Cookery Elisabeth Luard

WINTER WARMERS

Culinary historian Laura Shapiro’s What She Ate (Fourth Estate) takes six famous females and works out what and why they cooked. Eleanor Roosevelt employed a useless housekeeper and served horrible food at the White House to teach her philandering husband a lesson; it didn’t. Eva Braun was a frilly airhead with a taste for Moët and cream cake, while her friend Adolf, whose vegetarian diet included veal sausage and liver pudding, suffered from chronic indigestion (no surprises there). Dot Wordsworth fancied a black pudding, and Helen Gurley Brown ate as little as she could.

In The Reporter’s Kitchen (St Martin’s Press), Jane Kramer takes a break from the day job – contributor on European politics to the New Yorker – with an irresistible bundle of essays on iconic food folk. Interviewees include Claudia Roden ( Middle Eastern Food, Jewish Food), Naomi Duguid ( Burma, Taste of Persia) and Yotam Ottolenghi ( Plenty, Jerusalem). Modernists feature Massimo Bottura, who persuaded his fellow Italians that pasta alla mama leaves room for improvement; René Redzepi who does magic with foraged foods in Denmark; and Thomas Keller of the French Laundry in the Napa Valley.

Kramer’s kitchen lacks an index but, if it did (just saying), you’ll find me skipping through the wildwood, page 176.

Now for the spoon food…

Carrot and ginger soup The perfect combination of sweet roots and fiery ginger has a dash of vinegar to warm your woolly toes. Serves 2

4-5 large carrots, scraped and sliced 1 medium potato, peeled and chunked 1 tbsp finely chopped ginger root Salt and pepper To finish: a dash of cider vinegar

Cook the carrots and potato with the ginger in half a litre of water till the vegetables are perfectly soft. Drop everything into the liquidiser and process until smooth and thick – dilute with boiling water if necessary. Sharpen with a drop of vinegar, taste and season.

Parsnip soup with garam masala The flavours of the basic curry blend highlight the sweetness and earthiness of a creamy parsnip soup. Serves 2

2-3 well-grown parsnips, peeled, chunked 250ml full-cream milk or single cream 1 tbsp butter 1 small onion, finely sliced vertically into half-moons 1 level tbsp garam masala Salt and pepper

Cook the parsnips in about half a litre of water till perfectly tender: 20-30 minutes. Fry the onion gently in the butter till golden and perfectly soft; then stir in the garam masala. Tip half the contents of the pan into the liquidiser with the parsnips and their cooking water, process till smooth and dilute with milk or cream. Reheat, taste and adjust the seasoning, ladle into bowls and finish with the reserved spiced onion.

Fiery tomato soup Liquidise a can of plum tomatoes with 1 tsp plain flour, a slice of onion, a pinch of thyme, two dried, de-seeded chillis, and a tablespoon of olive oil. Heat to boiling, add water or milk to double the volume, reheat, taste and adjust the seasoning (maybe a pinch of sugar?). Finish, if you like, with a spoonful of Greek yoghurt. Serves one.