In-depth cookery book reviews.
When I read Allegra McEvedy’s book, Bought, Borrowed & Stolen: Recipes & Knives From A Travelling Chef, I immediately felt a kinship – a warmth that comes from the shared personality disorder of the collecting mindset! In her introduction, Allegra describes her knife buying as gathering, explaining that she hesitates to use the word ‘collect‘ ... Read more »
Given how much I adored Saraban, I was really excited about getting my hands on the latest title from Greg & Lucy Malouf, Malouf: New Middle Eastern Food. Whilst I was immediately taken by many of the recipes, one major problem with the book revealed itself very early on: The typography and page layout may ... Read more »
New cook books are great. New cookbooks I won by following the author on twitter are even better! I was delighted to win a copy of Stew! by Genevieve Taylor. I’m a huge fan of a good stew; hearty and comforting, full of warmth and good flavours and often made from inexpensive ingredients. Genevieve Taylor feels ... Read more »
Although I like Valentine Warner’s approach to food and cooking, I have mixed feelings about his telly programmes, mostly stemming from his incessant winking and innuendos (which might be charming in person but don’t translate to TV). I actually had to switch off when he referred to mini lavender meringues as “fairy tits”, though friends would ... Read more »
It would be easy to dismiss my friend Sig’s new book as jumping on the Scandi band wagon, but it’d be completely wrong to do so. Since June 2008 Sig has been sharing the joy’s of Scandinavian cooking via her blog, Scandilicious. Describing her heritage as Scandinavian-English-American-Irish-German-Jewish-Lithuanian (and born to a Norwegian father and English-American ... Read more »
Olly Smith is well known as a wine writer and presenter, respected for helping the nation to find and appreciate good wine. But he’s also a keen food lover and has written his own cookery book Eat and Drink full of his favourite recipes, with an emphasis on food that’s great to drink with. The ... Read more »
I fell in love with this book the moment I saw it, on a friend’s coffee table, towards the end of last year. Sitting in her flat, steaming a number of Christmas puddings and occasionally checking they hadn’t run low on water, I had plenty of time to give the book lots of attention. By ... Read more »
Whilst Julia isn’t the first food blogger to get a book deal, she’s one of the first in the UK and certainly the first that I know personally, so I couldn’t help but feel especially delighted for her and eager to check out A Slice of Cherry Pie for myself. Published by Absolute Press, a ... Read more »
Long lists of ingredients – some familiar, some exotic; instructions on how to transform them into delicious treats; vivid and tantalising photographs and even an insight into other cultures and cuisines… I love cookery books! I kinda, sorta agreed, about a year or two back, to a moratorium on the purchase of new cookery books. ... Read more »
Since it was published in 2002, Unwrapped: Green & Black’s Chocolate Recipes has sold more than half a million copies. Its recipes for chocolate coffee and walnut cake, chocolate truffles, chocolate pecan pie, chocolate salted caramel tart, white chocolate cardamom mousse, chocolate flapjacks, chocolate ginger cake, chocolate brownies (is the word “chocolate becoming redundant yet?) ... Read more »
The Place of Onions, in old Lille. After last night’s rainstorm the intense sticky heat has broken and today is cool, breezy, fresh… I love it! A drop of… [more]
We went to Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire at The Void this morning, an amazing VR experience where we got to be Rebel Alliance members going undercover as… [more]