodies, – I advise a quick ‘look inside’ the book to whet your imagination, but a few recipes I flicked at random – yellow pepper, broccoli, chilli and coconut cream; goat’s cheese, kale, cucumber and tomatoes; cavalo nero, avocado and sprouted beans.

Broad Beans Mozzarella and Courgette from Salad Pride Blog

I can hear those flesh eaters grumbling………….fear not, there is plenty for you. What Bez does is to define each recipe as being Omnivore, Pescatarian, Vegetarian, Vegan or Raw.

Obviously the omnivore is for the everything including animal eater , the pescatarian fish eater and the rest, the vegetarian has nothing which had a face, but does include dairy or egg., the vegan contains no ingredient from an animal – and the raw will always be an option which is not only vegan but had no heating applied – so for example, it could include sprouted pulses, but not cooked pulses, as protein source (he doesn’t include sushi in raw, it belongs, properly, to pescatarian)

But what is absolutely BRILLIANT is that for every recipe he gives an adapted option for one of the other groups. There ARE quite a few omnivore or pescatarian recipes, but only 10 of the omnivore or pescatarian main recipes have an adaptation which is the other flesh based one.

And for those on the most restricted diets of all (the raw food eaters) there are a lot of recipes! So this lovely book gives options for all

Chicory strawberries and fennel pic from Salad Pride Blog

Not only are the recipes themselves tempting and delicious, but I particularly love the THOUGHT which Bez has put into it. You can search yourself a recipe in different ways…the index helpfully will give page numbers for, for example, Vegan Main, Vegan alternative and the like – and there is the search by ingredient. Got some pak choi you want to use up? No problem.

Bez ‘deconstructs’ the layers of his salad, so every recipe will have a base (generally a salad leaf, but it might be a grain, then vegetables and or fruit, a protein component, toppings – nuts, seed, and the like, fresh herbs, and finally the dressing – which might be vinaigrette style, pesto style, or creamy style – some 25 varieties of dressing.

And if you run out of ideas and need some more he even has a salad blog called Salad Pride, where you can tiptoe through the garden gathering more goodies for lunch and breakfast! (from which site I have cut and pasted some hunger inducing pics)

I received this as an ARC from Amazon Vine UK
Salad Love Amazon UK
Salad Love Amazon USA

Tom Hunt – The Natural Cook: Eating The Seasons From Root To Fruit

Tags

Book Review, Cookery Book, Recipes, The Natural Cook: Eating the Seasons From Root To Fruit, Tom Hunt

Eat well, eat local, eat in good time

I’m not really quite sure why I failed to post this wonderful book on this blog,  given my enthusiastic review of it (after receiving it on Amazon Vine UK) on Amazon. I think I was a little restrictive in ‘what is this blog about’. As I fairly often review cookery books, why not? It was probably thinking I’d have to create another category, and the hard work that entails. My inner sloth protesteth! But this is too good a book to give way to that sloth………

Tom Hunt’s The Natural Cook is rather more than just another book of visual food porn, tempting you into your kitchen to try (and fail) to produce stunning results after a lot of time, heavy duty shopping and sourcing of rare ingredients shipped by rocket from Mars. Or at least air freight from across the world.

Hunt’s mission is to help us save our money, save our time, delight our eyes, taste-buds and tums, at a price which doesn’t cost the earth for future generations.

Although this is not a vegetarian cookbook (which will probably delight many) the star performers here are players from the vegetable, rather than animal, kingdom.

Divided initially into four quarters, to mark the four seasons, Hunt picks a few plant ‘stars’ typical of the season, and then gives a good 8 to 10 recipes with that star player as main ingredient. He offers 2 methods of preparation for each, and then sundry recipes involving that method. Advice is also given on the storage of left-overs from each recipe and indeed where it would be advisable to make extra in order to have freezer food for later.

A full list of the ‘players’ available in their right season is also given

His aim is to reduce food waste to a minimum, so ways of using left-overs are also included, making them part of other dishes.

This is all high end, easy prep (for the most part) gourmet, healthy, delicious and stylish food – designed to make the cook and the diner feel equally good and delighted, without sacrificing hedonic pleasure to dutiful , healthy, but rather dull eating.

As mentioned earlier, it is not a vegetarian cookbook, I guess a good quarter of the recipes involve inexpensive cuts of meat or fish, but certainly some of the meaty or fishy numbers could I think be adapted by the vegetarian cook, using tofu or pulses, as for the most part the flesh food is more Eastern and Mediterranean in quantity – if a recipe includes meat it is in smaller amounts, not groaning trenchers of severed limbs and the like – hence the possibility of replacing, for example, a recipe of asparagus and mackerel sashimi with pickled ginger, orange and soy dressing with smoked tofu in place of the fish.

Because I AM vegetarian, I’ve found a flesh free video of Tom demonstrating how to make a dish – there are some one’s I hid behind a couch, rather than watched, sobbing plaintively.

In a sense, though undoubtedly delivered with style and panache, Hunt’s recipes invitingly call out to the home cook to adapt and experiment with what you have to hand in YOUR cupboard – it is easy to see these are recipes designed to release your creativity in the kitchen, not stifle it into nervous following of rigid instruction.

I particularly like Hunt’s using up everything possible from the cooking process in interesting ways – a lovely example, from our current ‘apricot season’ is, having poached your fresh apricots, perhaps for an apricot melba, reserve the poaching liquid to add to white rum, lime juice and sugar and, hey presto, a daiquiri!

This is a cookery book with a lot of heart, joy, compassion and passion, as well as stuff to make the diner drool with anticipatory pleasure, and the cook happy in that fine dining can be produced without spending a life-time turning a lettuce leaf into something to be submitted for the Turner prize

The look inside lets you see some recipes, so its easy to try ‘is this my kind of food; do the recipes work; are they do-able or just faff’ etc, and the index also gives a fair idea of the recipes.

Hunt, as I think is explained in the look inside section, has based his cooking on excellence in home and traditional dishes – ‘regional cooking’ where the regions take in other countries as well, but this is not about cooking as art form or cooking using fashionably rare and highly exotic ingredients, and you won’t need to purchase arcane equipment in order to achieve fabulous results. No foams, no jus, no blowtorches.

Readers from outside the UK may well of course find that the availability of product, and the time of the year it is locally available won’t dovetail to perfection the way it does in the UK, and that you may wish to adapt recipes from UK local produce, with your own local produce. As stated earlier, Hunt really encourages that sort of creative, adaptive approach. he is a wonderfully relaxed, confidence inspiring cook, rather than one of those who will leave you sobbing because you followed the recipe to the nth degree and ended up with something looking like a dog’s dinner, and tasting so hideous that even the dog walked away from it. Recipes, I imagine, invented by star hissy fit prima donna chefs whose aim is to humiliate the home cook!

Tom Hunt’s lovely, enthusiastic and welcoming sharing of his food beliefs and scrummy recipes are further available on his blog tomsfeast.com which I for one will be bookmarking

The Natural Cook: Eating The Seasons From Root To Fruit Amazon UK
The Natural Cook: Eating The Seasons From Root To Fruit Amazon USA