My autumn star
Kitchening by Jeremy Lee (4th Estate, £30)
It’s difficult to say what charms me more about this beautiful book, the second from the Dundee-born chef proprietor of century-old Soho institution Quo Vadis – the food, or the words, both of which could only have come from Lee.
The first chapter, to give you an idea, is entitled “January: the general atmosphere is very Macbeth-ish”, and contains recipes including pickled rhubarb, peppered ox cheek, a warm salad of smoked haddock and brassicas, and a dish of “beans and greens” that, having already tasted it, would have cheered things up in Inverness Castle no end. The photography and design is gorgeous, the prose feels like having this warmest of cooks sitting beside you nattering about what to cook, and there’s also a magnificent lemon and blackcurrant trifle, which can only be described as magnificent. One to hug close – and give to everyone you know for Christmas.
Blood, Guts and Black Pudding: Ireland’s dying art of blood as food by Kate Ryan (Nine Bean Rows, £17.50)
If you’re squeamish about blood, this slim Irish history won’t be for you – but if, like me, you appreciate the richly savoury, velvety soft pleasures of an inky slab of black pudding, it’s an utterly fascinating read. As well as delving into why Ireland has had a “uniquely complex cultural and societal connection” with blood as food from ancient times onwards, it explores the ongoing struggle to keep this connection going in the face of a hostile regulatory climate; post-BSE, almost all* black pudding in the UK is made with imported dried blood, and producers in Ireland face many of the same challenges. Folklore, colonisation, rural culture, haute cuisine – it’s all here, but for me, the real treasure lies in the first-person accounts of small-scale farmers and producers, almost lyrical in their celebration of this least lovely, but most vital part of the animal.
* the excellent Fruit Pig is the rare exception.
The Modern Pie Maker by Calum Franklin (Bloomsbury, £26)
I frequently bemoan the British reluctance to celebrate our own cuisine in any meaningful sense – if butter pies, the first recipe in pastry wizard Calum Franklin’s new book, were from Pau, rather than Preston, there would certainly be a festival devoted to them, complete with competitions and silly pie-shaped hats. This book, which tackles everything from an 18th-century herb pie to a ploughman’s pork pie from the chef’s own imagination, taking in puddings, pasties, bridies, oggies and the like en route, is the next best thing. Franklin begins by explaining his belief that “the key to good pie making is … giving equal consideration to what is outside as to what is inside”, followed by a clear explanation of technique, process and equipment that should persuade even the most nervous pastry makers to give his gloriously golden six-meat Yorkshire Christmas pie a go this December: after all, as he points out, “nobody really remembers a roast turkey”.
Egypt by Rawah Badrawi and Suzanne Zeidy (Nourish, £30)
Though Egypt is the most populous country in the Arab world, its rich and varied cuisine is puzzlingly under-represented on my bookcases – but this sweeping survey from writer and restaurateur Suzanne Zeidy and her collaborator, the author and travel writer Rawah Badrawi, is a valuable companion to Zeidy’s previous work: 2013’s Cairo Kitchen. The pair, close friends since their 20s, went on a road trip around their beloved country to write it, amassing stories and recipes from the Mediterranean coast to the edge of the Great Sand Sea: the sourdough baked by the Greek Orthodox monks of Mount Sinai to the pharaonic-era bread that’s still a staple in modern Luxor, and Mohamed Salah’s favourite pitta pockets to the elusive celebrity chickens of Fayoum, the “garden of Egypt”. Egypt’s colourful history is written in the recipe index: Italian biscotti, Greco-Libyan pasta, Sudanese chilli sauce, and a final chapter of treasured family recipes from the capital, all accompanied by evocative location and food photography from Jonathan Gregson. A treasure well worth waiting for.
Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts School by Le Cordon Bleu (Phaidon, £400)
This seven-volume set, produced in collaboration with what is surely the world’s most famous cookery school, is perhaps one to put on your Christmas list – but it would be a serious investment for anyone looking to learn western culinary technique the proper way, fully explained and with accompanying photographs. Though centred, unsurprisingly, around French traditions, the outlook is global; the stocks and sauces volume, for example, which covers the entire classical repertoire, suggests putting it to use in recipes for Vietnamese pho bo, Scottish cock-a-leekie and Turkish kıkırdak, as well as a poule au pot or soup au piston. An astonishing achievement.
Modern Masala by Sanjana Modha (Quadrille, £25)
A good recipe book invites you to pull up a chair at the author’s table, to share not just a collection of recipes, but a taste of their lives. Modha, a first-generation British-Indian was weaned on a menu of Gujarati classics, and food from elsewhere reimagined with a little Indian spicing, and it’s this latter category of “remixed” cooking that inspired her second book. In its colourful pages, she shares clever family tricks (aubergines stuffed with Weetabix instead of gram flour, fluffy potato curry with instant mash and tomato ketchup), and her own intriguingly bonkers creations, including gnocchi in tomato dal, onion bahjis made with oven chips, and a very tempting “full English” aloo paratha breakfast. Great fun and a very persuasive argument for culinary cross-pollination. It’s also entirely vegetarian.
Simple Too by Yotam Ottolenghi and Verena Lochmuller (Ebury, £30)
Second helpings of that Ottolenghi Test Kitchen magic pared down for everyday use – I guarantee you won’t be able to flick through this book without reconsidering your dinner plans, because they really know how to grab the reader by the tastebuds. Recipes, all of which have been designed to fit around the constraints of everyday life, whether time, confidence or energy-related, and many of which embrace a one-pan or baking tray approach, include the seductive likes of butter beans with Urfa chilli butter and sticky orange and harissa pork belly, and ginger peach puffs, plus a whole chapter on condiments that can be repurposed in various dishes throughout the week. Practical and exciting; it has hit the weekday cooking bullseye.
Lozhka by Alissa Timoshkina (Quadrille, £28)
Lozhka is the Russian word for spoon, the universal utensil “that has always guided us back to the foods that know how to take care of us”. In the aftermath of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Timoshkina, has had to become an expert in that department, and writes that cooking has served as therapy and to forge connection in the years that have followed. Eastern European cuisine – and the book includes recipes from the Baltic Sea to the Balkans, as well as from Tatar, Roma and Ashkenazi communities – is rich in dishes that require little more than a spoon and a pot to soothe, from a fruity Crimean borscht with quince dedicated to her great-grandmother to a Persian-spiced Armenian lamb and chickpea stew. Porridges, broths, soups, dumplings and noodles, steamed and set puddings, the book travels thousands of miles in search of comfort, collecting some truly beautiful stories and photography, along the way; this is a book to brighten the dark months to come, but which will earn its place on your shelf all year round.
Pasta Tricolore by Jacob Kenedy (Bloomsbury, £18.99)
Just when I think I don’t need yet another book devoted to the pleasures of pasta, I realise there’s room for one more, if it changes the way I look at the ingredient that, as Kenedy observes, almost every child in the western world is now weaned on. His theory is that all pasta dishes fall into one of three principal, and patriotically coloured categories: red (tomato), white (fat or meat) and green (pestos and vegetables). Exploring these family trees takes us, in turn, from the simple pleasures of tagliatelle and butter to the cream and radicchio tagliolini gratin that’s been on the winter menu at his restaurant Bocca di Lupo since it opened (white); from classic pesto Genovese to an unusual combination of green peppers, mussels and linguine he first ate in Sperlonga (green); and from tomato spaghetti to a Roman oxtail rigatoni (red).It is all generously annotated with potential variations. Helpfully, a series of charts at the back of the book allow the reader to see at a glance which dishes can be made with the particular pasta on hand – all in all, a worthy addition to my extensive collection.
My seasonal classic
The Dal Cookbook by Krishna Dutta (Grub Street, £16.99)
“Dal is to India what pasta is to Italy,” according to the cover of this book, which I’ve owned and loved since it came out in 2013 – a bold declaration, but one that gives some clue of the variety and versatility of its contents. Dutta, who began her dal-cooking career in the late 1960s as a student in London desperate for a taste of home, spent decades collecting recipes from all over India. Along with the vivid yellow tadka dal many Brits might be familiar with from northern Indian restaurant menus, there’s a sinus-clearing ginger rasam she picked up in Chennai, a creamy Goan prawn and coconut dal and a green mango version from Orissa and many more, plus dal dumplings and fritters, breads and even sweets. If you’re trying to eat more healthy, fibre-rich pulses, this book will make it a pleasure.
