Book Reviews
Stay in and stay warm with a good (cook) book.
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Mary Berry's Complete Cookbook - a wise mother in your kitchen
Tuesday January 31st, 2012With the current trend for quirky cookery books offering an esoteric range of recipes from celebrity chefs, restaurateurs and bloggers, Mary Berry’s Complete Cookbook plays the role of wise mother to their naughty children. It won’t set you up as a here today, gone tomorrow pop-up or supper club host but it will make your repertoire much more varied – and your life a lot easier, as Joanna Biddolph discovered.
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Ken Hom 100 Easy Chinese Suppers
Saturday January 28th, 2012Once you get the Chinese bug from this book it’s hard to stop. You’ll find yourself using it every night. It’s not often a cookbook is this good, this simple and this well produced for the money and it knocks many a posher production into a cocked hat. Well done our Ken and well done My Kitchen Table.
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Skinny Meals in Heels
Tuesday January 10th, 2012Author of 8 books and a long term food writer, stylise and food enthusiast, Joyce's latest offering Skinny Meals in Heels is the lighter but equally sophisticated younger sister to her original book Meals In Heels.
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London Oyster Guide - Colin Pressdee
Thursday December 29th, 2011Forget the scare stories and cuddle up to an oyster or six, it’s one of life’s greatest eating pleasures and an example of how simple can so often be the very best. Lift the lid on a briny bivalve and tip it into your mouth, bite gently to release the flavour and then swallow. No, Stephen Fry did not say that, although he might.
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The Oxford Companion to Beer
Thursday December 8th, 2011Garrett Oliver has gone where no man has gone before. He has formalised the world’s most informal drink. This is not a coffee table book or a gift idea for Uncle Kevin who loves his lager. This is a serious book about a serious business
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Hawksmoor at Home
Wednesday November 30th, 2011Big, bold and British, the new cookbook from the Hawksmoor is a joyous celebration of all that’s good about food.
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Poulet: More Than 50 Remarkable Meals that Exalt the Honest Chicken: Cree La Favour
Tuesday November 29th, 2011With 160 recipes gathered into 55 recipe sets, the pages on cooking met all my needs, plenty of variety and plenty of multi-cultural flavours as befits a bird that is globally ubiquitous. Mulligatwany with Onion Flatbread, Crispy Roast Chicken with Watercress Vinaigrette, and Jerk Thighs with Jamaican Peas are just a few that spring from the page.
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Tasting India Christine Mansfield
Saturday November 26th, 2011We often hear that recipe books are dead and that everyone goes online to find recipes now. Well this book is a counter-argument to that, offering you something beyond mere information, but instead a tangible sensory experience too, a feast for the eyes, a tactile treat and something to curl up in a chair with. Just make sure it’s a strong chair.
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Bought, Borrowed & Stolen - Allegra McEvedy waffles around the world
Saturday November 19th, 2011Ignore the hideous photographs, and self-indulgent waffle, and you might find some recipes you'll want to cook again and again in this astonishingly big book, suggests Joanna Biddolph.
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The Mind Maps of Maria Elia
Thursday November 17th, 2011Full of Flavour is a lovely book. With a simple, easy to read layout and photo after glorious photo of Elia’s meals, this is one of those books you like to look at as much as you like to actually use it.
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A History of English Food
Saturday November 12th, 2011An invitation to dine at The Savoy with the incomparable Clarissa Dickson Wright was an opportunity too good to be missed last week. The lady is in town publicising her new tome, A History of English Food, and where better to talk trotters and trifle than one of London’s original and best dining destinations.
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The Meat Free Monday Cookbook
Friday November 11th, 2011The Meat Free Monday Campaign was launched in 2009 and has grown as more people discover the benefit of taking a day off from meat – health wise and budget wise too. It’s also sensible as most people will balk at the idea of going totally cold turkey on meat, but once a week is do-able given the right incentives.
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Robin Asbell's Big Vegan Recipe Book
Thursday November 3rd, 2011Robin Asbell's Big Vegan cook book is a must have for any vegetarian or vegan wanting fresh, nutritious every day meals. Big Vegan is a stylish and authoritative collection of more than 400 gourmet vegan recipes.
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Lucy's love for leftovers
Wednesday November 2nd, 2011Lucy Cufflin, author of Lucy's Food, loves her leftovers. That's right, the mangy old salad, the dregs of last night's curry and the sad looking veg in the back of the fridge. Foodepedia digs into some of her dishes and finds out why.
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Cooking without Recipes: Philip Dundas
Thursday October 27th, 2011Cooking without Recipes, by Phillip Dundas, as the name suggests, contains no recipes. Instead, it provides a manual for confidence in the kitchen, with information on techniques,food shopping, and cooking various ingredients. Beautifully illustrated, the writing possesses a lightness of touch that never feels patronising.
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Gin O’Clock – Queen_UK publishes extracts from her diaries
Thursday October 27th, 2011The Queen [of Twitter] has published extracts from her diaries, revealing her surprisingly candid thoughts about the events of the day and showing that the only way to survive the nonsense we have to put up with from leading public figures is by taking hefty slugs of Bombay Sapphire gin, with or preferably without tonic. Joanna Biddolph went along to meet her at the official launch.
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MasterChef Kitchen Bible
Saturday October 22nd, 2011This is a good book if not The Good Book. Everything you need to bring your cooking up to a higher level. A practical book to help you feel that, actually, cooking needn’t get tougher than this and it’s well worth the investment.
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Never again overspend on your favourite bottle
Thursday October 6th, 2011This hefty hard cover from DK is an essential guide to the best affordable wines, telling you everything you need to know buy and enjoy wines from the best wineries in the world, without breaking the bank.
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Leon: Baking & Puddings
Thursday September 29th, 2011The third Leon cookbook, Baking & Puddings, brings together recipes for the sweeter treats available in Leon's London restaurants. The result is a treat for home cooks everywhere.
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Classic Vegetarian Cookery: Arto der Haroutanian
Saturday September 17th, 2011Classic Vegetarian Cookery has been unavailable for almost 20 years, the author Arto der Haroutanian can now be seen to have been ahead of his time. An Armenian by birth he was brought up from the age of 12 in the North West of England and was a painter of international distinction, as well as the owner of a chain of hotels and restaurants where Armenian cookery featured.