Category: cooks

Categories
cookbooks cooks food

my favourite cookbooks of 2012

my cookbook shelf, december 2012

I look forward to writing this post every year; a chance to reflect on the year’s cookbook shelves. Polpo gave us a travelogue round Venice’s cicchetti bars, Madhur Jaffrey returned to explore the UK’s curry scene, and LEON released their fourth impressive volume.

As baking fever truly took hold, with Jubilees and the like to celebrate, the market groaned with cupcake and muffin recipe manuals designed to capture Great British Bake-Off mania. It sometimes felt as though this was the only part of the market churning out books! From the non-cake section I’ve compiled my favourite cookbooks of 2012 that have in turns entertained, educated and enlightened me.

3. Jerusalem – Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

Yotam Ottolenghi has become one of those chefs for whom I pay close attention. Whatever he’s up to I’m interested, as it will certainly have an unusual angle that is completely new to me.

And this book goes some way to explaining why. Part holiday guide, part autobiography and all good eating, Jerusalem is a culinary tour of his and long-term collaborator Sam’s childhood home, knocking on all the doors of their youth and exploring the complex political and religious web that covers the city. They grew up in opposite corners of Jerusalem and their “same but different” upbringing is a fascinating story.

Most recipes have some potted history alongside it, and the recipes themselves are of course outstanding. Packed with bold flavours and its sings of people making the most of what little they have. In many cuisines crowd-pleasing dinners have peasant roots; warming, familiar, generous. These qualities abound throughout the book.

Perfect for: adventurous types with a love of aubergines!

Standout recipe: Aubergines with lamb and pine nuts

2. Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals – Jamie Oliver

Some may well groan at this inclusion – I imagine like 30 Min Meals it has set some sort of sales record – and the same tired old moans about adhering strictly to 15 minutes as an absolute time limit will surface no doubt.

But I cannot ignore this book. Like its almost slothful predecessor it had genuinely changed the way I prepare the evening meal, freeing me of the usual rules and conventions encouraging me to think in more adventurous ways. Deconstructing a chilli con carne, not in the modern British way so loved by Masterchef finalists, but in a sensible way to separate all the elements you love about it and bring together at the end is simply brilliant. This approach echoes throughout the book, touching on loads of great world cuisines along the way.

There is a reliance on kitchen gadgetry but none of it is gratuitous. It is sensible and well-judged. I defy anyone not to take at least one of these great recipes into their weekly repertoire.

Perfect for: people looking to do more in less time.

Standout recipe: 15 minute chilli con carne meatballs

1. Everybody Everyday – Alex Mackay

This came out of nowhere. I was a little familiar with Kiwi chef Alex Mackay so had almost no expectations for this book. I knew it was going to be great when I’d got about half way through my first flick-through and had to stop putting post-it notes against the ones I wanted to make, because ten is too big a for a to-cook list.

The premise is simple: take one ‘mother’ recipe, then spin it into five proper meals. But not in a prissy, cheffy way. Each one is approachable, and broken down to a very low level. Every description has steps in there for how children and babies can have the same food (for all his professional training with Raymond Blanc and Delia Smith, Alex runs many cookery classes for children, and it shows). Do you know the best thing about the recipes? They are all for two people. This is the number I cook for most often, so it’s so appealing to have recipes easily multiplied up.

But that’s all technical details, what about the food? It’s all just excellent, home-style food with influences from every continent. There are stir-fries, roasts, pizzas and many more. I’ve learned so many things from this book that I’ve stuck straight into my everyday repertoire – like how to cook a potato pancake perfectly every time, I must’ve made nine times this year. Or how to make an unctuous and delicious sauce like I’ve always dreamed of.

It is a book that reads very well, and eats even better. It’s smart cookery, by spending a lot of time on the base recipe you can have five very different meals with it, all of which are great. This is a truly good cookery book – add it to your shelf now.

Perfect for: everybody, everyday. Cheesy but true.

Standout recipe: Burger with red onion and red wine sauce

Such great books to choose from this year. What was your standout cookbook this year?

Categories
competition cookbooks cooks food

competition – win jamie oliver’s 15 minute meals book [closed]

This competition is now closed. Many thanks for all your entries. So many ideas in there, both inspired and crazy! The winner has been notified by email.

You can’t move far around this blog without bumping into a Jamie Oliver recipe. It’s fair to say I’m fan, having decked out my kitchen with branded crockery, bakeware, utensils and knives. I even owned a Flavour Shaker.

After the rip-roaring success of Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals, we now have Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals. Not content with resting on the success of this book, he took a step back and realised more could be done with a tighter focus on a single, substantial dish. I’ve tried a few of the recipes out already and I’ve been impressed with what you can achieve in a short time so far.

I’ve already blogged a few of these: golden chicken and chilli con carne meatballs.

To celebrate the start of the series on Channel 4 this week, I’ve got a copy of his new book to give away. To be in with a chance of winning, just leave a comment answering the following question:

What’s your best time-saving kitchen tip?

  • Competition closes 8pm 28th October. Comments posted after then won’t be counted.
  • I’ll pick the winners at random using some fancy random number generator.
  • Entrants must be 18 years or older.
  • If the winner hasn’t replied within one week, someone else will get it.
  • Only people from the UK please. Additionally, I’ll only post to a UK address.
  • Any answer along the lines “I get the wife to do it” or “I have the kebab shop on speed-dial” will be tutted and sighed at, and not counted. Get into the spirit of things, people!
Categories
cookbooks cooks food

my favourite cookbooks of 2011

2011 is not quite over but I think we have seen the major releases in cookbooks this year that we should expect. If you’re planning on buying the foodie in your life a recipe book, here’s what I would be asking for!

2010 was an embarrassment of riches in the cookbook market; to be honest this year wasn’t quite as bountiful. Nevertheless there are plenty of gems to be had. Here’s a rundown of what I consider to be my absolute favourites of this year.

3. The Good Cook – Simon Hopkinson

This was a real joy to discover. Simon Hopkinson, someone I was only passingly familiar with, popped up week after week with relaxed, homely, but gobstoppingly good food. Nothing was difficult, nothing was pressured but everything was tasty without feeling stodgy. The presentation was fresh and geek that I am giggled at the use of QR codes for the recipes. All the recipes are winners.

And on another note: I really want Simon’s kitchen, replete with adjacent sofa for reading while your sponge rises.

If there’s an unconfident cook you know this would be a great gift, with recognisable but foolproof dinners.

Standout recipe: Lamb breast with onions

2. Ginger Pig Meat Book – Tim Wilson & Fran Warde

This book had a unique criteria for selection in this list. My Dad flicked through it, raised his eyebrows and said “can I borrow that?” and took it home to read cover-to-cover. Not like my Dad at all.

He enjoyed the same things that I did in it: part recipe book and part autobiography, this lovingly prepared tome covers the trials and tribulations of raising livestock. There’s so much humanity in every page you really feel for Tim and Fran as they lose another animal to the ravages of nature and disease.

If that doesn’t do it for you then the recipes will. Proper farmhouse fare treating each animal and each cut with the respect they know it deserves. Casseroles, roasts, stir-fries… all very approachable.

This book also features one of my favourite things: those diagrams that tell you where all the cuts of an animal are from, with dotted lines criss-crossing the beast. I think they’re fascinating.

Standout recipe: Pork in milk

1. Heston Blumenthal at Home – Heston Blumenthal

It could never really be anyone else. My mild Heston obsession peaked this year with both meeting the man himself and then the arrival of this beautiful book. It’s a huge great heavy thing, not easy to read in bed I can tell you (yes, I read it in bed, so what?).

Even though it bears the title “at home” most of the recipes are still quite involved and still multi-stage. Nothing however is insurmountable and thankfully laid out in a clear and achievable way. He admits some things do need a lot of investment but reading the method thoroughly reveals insight. None of it feels extraneous and calling on Heston’s detailed research yields incredible results on the plate. With flavour combinations you’re not familiar with and processes that feel odd at the time, this is a real way to genuinely improve your daily techniques in the way you approach cooking. From chicken and potatoes, from triple-cooked chips to porridge, from sweets in a jar to dry-ice ice cream, all the Heston classics are here plus new delights.

The best parts are the long chunks on Heston’s thoughts about a subject, such as fish, desserts and the long evangelising essay on the benefits of sous-vide (which I would love to have at home – just waiting on Argos to do an Anthony Worral-Thompson branded one).

One slight quibble is if you are a Heston-maniac many of them will feel familiar and almost reprinted but the comprehensiveness of the collection make them apt. To be without them would feel lacking.

In short, it’s a great collection of articles with moments of brilliant inspiration from the chef that most inspires me. Fantastic.

Standout recipe: Pea and ham soup

That was really difficult to choose my top 3! What cookbook did it for you this year?

Categories
competition cooks kitchen gadgets prize

competition – win a heston blumenthal measuring jug [closed]

This competition is now closed. Many thanks for all your entries, there were some really fantastic ideas! The winners have been notified by email.
Image copyright HestonBySalter.com

Like most people who love being in the kitchen, I enjoy a good gadget. But better than that is a good gadget you use more than once. There’s the key. And this digital measuring jug by those clever folks at Salter is the business. Heston’s seal of approval has made this a very canny device. Yes, yes, it’s a measuring jug, but it’s more than that. It’s a measuring jug that can gauge liquids of different types (milk, oil, etc.), but it can manage weight too. And in a bunch of different units. One after the other. Let me explain.

I’ve made a bunch of things with it recently, such as white chocolate and blueberry muffins. The cool part is making it all in the one jug. Add your flour, zero it. Then add your sugar, zero it, change to liquids and off you go adding milk, zero, etc. etc. Similarly chocolate and rosemary ice cream was made by measuring stuff as I went along, adding and pouring out, then zeroing and adding something else to the jug. Less washing up and the mixture’s all there in one pot ready to go. Put simply – it’s a measuring jug and add-and-weigh digital scale in one gadget. Genius.

The good folks over at Salter have kindly passed on some of these measuring jugs for me to give away. Want one? Enter below.

In addition to the current range, there’s a brand new selection of Heston Precision products coming very soon. I had a chat with Caroline from Salter who gave me an idea of what it’s like working with Heston Blumenthal and what new products we can expect to see:

How did Salter get involved with Heston Blumenthal?

When we first started thinking about working with Heston and his team, we felt that it was important to understand the brand values for both Salter and Heston to ensure that the partnership had integrity behind it. While Salter has been around for over 250 years, and Heston is very much a forward thinking modern chef, the good news was that our values of Precision, Trust, Excellence, Innovation and “Britishness” bought the two brands together and ensured that our collaboration would make sense to our combined audience.

We approached him with a proposal, and he was very agreeable to collaborating from the start as he knew the Salter brand and was comfortable with our values and ethics. It took a while to decide the range, as we wanted to make sure that it most definitely wasn’t just a celebrity endorsement, rather that it was a range that reflected the methods and tools that Heston would use in his own kitchen.

Heston and Caroline

To what extent has Heston and his team been involved with development?

From day one we have had access to Heston and his amazing team at the Fat Duck. The whole process has been remarkably easy as they are a truly passionate bunch, and Heston is a genuinely nice chap. He is both interesting and interested – he makes time for us, and I always look forward to our development meetings as we are always looking ahead to see what other products we could develop that would help people cook like Heston, at home.

What’s involved in developing one of these products and to what extent does Heston have sign-off?

Product development is a fascinating process as it involves a lot more thought and time than perhaps many people realise. If we know that we have a new category to think about, we will look at it from both consumer and catering viewpoints. We will get together to brainstorm new ideas and talk each one through – taking into account the brand values, and especially how true the product is to Heston’s processes. Once we have a firm idea of a product that we would like to bring into the range, I work with our in-house design team to come up with concepts, showing how the product could look and function. These are then taken to Heston and the team for reviewing and refining. Once we are all happy with the product concept we can get going on the manufacturing process. With any product that Heston is putting his name to, it is important that us that he is delighted with the product and that he has full sign off. Whilst people usually ask for his signature as an autograph, I ask for his signature in order to bring another great product to market!

There’s a new range coming in 2012, what can we expect to see in the future?

All I can say at the moment is watch this space… we are working on a 3 year product plan which will result in many more truly exciting products that will help people achieve great results in the kitchen.

Keep an eye on the HestonBySalter website for more info. Until then though, it’s competition time!

How to enter

There’s five ways to enter, and you can do all of them if you like:

  1. Leave a comment below answering the question what unusual ice cream flavour would you like to make?
  2. Follow me on Twitter, and leave a comment below to let me know.
  3. Link to this competition on Twitter using the Tweet button at the bottom, and leave a comment below to let me know.
  4. Like my Facebook page, and leave a comment below to let me know.
  5. +1 this post using the button below, and leave a comment below to let me know.

After the closing date, I’ll use a random number generator to pluck out the lucky winners. So more entries means more chances to win.

Rules

  • Competition closes 10pm 25th July. Comments posted after then won’t be counted.
  • I’ll pick the winners at random using some fancy random number generator.
  • Entrants must be 18 years or older.
  • If the winner hasn’t replied within two weeks, someone else will get it.
  • Only people from the UK please. Additionally, I’ll only post to a UK address.

Good luck!

Exit mobile version