The best new cookery books: spring 2020
During this time of deep uncertainty, it is important to look after ourselves. How better than by taking refuge in the kitchen with these inspiring, palate-broadening culinary titles?
The Irish Cook Book by JP McManon
A lot of love and warmth has clearly gone into this important and definitive delve into Ireland's rich culinary heritage. Besides his deep dive into the stories behind the best-loved traditional dishes, McManon, chef-patron of Michelin-starred Aniar in Galway and the man behind Galway's world renown Food on the Edge culinary festival, provides a particularly strong choice of bread recipes, including: brown soda bread with stout and treacle, potato bread and a bread made with rolled oats, bicarb of soda, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, linseeds, yoghurt and buttermilk (yoghurt with lemon juice works too).
There are traditional dishes such as Brotchen made with leek, oat and milk and, yes, bountiful potato dishes from colcannon to smoked eel and potato cakes. McMahon is very strong on fish dishes including sea trout with mustand and hazelnut dressing and ultra comfort food including fish cakes coated in oatmeal, fish pie and smoked haddock with poached egg and nutmeg.
Among desserts, there are plenty that don't require too many fancy ingredients: spiced baked apples, warm plums and rose custard stand out.
Pickling and preservation are covered, too, for those with time on their hands, like how to make herb or fruit vinegar, pickled onions, fermented cabbage with juniper, plus lemon curd and much, much more.
This is a huge, definitive book with 500 recipes. It is a little short on photography though ravishing shots of beguiling Irish countryside more than make up for this.
The 7 Day Vegan Challenge by Bettina Campolucci Bordi
In The 7 Day Vegan Challenge, Bettina Campolucci Bordi shows that with a little bit of planning, following a vegan diet has never been so effortless, accessible and fun. I wanted to make almost every dish even though I have no intention of becoming a vegan. Everyone would love her vegan Sunday roast with smashed peas and parsnip chocolate brownies.
Bettina uses easy-to-find, affordable ingredients to produce fast, tasty and thrilling recipes that have you re-thinking ingredients and their endless possibilities. It is especially useful during these unprecedented times when we need to make a few tins and veg go further. Examples like baked butter bean bubble & squeak may be simple but are incredibly appealing.
The breakfast/brunch section is especially enticing. I loved her sweet quinoa suggestion, mixing apples/pears/citrus nuts with cooked quinoa (which can be the reheatable pre-cooked pouches), besides char-griddled broccoli and kale toast with pea hummus and chickpea scramble. There are great soup ideas, particularly the green broth and the once-a-week-fridge soup. Try, too, the savoury tray bakes such as roasted veg with satay peanut sauce. The Scandi-inspired coconut snowballs (powerballs) are a great idea to have by your home-working desk.
Handy icons indicate whether something can be batch-cooked, if it contains nuts, how long it will keep in the fridge and if it can be frozen. The book has meal planners and weekly shopping lists too.
This is an inclusive book giving pracitcal and inspiring ideas both for full-on vegans and those flexitarians who know it makes good sense to eat more veg and need a knowledgeable, fun friend to help.
Women on Food edited by Charlotte Druckman
Thrilllingly, radically outspoken, Women on Food brings together esteemed chefs, writers and thinkers from Samin Nosrat to Nigella Lawson and Diana Henry besides some of the most highly regarded American names including Dorie Greenspan and Betty Fussell, to discuss many issues that are extremely pertinent to women working in and interested in hospitality. It covers all the pleasures, frustrations, misconceptions and outrages we've been waiting a long time to hear discussed so explicitly.
There's much writerly prose and provocation here as well as sound bites such as 'Are there any words you really wish people would stop using to describe women chefs?' 'The truth about my mother' and 'What misconceptions are made about women who do your job'.
Truly this is a compendium to challenge assumptions and like having a conversation with an enjoyably feisty foodie friend.
Grow Fruit & Vegetables in Pots by Aaron Bertelsen
Exactly what is needed in such uncertain times, this gorgeous book provides abundant feel-better therapy. There is nothing like immersing oneself in gardening and getting muddy to give renewed hope. A great combination of practical gardening and accessible recipes.
Inspired by his beautifully bijou courtyard kitchen garden at the celebrated English garden, Great Dixter, cook and gardener, Aaron Bertelsen, shares his expert knowledge on growing fruit and vegetables in containers in a small backyard or even a window box. It is a reassuring to learn that lack of space (or no prior knowledge) is no barrier to growing delicious home-grown ingredients. Beautifully illustrated by acclaimed photographer, Andrew Montgomery, the book provides practical advice and growing tips, alongside more than 50 delicious recipes that make the most of your home harvest. Recipes include oven-baked lentil soup with greens, baked trout with herbs, fennel, aubergine and artichoke caponata, gooseberry cake besides preserves, pickles and homemade drinks including rhubarb gin.
Sun and Rain by Ana Ros
This is gorgeous gastronomic escapism. Most of us can only dream of being socially isolated anywhere as Arcadian as Hisa Franko. It is a pink family home, now hotel/restaurant, deep in the Slovenian countryside with a turquoise river flowing through the garden and towering mountains behind. It is home to the feisty chef Ana Ros, who jettisoned being a diplomat to take the culinary world by storm. She has introduced us to a little-known, unspoilt area of Europe: Slovenia close to the Italian borders, less than two hours from Venice, yet barely known.
Ana Ros, the World's 50 Best female Chef of the Year 2018 (whatever its divisive shortcomings, the controversial award certainly raised Ana's profile) and she is often compared to René Redzepi. Certainly, she shares his fondness for foraging and fermenting, and she lyrically describes her love and respect for nature. The book is hauntingly beautiful, mostly made up of evocative photography and stories of the landscape and its producers and growers. It makes for perfect travelogue escapism.
The recipes at the back of the book require a good deal of time and technique. They are unashamedly cheffy. Many have multiple elements, though it would be perfectly feasible to settle for just a couple of elements such as the brown butter chicory and horseradish buttermilk and plum purée from Chicory and Plums.
Tin Can Magic by Jessie Elliott Dennison
Uncannily prescient, chef-patron of Elliott's Cafe in Bristol, Jessie Elliott Dennison couldn't have predicted quite how timely her book focussing on the cans that usually lurk low in our larders would be. Right now, cans are hot property yet require some practised culinary creativity to make truly alluring dishes. Recipes include overnight oats with apple, ginger and coconut, garlic mushrooms, lentils and salsa verde, tomato and red wine baked aubergine, roast chicken with anchovy and herb aïoli and miso salted caramel sauce with ice cream, and the book combines big hits of flavour with simple and very yummy cooking.
Table Manners: The Cookbook by Jessie & Lennie Warre
Building on the huge success of their podcast, singer-writer Jessie Ware and her social worker mother Lennie have created a book as chatty, boisterous and soulful as their dialogue. Interspersed with lively anecdotes about their interviews, the hug factor recipes are divided into effortless, some effort, desserts and cakes, Christmukah, Jewish-ish recipes.
From Jewish-mother chicken soup with matzo balls, the ultimate immune-boosting dish, surely, and turkey meatballs with tomato sauce, salmon with pistachio crust and courgette bake to rum and raisin brûlée and triple treat brownies for when the going gets really tough, this book will really cheer and comfort with food and chat.
Falastin by Sami Tamimi with Tara Wigley
Falastin is a beautiful love story to his childhood by Palestinian Sami Tamimi, who is Ottolenghi's executive chef and business partner, written with co-author, Tara Wigley. a fellow Ottolenghi chef. The book recounts Sami's upbringing with 11 siblings and his decision to leave home at 17 to cook in West Jerusalem, where he met and first worked with Yotam Ottolenghi.
It speaks of a cooking born of resourcefulness and ingenuity from refugee-camp cooks to the home kitchens of Gaza and the mill of a master tahini maker, Tamimi records the cuisine and people in more than 120 recipes with captivating photography. The title is named after the influential Palestinian newspaper. Recipes include Hassan's Easy Eggs with za'atar and lemon, fish kofta with yoghurt, sumac and chile, pulled lamb schwarma sandwich, labheh cheesecake with roasted apricots, honey and cardamom.
As Nigella Lawson has written: 'I want to cook every single recipe in it.'
Eat Green by Melissa Helmsley
A beautiful and smart book, this is Melissa Helmsley's manifesto for living a greener, more sustainable life by eating more vegetables, having less waste, only buying meat and fish from good sources and more occasionally. It is stuffed with flexitarian tips, waste-cutting advice and easy-to-adapt, feel-good recipes for using up odds and ends, reinventing leftovers, using the freezer effectively and using ingredients in their edible entirety. Most of all Helmsley suggests switching seasonal vegetables. Try the fridge-raid frittata, red lenitl hummus and lentil bolognaise for truly economical and food-savvy cooking.
Eat Green provides the kitchen commandments for cleaner, greener living for time-poor cooks.
Fakeaway by Chris Bavin
For those of us who are wary of takeaways yet sometimes crave their comfort. Chris Bavin, presenter of British Home Cook's book Fakeaway has 100 speedy recipes for tastier, more wholesome and affordable, fun versions of favourite take-out dishes. There's grilled chicken katsu, healthy scampi, minty lamb kebabs, noodle broth with lime and chilli pork balls, cheat's lasagne, chilli prawn pops, dough balls and dips besides the ultimate healthy chicken burger. Veggie options include a loaded veggie calzone and oven baked falafel with roasted pepper dip.
The big-on-flavour recipes sensibly have suggestions for ingredient swaps to make them adaptable, gluten-free, dairy-free and vegan, and there is clear nutritional information for ensuring the dishes are immune-boosting too.