When I first had the idea for my debut novel, The Underdog, which came out last week, I knew it had to include food. After all, the received wisdom is to write about what you know and, after almost two decades’ worth of recipes, features and restaurant reviews, it’s surely my specialist subject. Though a grumpy terrier threatens to steal the limelight, the book’s (ostensible) main character, Katy, is a newly qualified pastry chef who goes from turning out heritage duck egg and black garlic mayo sourdough sandwiches in a painfully pretentious London cafe, to making cheese scones with foraged sea buckthorn jam on the west coast of Scotland. Her journey also involves a Michelin-starred restaurant and a bespoke baking business (as well as a couple of disastrous run-ins with bitchy critics, including on a television gameshow involving Sue Perkins and a chocolate souffle challenge).
I had an absolute blast writing the book, and the food sections were definitely the most fun – thinking about what a starred restaurant might serve with a salted chocolate tart, say (Fergus Henderson’s recipe is here, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t pair it with a beetroot sorbet and walnut crumb), or what a critic might order for lunch at Margot Henderson’s Rochelle Canteen (bitter greens, like our own Rachel Roddy’s, for a start). In fact, from the glistening, bronzed hunk of pork with salsa verde and pressed potatoes set in front of the UK’s most feared culinary taste-maker, to the merguez and chip baguette Katy eats on the pavement after kidnapping a dog she doesn’t even like, the food is the real star.
