20 saturday review Saturday December 4 2021 | the times
A Cook’s Book by Nigel Slater
4th Estate, £30
“I am a cook who writes,” Nigel Slater
says at the start of this compendium of
200 recipes. And how. Countless cooks
try but fail to match Slater’s intimate
style of prose where he finds lyricism in
the most mundane kitchen tasks. So it
is that “mince is a rare visitor to this
house” or a roast chicken “is a message
that says all is well. A Pied Piper
beckoning us to the table.” It helps,
of course, that every book is full of
simple kitchen suppers, the kind that
make you realise that good cooking
does not need endless reinvention.
Who wouldn’t want to sit down
to a plate of sausages and
cheesy mash, or a rich chicken
and leek pie?Sugar, I Love You
by Ravneet Gill Pavilion, £20
Admittedly this sounds like a
billet doux to diabetes, but the
pastry chef Ravneet Gill’s point is
that if you enjoy the sweet stuff
(and let’s be honest, most people do)
it’s better to use up your sugar allowance
on homemade cakes and bakes than a
packet of supermarket biscuits. What
treats the book’s pages contain, from
six riffs on cheesecake to the ultimatecherry lemon pie. And
who can fail to love a
chef whose signature
bake is an LPC (lazy
person’s cake)?Asian Green by
Ching-He Huang
Kyle, £20
With a teenage
vegan in the house,
the midweek answer
to “what shall we have
for supper?” is often “stir-
fry”. Somehow it’s a style of
food that leaves the meat eaters
happy too. There’s a lot more than
wok-based cooking in this beautifully
photographed book, but it’s the Fast
and Furious chapter I’ve mined most
deeply. As with a lot of Asian cooking
there’s an investment to be made in
often unfamiliar ingredients, but once
properly stocked, and under Ching-He
Huang’s clear tutelage, dishes such
as Hunan-style crispy sweet chilli
mushroom noodles or black bean tofu
are within easy reach.The Italian Deli Cookbook
by Theo Randall Quadrille, £26
For obvious reasons there’s a theme to
many cookbooks this year of exploitingMed: A Cookbook
by Claudia Roden
Ebury, £28
Before Yotam
Ottolenghi,
before Sabrina
Ghayour, before
any of the
present-day
chefs who extol
the cooking of the Middle East, there
was Claudia Roden, quietly and
studiously recording for the first time the
dishes of the old Ottoman world. Fifty
years and 20 books later she homes in
on the recipes of coastal Spain, France,
Italy and north Africa. Known for being
true to original dishes, in Med she has
allowed herself a little more freedom.
Does it matter if it’s not traditional to
add boiled lemons to a Moroccan salad
of tomato and roast peppers? Not a bit
of it when it tastes this good.
Taste: My Life Through Food
by Stanley Tucci Fig Tree, £20
You don’t need to have seen Stanley
Tucci’s viral “perfect negroni” video or
to have read his two cookery books to
know that the Hollywood actor takes
his food very seriously. He brought an
authenticity to foodie films such as Big
Night and Julie & Julia that Tom Cruise
did not manage in Cocktail. Tucci
is an eater and a feeder, and this memoir
shows how food and life intersect at
every juncture, from his upbringing in
Westchester, New York, to the family
meals he shares with his wife and
children now, with a few celebrity
anecdotes thrown in for good measure.
All told in Tucci’s wry way, it updates the
Hollywood trope that greed is good.
The Thinking Drinkers Almanac
by Ben McFarland and Tom Sandham
Kyle, £10.99
If you are after an authoritative tome to
guide you through the world’s finest
vintages and grand crus, look elsewhere.
Ben McFarland and Tom Sandham,
known as “pioneers of alcohol-based
comedy” with their stand-up shows,
bring a much needed lightness of
touch to what can perversely be a
very dry subject. There’s a tipple
for every day of the year, with
jokes, asides and the occasional
interesting fact to make you a
more rounded drinker. So we
learn that Violet Beauregarde in
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
was named after Roald Dahl’s
favourite claret, and that David
Bowie was partial to a glass of
Schelvispekel, a Dutch liqueur that
translates as “haddock brine”. Wisely
they choose to celebrate his birthday with
a Coldharbour Lager, made in Brixton,
south London, where he was born.
books of the year
Tuck in! Books to sate your appetite
From simple suppers
to Ottolenghi dazzlers
— Tony Turnbull has
it all on the menu (not
forgetting the booze)
the ingredients you have in your store
cupboard (see Ottolenghi Test Kitchen),
and Theo Randall makes full use of
eggs, tinned fish, dried pulses and
pasta, augmented by judicious use of
deli staples. It’s a wonderful book that
showcases Randall’s ethos in the
kitchen: unshowy cooking that
remains true to its roots, but always
overdelivers on flavour. After his years at
the River Café and now at his own
restaurant, you know you are always in
safe hands.The Kitchen Cabinet: A Year of
Recipes, Flavours, Facts and Stories
for Food Lovers by Annie Gray
BBC Books, £16.99
The food historian Annie Gray has had
a constructive year. Her latest book,
At Christmas We Feast, looks at festive
food through the ages, but this more
useful book looks at more recent
history: a year in the life of Radio 4’s
The Kitchen Cabinet. She captures the
scattergun nature of the programme,
addressing subjects that are by turns
populist (What are the panel’s go-to
dishes in a Chinese restaurant?) and
esoteric (How do I make my own
mustard?), and weaves them into a
very readable narrative rich with tips
and advice.Rick Stein at Home: Recipes,
Memories and Stories from a Food
Lover’s Kitchen BBC Books, £26
The old warhorse carries on. I know
he’s not the most fashionable of chefs
now, but I could happily listen to Rick
Stein reminiscing about favourite meals
for hours on end. He has bags of
knowledge and experience, of course,
but it’s the gentle intelligence — and
occasional confessions of self-doubt —
that make his writing so seductive.
This is billed as recipes, memories
and stories from a food lover’s kitchen
and has the feeling of a retrospective,
with all his favourite dishes
from his many years at
the stove. An absolute
treasure trove.Ottolenghi
Test Kitchen:
Shelf Love
by Yotam
Ottolenghi
and Noor
Murad
Ebury, £25
A new Yotam
Ottolenghi is always
an event. The Israeli chef
has been generous in crediting
those who help him to compile his many
cookbooks, but this is the first time he
has shone a light on the entire team at
his test kitchen in north London.
Ottolenghi Test Kitchen provides an
insight into the creative process, but
mainly it’s a repository for more of
Ottolenghi’s trademark recipes that
merge unexpected elements with big
sunny flavours. He claims that dishes
such as sesame-crusted feta or grilled
courgettes with warm yoghurt sauce
represent a more stripped-back
approach, a chance to use up those
half-pots of spices in your cupboard.
Albeit a cupboard that contains black
limes, sumac and saffron.LIZZIE MAYSONcooking the books
Theo Randall’s buffalo
mozzarella, black fig
and herb salad. Below:
Claudia Roden. Right:
Taiwanese hot and
sour soup from
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