This is the way.

Good chickens are – like true love, reliable plumbers and excellent espresso – hard to find. They are also, when you finally get your hands on one, costly things! Quite right too! We should be deeply suspicious of cheap (even modestly priced) chickens, they almost certainly have the darkest, dirtiest story etched into their tragic flesh. The chicken above, the one sitting in my new enamel roasting tin from Emanuela, is a good chicken. A blooming good chicken in fact, from my butcher Marco who in turn procured it from the blazing beacon of conscientious husbandry: Azienda San Bartolomeo. Having parted with the best part of 16€ (an investment in our sustenance for the next three days) and taken possession of our bird, we – that is Luca and I – also picked up half a dozen San Bartolomeo eggs, a fat pat of butter, five lemons, some bitter salad leaves and a piece of Lariano bread. After all, good chicken deserves good company.

We walked home the long way, following the deep arc of the river, which meant there were leaves to crunch and dogs to bark at! I crunched and Luca barked. We stopped, as we usually do, at Giolitti for an espresso before crossing our vast echoing courtyard and barking some more. Time was taken climbing the stairs, after all it’s important to peer between every other railing. It’s also important to ring the doorbell 17 times, especially when there is nobody at home. Then while Luca played with something inappropriate and slightly dangerous, I set about roasting.

Roast chicken is one of my favourite things both to make and eat. It’s also a significant meal for me, maybe the most significant. We ate roast chicken and then soup made from the leftovers and carcass, at least once a week when I was growing up. It’s a meal evocative of home, the kitchen in Kirkwick Avenue, my family and the meals we shared. Over the years roast chicken has bought us – parents, relatives and three Roddy kids in turn doe eyed bundles, eager fat-fingered toddlers, grasping children, grubby rascals, sullen teenagers and floundering/flourishing adults – together again and again and again. A burnished bird has the capacity to stir deep (food) memories, some crisp and golden, others as dark and sticky as the juices stuck to the bottom of the roasting pan.

I think of my mum and my granny Alice when I roast a chicken, especially at the beginning when I wash it in very cold water and then pat it absolutely dry with a clean cloth. My granny was – and my mum still is – a great believer in very cold water, clean cotton cloths and patting things absolutely dry. I rub my chicken, as my mum does, with butter. Butter I’ve remembered to leave out in the kitchen so it’s smearble. I’m as liberal with the salt and freshly milled black pepper as I am with the gin in a Gin and tonic: very.

I put a lemon up my chicken’s bottom (that was for you Ben) long before I came to Italy. However it was cut in two so the juice could be squeezed over the chicken and the hollow halves tucked inside. Now, as taught by my old neighbor Mima and guided by Marcella Hazan, I roll a lemon vigorously around the kitchen counter so it is soft. I prick it 37 times with a toothpick and then stick it up my chicken’s bottom just so.

I roast my lemon filled chicken with its breast down for 20 minutes. I then turn it breast up, crank up the oven a notch and roast it for another 40 minutes. I don’t baste. Then  - as taught by Simon Hopkinson in his aptly named book Roast chicken and other stories – I turn the oven off, open the door a jar and leave the chicken sitting in the cooling oven for another 20 minutes. These twenty minutes are vital. It is during this time, the cooking equivalent of a perfect vinyl fadeout, that the cooking finishes, the skin dries and flesh relaxes but clings to the precious juices making for a roast with properly crisp skin, succulent, tender flesh and easy carving

Actually carve is not the right word for a bird like this – a bird with runner’s legs and a lean breast – pull and tear is more appropriate. Using my hands, a knife and my poultry shears, I pull and tear my chicken to pieces. I do this in the roasting tin and then roll the pieces in the best sort of gravy: the buttery, lemony, nut-brown juices that have collected at the bottom of the tin.

Did I mention how I feel about the smell of roasting chicken? Oh you know! Of course you do, because you feel the same way! Excellent. Today we ate our chicken with mayonnaise (see below), a mixture of bitter and sweeter salad leaves and bread. What a good lunch! I had some wine too, an inch, maybe two and raised my glass to us, to my family – who seem a long way away these days – the whole delicious, tender, dark, messy, sticky lot of us.

Roast chicken with lemon

With advice from Granny, Mum, Simon Hopkinson and Marcella Hazan

Notes. A good roasting tin of the right size is pretty vital. It should be large enough to accommodate the chicken comfortably but small enough to contain the precious juices. I like, really like, this tin. You do not need to baste the chicken.

Serves 4 or in my case serves 1 and a quarter (Luca) for 3 days.

• 1.5 – 2 kg / 3 – 4 lb chicken at room temperature
• 50 g / 2 oz good butter at room temperature
• salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1 large unwaxed lemon

Set the oven to 180° / 350 F.

Wash the chicken both inside and out with cold water. Leave it sitting on a slightly tilted plate for 10 minutes or so, to let all the water drain away. Pat the chicken absolutely dry with a clean cloth.

Put the chicken in a roasting tin that will accommodate it with room to spare. Smear the butter with your hands all over the bird and then season it liberally with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Wash, dry and then soften the lemon by rolling it back and forth across the kitchen counter while applying pressure with your palm. Prick the lemon 37 times with a cocktail stick or trussing needle.

Tuck the lemon in the chicken cavity and then close the opening with two cocktail sticks. Don’t make an expert job of closing the opening or the chicken might just puff up and burst.

Turn the chicken beast side down in the roasting tin and place it in the upper third of the preheated oven. After 20 minutes turn the chicken the right way up. Do not baste.

Turn the oven up to 200° / 400 F and continue roasting the chicken for another 40 minutes. Turn the oven off, leaving the door ajar and let the chicken rest in the cooling oven for another 20 minutes.

Before carving tilt the chicken slightly so all the juices run into the tin. Stir the buttery, lemony, nut-brown juices  – scraping the thick dark ones from the bottom of the tin – with a wooden spoon. Carve, rip, tear, pull the chicken in the roasting tin letting the pieces and joints roll in the juices.

And may I suggest you make some mayonnaise!

mayonnaise

• 2 egg yolks (at room temperature)
• salt
• 150 ml sunflower or grapeseed oil
• 150 ml extra virgin olive oil
• juice of half a lemon or dab of Dijon mustard

In a heavy bowl (which doesn’t require too much effort or holding to keep it firm) start whisking the egg yolks with a generous pinch of salt.

After a minutes, when the yolks are thick and sticky, start adding the groundnut oil very gradually – by very gradually I mean drop by drop and then a very thin stream. Do not rush and keep whisking as you add the oil.

Keep adding the oil until the mayonnaise seizes into a very thick ointment, at this point you can relax and add the sunflower oil in a slightly thicker stream.

When you have added all the groundnut oil, add the extra virgin olive oil (again in a thin stream) and keep whisking until you have a smooth, silky and firm mayonnaise. You may not need to add all the olive oil. Add a few drops of lemon juice or a dab of mustard, whisk, taste and then, if necessary a few drops/dab more. Add salt as you like.

Eat.

Just One

If I had to keep just one cookbook, it would be a red hardback wrapped in a bright blue sleeve with a lobster on the front, a single volume which comprises three of Elizabeth David’s classics of the kitchen; Book of Mediterranean Food, French Country Cooking and Summer Cooking. I might have a moment of doubt and consider Jane Grigson’s ‘Good Things’ or my dog-eared copy of ‘English Food’. I may clutch my battered copy of Simon Hopkinson’s Roast chicken and Other Stories closely for a moment, but my definitive choice, my desert island trilogy, would be my crustacean adorned copy.

Elizabeth David is not just my favorite food writer, she’s one of my favorite writers and one of the reasons I absconded to Italy. For years I’ve returned to at least one of her eight books or one of the two anthology’s of her articles, letters and notes – which are invariably scattered all over my flat – most days, be it in the kitchen, in a chair, writing here, or last thing at night in bed. Her introduction to Mediterranean food, description of Provence in French Provincial Cooking and anything from An omelette and a glass of wine are all favorites to fall asleep to.

She is a masterful writer: scholarly, witty, informative, elegant, fiercely opinionated, and the passion and enthusiasm with which she communicates her love of good food, well cooked is contagious. Her writing, essays, descriptions of weather, food, herbs, colours, smells, tastes, and of course her meticulously authentic recipes collected during her travels in France, Italy, Corsica, Malta, India, Eygpt and Greece are timeless (she began writing in the 1950′s) and as bright and brilliant as sunshine. But for all their bright brilliance, Elizabeth David’s books, illustrated with John Minton’s black and white drawings, are also a refuge, evoking a way of cooking and thinking about food so entirely different from the loud, fussy, over styled but often hollow food culture I can (and do) bombard myself with.

Over the last five months Elizabeth David has mostly been a bedside companion. But now I’m emerging – sleep deprived, disoriented, quite grumpy but uncharacteristically content – from my postnatal vortex and my very bonny five and a half month old son, if armed with a wooden spoon and a Tupperware lid, is happy to bounce away in the doorway, I’ve started working my way through the fringe of bookmarks. The first being Quiche Lorraine.

In truth, this particular recipe for Quiche Lorraine from French Country Cooking has been bookmarked for years rather than months and the food memory behind the bookmark is decades rather than years old. Two and a half decades to be precise, 25 years, since I ate a slice of Quiche Lorraine at the vast kitchen table of the Renault family during my traumatic but gastronomically revelatory French exchange with the horrid Carolyn I was 14. I even mentioned this recipe when I wrote about savory tarts a while back. But I never made it. Then the other week my friend Ruth came over for lunch and I wanted to make something tasty, simple and nice, a thank you of sorts for all the meals her and her husband have made for me. The bookmark for the Quiche was particularly prominent, a postcard from France no less, so I finally made this Quiche.

This is the Quiche Lorraine I ate in France all those years ago, simple, authentic, understated and very delicious. Short, crumbly, flaky pastry – made with plenty of good butter and some lard – encasing a delicate, quivering, softly set filling of fresh thick cream and eggs studded with chopped bacon. This is my Quiche touchstone, the example which shames all the crimes against Quiche I’ve had the misfortune to encounter, those heavy leaden triangles of heartburn inducing pastry filled with rubbery custard and stuffed to the gunnels with too much cheese, béchamel, three types of vegetable, pineapple, two paperclips and goodness knows what else.

This may seem a mere slip of a Quiche if you are used to heftier more elaborate things! But I assure you it’s a lovely slip of a Quiche.  Unfashionably rich and unhealthy by todays standards, what with all the butter, lard, bacon and cream and just my sort of thing. My sort of thing too I can hear you shouting, hooray for butter, lard, bacon and cream. And after all, there will be salad too, crisp and green, hopefully with some bitter leaves to contrast the soft dairy creaminess of the Quiche.

It is pretty straightforward to make and involves four nice kitchen tasks all of which I am happy to interpret as dance moves if given the appropriate quantity of alcohol; rolling, tucking, frying and whisking. First you make the pastry by rubbing butter and lard into flour (with a pinch of salt) until it reassembles breadcrumbs, adding some very cold water and bringing everything together into a ball. You chill the pastry for a while before rolling it out into a circle and tucking it into a tart tin, preferably one with a loose base.  Then the frying, of the diced bacon – the smell of which along with thoughts of roast beef brought was the smell that brought me back from the other side . Finally the whisking together of the thick, fresh cream – luscious and lovely - with two eggs. Once you have sprinkled your diced, fried and provocatively smelling bacon into the pastry case and poured over the pale yellow mixture you manoeuver your Quiche (set on a baking tray)  into the oven, bake it for 30 minutes for so or until it’s set but still with a slight wobble, blistered and golden.

The Quiche is best about 20 minutes after coming out of the oven, so it has time to settle and the filling firm up a little. Also the  texture and flavors – as is so often the case – are best appreciated when the Quiche is warm as opposed to hot.

It seems appropriate that I give you Elizabeth David’s recipe as she wrote it - word for word – in French Country Cooking. I have however added metric measurements and some of my own notes at the end.

Quiche Lorraine

From Elizabeth David’s French Country Cooking

For six people

• 6oz / 180g flour
• 2 oz /60g butter
• 1 oz / 30g dripping / lard
• 6 rashers bacon
• 1/2 pint / 250 ml cream
• 2 fresh eggs
• salt and pepper
• 1/2 gill / 75 ml of water

Make a pastry with the flour, butter, dripping, a pinch of salt and the water. Give it one or two turns and then roll it into a ball and leave it for 1 hour.

Line a flat buttered pie tin with the rolled out pastry. Onto the pastry spread the bacon cut into dice and previously fried for a minute. Now beat the eggs into the cream with a little salt and ground pepper; when they are well mixed, pour onto the pastry, put into a hot oven and bake for about 30 minutes.

Let it cool a little before cutting and serving.

My Notes.

I only used 50ml of water. I think very very cold water (I add an ice-cube to the measuring jug) is best. I rest my pastry in the fridge. My tart tin has a loose bottom. I bought it here. It is a trusty tart tin. When I roll the pastry out and tuck it in the tin, I leave a pastry overlap which compensates for any pastry shrinkage when it cooks. I make sure I press the pastry firmly into the tin. I don’t worry about neat tart edges. I set my oven to 175°. I bake my tart case blind for 10 minutes before adding the filling. When I bake blind I don’t use baking beans, I simply pick the pastry with a fork – the pastry may well puff up but it quickly sinks down again. I use double, heavy cream. I think the tart is best eaten about 20 minutes after coming out of the oven.

Quincing my words

Luca was born in time for lunch on the 14th of September. He is, as my sister Rosie would say, a bonny boy. I am feeling deeply unqualified for this truly wondrous but frankly bewildering job. Luca however, seems to have faith in me and so we have agreed to muddle – and I mean muddle in the nicest possible way – along together. Have no fear, even though I’m sure Luca will come up from time to time, I’ve no intention of dishing out a blow-by-blow account of this muddle. I do intend to talk about quinces.

I am slightly obsessive about quinces. This is partly because they are so illusive, their short season coupled with their fall from favor can make them hard to find. But my obsession is mostly because I adore both their heavy, properly sensual scent: a heady cocktail of apple, pear, rose, musky honey and a dash of something exotic, sultry and tropical and their particular but superb flavor and texture when cooked.

Quinces are ancient fruit, part of the rose family and cousins of apples and pears. They are rather odd-looking, bulbous and lumpy but somehow curiously beautiful. They could be the love child – conceived during a night of passion at the back of a fruit crate  - of a knobby, yellow pear and a underripe cooking apple. They are the pome fruit equivalent of the tall, gawky boy with a massive nose and aptitude for physics who turns out to be by far the most interesting and delicious male in your year. Quinces are covered in strange downy brown coat and their hard, astringent flesh when raw gives little clue as to the potential delights in store when they cooked with sugar or honey. They are not easy fruit, they need a bit of attention and keen hand to deal the devilishly hard flesh. They need - like me on a Monday morning – sweetening-up and then patient cooking; a simmer, bake or slow bubble, to bring out the best in them and transform them into something delicious, be it jam, marmalade, thick paste, relish or clear jelly.

I entertained the idea of making some cotognata (quince paste or cheese) when I spied a crate of particularly bulbous but fantastically scented fruit at the market. This domestic fantasy persisted all the way home. Encouraged by the heady scent curling provocatively out of my shopping bag, I daydreamed of slices of amber quince cheese with chunks of hard, piquant goats cheese all the way along via Branca, round the corner into via Marmorata, into the courtyard and up the stairs. I only came to my senses when I entered my kitchen and remembered that I’m hard pressed to make a cup of tea at present, never mind execute lengthy fruit preservation. As I put the quinces in a bowl I resigned myself to the fact this was probably their final resting place! At least they would make the kitchen smell glorious I told myself.

As is so often the case, once I accepted the fact I wouldn’t find the time to cook my quinces and promised myself not to feel guilty about my fruity air freshener, I found time to cook them. Not quince paste I hasten to add, that will have to wait until next year, but something nearly as delicious: poached quinces with lemon.

Quinces poach beautifully. Peel, slice and sweeten them with sugar or honey, then leave them for a long gentle simmer over a low heat and they transform. They become tender and succulent (while resolutely holding their shape and pleasing grainy texture) and taste like buttery poached apples, fragrant grainy pears, sweet honeyed wine and something sharp and rather tropical.

I’ve actually written about quinces before, poached quinces no less, but this recipe is a little different, simpler and (particularly if you can find really good, unwaxed lemons) just as delicious. You simmer wedges of quince gently with long strips of lemon zest in a light syrup of water, sugar and lemon juice. The lemon lends a sharp defining edge which both accentuates and balances the honeyed sweetness of the quince. Whats more, the strips of lemon, having made their, sharp, citrus contribution, cook into tender almost candied softness and can be eaten with the quince.

The recipe is ridiculously simple, you could argue it is not really a recipe at all, more a suggestion. The amount of sugar you add really depends on you and how sweet-a-tooth you have. I’d say I’m pretty middle-of-the-road when it comes to sugar, not a fan of either sickly sweet or too bracing, my quantities reflect this. You should adjust accordingly.

I like this poached quince with a dollop of creme fraiche and a little almond biscuits, it’s a pretty perfect pudding. What am I saying, pretty perfect pudding, the heady combination of tender fruit, slightly sour cream and soft, milky, nutty almond biscuits is pretty perfect at anytime. I imagine a little pile of poached quince would also be nice with a slice of plain or almond cake.- you could pour a little of the syrup over the cake! I also like poached quince for breakfast with yogurt and muesli.

Poached quince with lemon

• 1.5 kg (roughly 6) ripe quines
• 150g fine sugar
• 1 large unwaxed lemon
• 500ml water – you may need to add a little more

• Cover the quinces with warm water, and rub them in the water to remove the fuzzy down from their skin. Rinse, drain, and dry.
• Using sharp knife carefully pare away the lemon peel in long strips from the lemon (trying to avoid too much bitter white pith). Put the lemon strips, 500ml of cold water, the sugar and the juice from the lemon into a large heavy based pan
• Carefully peel the quinces with a vegetable peeler. Using a very sharp knife (carefully, they are devilishly hard), cut each quince in quarters, carve out the core, and cut into slim wedges. As soon as you have cut a wedge drop it into the lemon water in the pan to stop it discoloring.
• Over a modest heat, bring the pan to a gentle boil and then reduce to a simmer for about an hour or until the quince is very tender but still holding its shape and liquid has reduced to a thick syrup.

Thank you, as always, for all your nice messages and comments, we – I am still adjusting to the plural –  appreciate them very very much.

Fergus Henderson’s Salt cod, Potato and Tomato.

I have been mulling over how to write this post for 3 days now, I have started it at least 5 times only to delete everything, put the computer to sleep and mull some more. You see, I just can’t seem to find the appropriate and fitting words to pay tribute to a chef , a restaurant, a book and a recipe.

The 4 objects of my procrastination are chef, Fergus Henderson, his restaurant St John, his book, Nose to tail eating and his recipe, salt cod, potato and Tomato.

My usual list of superlatives and excessive adjectives for praise just don’t seem right for the above 4, even though many of them are bouncing around in my mouth like a class of unsupervised over excited, hyperactive 5 year olds when I think of any one of this quartet - brilliant, inspiring, cult, classic, tour di force, awesome (did I ever say that, ok, slap my face and wash my mouth out with salt water). I would like to write something that at least vaguely honours the style of all 4, unpretentious, straightforward, without an ounce of hyperbole. So, how about, just great, oh, and considering this is all about food, lets put the emphasis on the latter part of the word, as in grEAT.

To write something I am vaguely happy with, maybe I need to take myself back to when I first encountered Fergus Henderson’s cooking about 8 years ago. My  friend Joanna took me to St John. It had been open about a year, we ate in the bar, anchovy toast, welsh rarebit, hard boiled eggs with celery salt, a salad with crispy pigs tails, roast bone marrow with parsley salad. I knew nothing about the fast growing fervour for this white, cavernous, ex- smokehouse of a restaurant, even less about the man at the stove with a penchant for cooking way beyond the fillet. I just knew the place was wonderful, the food simple, honest, original and utterly delicious, the staff really nice and the experience, well great.

Lots of visits ensued, usually with Joanna, occasionally in the restaurant but mostly in the bar, each experience like the first, great. I bought the book, I took it home, its great. The recipes, to make that simple, honest, original and utterly delicious food are, yes, GREAT.

That’s it, that’s what I wanted to say, the aforementioned 4 I have been mulling over are, well great. My over excited, hyperactive 5 year old words are bouncing again, stop it Rachel, you have said enough.

Now, the book. Much has been written, feverish admiration, squeals, commotion about FH’s masterful way with lesser used cuts and bits of beasts, noses, tails, spleens, hearts and feet. FH’s reclaiming the inspired use everything, of nose to tail – something French an Italian mothers have never forgotten, that the trotters, necks, kidneys, intestines and to put it bluntly, blood and guts, in the hands of a thoughtful and gentle cook are some of the most delicious, flavoursome morsels you can eat (if meat is your thing.)

The book is nose to tail of the beast heavy, 73 of the 139 recipes. But just say I developed a life threatening allergy to all things beast, (which would be a terrible thing) I would still prize and return joyfully to this book for the fish, vegetable, salad and sweet recipes which are every bit as wonderful as the rest.

Finally to the recipe.

No, I have not developed a life threatening allergy to all things beast, I just fancied some salt cod when I thumbed through Nose to Tail last Wednesday. Actually it wasn’t entirely by chance I chose something starring salt cod, it had been on my mind ever since the day before, when I read that one of FH’s favorite cooking play-lists includes the soundtrack of Zorba the greek and that he fell in love with his wife while dancing to it and discussing salt cod.

Yes, lets discuss salt cod, not in great detail I hasten to add, I will leave that to wikipedia. I know this is another ingredient which provokes delight or revulsion rather than indifference, the particular smelling salted and preserved pieces of cod which when carefully soaked can produce the most delicious platefuls – I should just add that salt cod if different to stock fish which is dried cod.

I fall onto the delight side of the fence and I consider myself lucky – you may say unlucky I suppose, if you fall onto the revulsion side – because Italians are lovers and masters of cooking salt cod, known as Baccalà. You can buy it everywhere here in Rome, where the cooking of salted and preserved cod (the worlds oldest method of food preserving) is shrouded in history, religion and faith, politics and commerce and for many, the weekly ritual of eating it.

You can buy salt cod ready soaked, but I prefer to soak it myself because its cheaper and if its over salted or over soaked and fuzzy, I am to blame, not left cursing somebody else. There is some soaking time involved, any thing from 14 – 48 hours and about 8 water changes depending on the size of the piece – are you gasping, ok, buy the ready soaked.

So this fine recipe is as I promised before, simple. honest, and utterly delicious.

Flakes of salt cod, its robust yet delicate and pleasingly chewy texture quite unlike fresh cod tossed with roasted small tomatoes, garlic, and pebble like cubes of boiled potatoes. The 4 are dressed simply with the sticky, oily, tomato and garlic juices which collected in the roasting tin and a big handful of chopped parsley.

We ate in warm for lunch with some Focaccia to mop up the juices.

Vincenzo declared it delicious and we raised our glasses to the fine Quartet of chef, restaurant, book and recipe.

Fergus Henderson’s Salt cod, Potato and Tomato.

Adapted from Fergus Hendersons Nose to tail eating.

• 8oog vine tomatoes
• 12 cloves of garlic, peeled.
• sea salt and pepper
• about 200ml extra virgin olive oil
• 1kg flavoursome potatoes
• 1kg salt cod, soaked as required,carefully patted dry, skinned, small bones picked out and cut into 3cm chunks
• a big handful of parsley roughly chopped

Chop your tomatoes in half and place them with the peeled garlic in a oven dish, sprinkle with salt and dribble over the oil.

Roast in a medium oven, about an hour, until the tomatoes are soft and giving and just a little caramelized at the edges,

Peel the potatoes and boil under tender. Drain and allow to cool enough to handle and then chop into rough chunks.

Gentle poach the cod pieces in a shallow pan of simmering water for 5 minutes and then remove with a slotted spoon and drain on some kitchen towel.

In a large bowl mix the tomatoes, garlic, potato chunks, poached cod. Tip over the sticky, tomatoey, juices from the roasting tin and another glug of oil if you think it needs it. Add the roughly chopped parsley, season carefully with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Mix the ingredients together gently but firmly so the flavours mingle, the cod will crumble, this is good.

Serve just so with good bread.

Review: Plat du jour by Patience Grey and Primrose Boyd

One of my favorite cookery books and one which is a constant source of inspiration is ‘Plat du jour ‘ by Patience Grey and Primrose Boyd first published in 1957.  Inspired by their experiences of simple meals abroad, most notably in france and Italy PG and PB  in their own words  ‘Evolved a system of cookery by which a variety of dishes was replaced by a single ‘plat du jour’ accompanied, as a rule by a green salad, a respectable cheese, and fruit in season, and whenever possible, by a bottle of wine’. This conception of a meal underlies this book. This central idea is beautifully realised and illustated with drawings by David Gentleman. As with all the best cookbooks it has no photographs, the recipes themselves, notes, comments and occasional illustations or diagrams are evocative and inpiring enough, often poetic .

The good cook

“All culinary tasks should be performed with reverential love, don’t you think so ? To say that a cook must possess the requisite outfit of culinary skill and temperament  – that is hardly more than saying that a solider must appear in uniform. You can have a bad solider in Uniform. The true cook must not only have these externals, but a large dose of general world experience. He is the perfect blend, the only perfect blend of Artist and philosopher. He knows his worth : he holds in the palm the happiness of mankind, the welfare of generations yet unborn………..If she drinks a little, why it is all to the good. It shows that she is fully equipped on the other side of her duel nature. It proves that she processes the prime requisite of an artist: sensitiveness and a capacity for enthusiasm. Indeed, I often doubt whether you will ever derive well flavoured victuals from the atelier of an individual who honestly despises or fears  – it is the same thing – the choicest gift of god”

South Wind
By Norman Douglas