With a foreword from Grand Master Pierre Koffman, this is a real celebration of real food – it can look pretty but it never sacrifices visual appeal for visceral satisfaction. Get greased up with some duck fat and dive into this unique collection of taste and terroir.
Simone and Ines Ortega are the chef/authors and names to drop whenever talk turns to tapas. Their book, 1080 Recipes is a fixture in just about every Spanish home kitchen and they are a trusted authority. Their Book of Tapas has the tone of voice of people who know what they’re doing and if you pay attention you will too.
All of GB’s best and unique ingredients are used here, venison, ham hocks, beetroots, John Dory, rare pork breeds, Somerset cider Cromer crabs – the list goes on and on reading as a roll call of all the things we can be proud to call British. Preferably raising a pint of warm beer into the air as we do so while litter flaps around our ankles in a bracing seaside breeze.
The reissued volume 2 of Julia Child’s seminal work Mastering the Art of French Cooking is now out and shows yet again how a cookbook should be written. A work of luminous writing, compassion, pedagogy and superb classic recipes made possible for any cook who wants to learn and knows how to read.
As the shock of Jason Atherton’s resignation from the Ramsay Empire begins to die down, here is his new cookbook to console us until he pops up elsewhere, as he surely must. And far from being a Maze cookbook, delicious dishes beyond the reach of most of us, it’s a book that promises us that we can cook well and for under a fiver a head.
Michel Roux has spent his life up to his elbows in flour and butter. He is one of the few world-famous chefs who is perhaps known for his patisserie skills above all else. He began, as he explains, at the age of 14 with 4 a.m. starts six days a week as a tourier – the person who prepares, rolls and shapes the dough for the day’s work amid a morning mist of airborne flour particles.
Overall, this feels like a book for a cook with some confidence and experience, but that said, the clarity of instruction, quality of photography and breadth of recipes means that there really is something for everyone in Flavour First, from the most adventurous cook to the novice.
You’re going to be seeing a lot more of Gizzi Erskine that’s for sure. Magazine editors and TV commissioning editors all look for looks in their female cooks; the men can resemble Arthur Mullard ,or even Greg Wallace, but not the women.
A professional chef, and the man behind the successful Brindisa tapas kitchens, Jose Pizaro knows his stuff. As Spain continues to culinarily crush all before it, thanks to the El Bulli factor, Jose still has his heart set on the simple honesty of tapas type meals.
Midnight Feasts conjures up a misty-eyed nostalgia, which makes for an enjoyable wallow in memories, but more than that, there are ideas for everyone in here, from the novice to the more accomplished cook: and better still, 100% of the profits go to Springboard for Children.
