Cook up some comfort and joy
SIMPLY NIGELLA
by Nigella Lawson (Chatto & Windus £26 % £19.50) ‘With this book . . . i had to cook myself strong,’ Nigella writes in the introduction. the suggestion that her kitchen became a sanctuary during a painfully public couple of bad years is underlined in chapter headings such as: ‘Quick and Calm’ and ‘Breathe’.
the underlying theme of the book is ‘mindful cooking’, and her belief that what we cook connects us ‘to ourselves, to others, and the world’.
Recipes include such witty gems as Jackson pollock — pollock fillets with chargrilled peppers, artistically dribbled with green sauce — and a beef and Guinness stew with prunes and black treacle — ‘a dark beauty with a deep and intense flavour to match’.
THE HAIRY BIKERS: MEAT FEASTS by Si King and Dave Myers (Weidenfeld £22
% £17.60)
the jacket of the hairy Bikers’ latest cookbook describes it as a ‘meaty modern classic’, and it is a riotous celebration of all things fleshy.
For dedicated believers in nose-totail eating, the chapter titled Lovely Offal offers a celebration of the more outlandish bits of animal anatomy — according to the hairies, ox heart kebabs taste just like steak.
their take on more conventional cuts is equally robust — roast haunch of venison with quince, pork cooked in milk, italian-style, and a fabulously hefty-looking steak and kidney pudding, with the optional addition of smoked oysters. THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF: CELEBRATIONS
by Linda Collister
(Hodder £20 % £15) MaNy of the contestants on the Great British Bake Off began their baking careers by making cakes for celebrations.
a homemade treat makes any occasion seem special, and this easy-to-follow cookbook has a huge range of cakes, pastries, savouries and bread recipes, from simple to spectacular.
Spooky gingerbread haunted houses are fun and easy for young bakers, while a toasted almond and bitter chocolate cake with edible gold decoration is darkly sophisticated, and an edible box of savoury Parmesan biscuits is a summer party showstopper. TOM’S TABLE
by Tom Kerridge (Absolute Press £25
% £18.75) theRe is a lovely homely feel to tom Kerridge’s book of his favourite recipes from his own kitchen. ‘even if you haven’t done much cooking before, i’d encourage you to get stuck in,’ he writes. and no encouragement is needed to try his appealing collection of favourites with a twist.
Meatballs are served with a treacle gravy enriched with chunks of onion and red pepper. Duck is immersed in a tea-based brine, then roasted with Szechuan pepper, while a luscious peanut butter, cherry and chocolate tart requires a minimum of cooking.
SESAME & SPICE: BAKING FROM THE EAST END TO THE MIDDLE EAST
by Anne Shooter (Headline £25 % £18.75)
‘ ONLy Jewish people could possibly have festivals where it is an absolute necessity to eat cheesecake or doughnuts’, writes anne Shooter, and her book celebrates the exuberant Jewish tradition of baking with sweet and savoury recipes inspired by the flavours she grew up eating at regular feasts with family and friends.
there are recipes for bagels, while hungarian chocolate layer cake is a decadent treat — an almond sponge sandwiched with layers of chestnut cream and rum-flavoured chocolate icing — and Friday night dinner pie is a comforting way to use up leftover roast chicken. MY SIMPLE ITALIAN
by Theo Randall (Ebury Press £25 % £20) theO RaNDaLL worked for many years at the River Cafe, the hothouse of culinary talent where Jamie Oliver was first spotted.
he begins his book with a practical question — how long have you got? — and suggests recipes for every timescale, from frantic to leisurely.
twenty minutes is long enough to prepare linguine with red mullet, tomatoes, olives and pangrattato.
But if you’re not pressed for time, beef and porcini stew with rosemary and tomatoes takes a couple of hours, and the picture of a rich, unctuous casserole promises that it’s worth every minute. MILDREDS: THE COOKBOOK (Mitchell Beazley £25 % £18.75) WheN Mildreds restaurant opened in 1988 on the site of a former Soho sex shop, sceptical locals reckoned that it would survive for six months at most.
almost 30 years later, it is seen as one of London’s coolest vegetarian restaurants, serving delectable, meat-free recipes from as far afield as Mexico and Japan.
even the most devoted carnivore will find it hard to resist such delicacies as ruby jewelled tabbouleh with red grapes, pomegranate seeds and toasted pistachio, or a creamy Sri Lankan sweet potato and cashew nut curry served with garlic rotis and tomato and coconut sambal. A BIRD IN THE HAND
by Diana Henry (Mitchell Beazley £20 % £15) the humble chicken is a versatile fowl, but Diana henry’s inventive book presents it in so many different guises that you could cook it every day for a month and still not be tired of it.
henry offers a world tour of ways with poultry. an exquisite Persian chicken dish with mint, pistachios and rose petals; an elegant supper of poussin with red wine, juniper and black grapes; and roast chicken Georgian-style, spiced with cayenne pepper and stuffed with barley and pomegranate are all tasty and stylish without being too complicated to prepare. LOVE YOUR LEFTOVERS by Hugh FearnleyWhittingstall (Bloomsbury £20 % £15) huGh FearnleyWhittingstall relishes a crusade, and his latest campaign is to persuade us to stop wasting our leftovers and instead turn them into delicious, nourishing and thrifty meals.
his new book begins with sensible advice on safe food storage and the not-too-literal interpretation of use- by dates, and goes on to propose an ingenious range of ways to use up the odds and ends lurking at the back of your fridge.
Some are homely (potato peel soup), some hearty (shepherd’s pie), some surprisingly elegant (chilled cucumber and almond soup) and some frankly bizarre (spaghetti bolognese omelette). RICK STEIN FROM VENICE TO ISTANBUL
(BBC Books £25 % £20) RiCK SteiN says he thinks of the cities of Venice and istanbul as two large books propping up a shelf full of stories about the cooking of the eastern Mediterranean.
Wonderful fresh flavours burst from every page of his handsomely illustrated book.
in the section on street food, he suggests wafer- thin flatbreads stuffed with feta and spinach and skewers of lamb and pistachio kofte.
More substantial dishes include walnut- crusted pork chops with figs, roast chicken with pomegranate molasses, and an intense black risotto made with cuttlefish ink.
NOPI by Yotam Ottolenghi and Ramael Scully (Ebury Press £28 % £21) Yotam ottolenghi and Ramael Scully’s restaurant, NoPI, opened in 2011 — a fusion of asian and mediterranean influences.
this sophisticated book with its gilt- edged pages and cream silk bookmark is almost too goodlooking to let anywhere near the smears and stains of a kitchen.
the recipes are ambitious, but not too intimidating, with appetisers such as truffle polenta chips and starters including seared scallops with pickled daikon and chilli jam. main courses of lamb fillet with peanuts, coconut milk and red onion salsa, or pistachio and pine nut crusted halibut with parsley vichyssoise offer an exciting challenge to a confident cook.
A YEAR OF GOOD EATING
by Nigel Slater
(Fourth Estate £30 % £22.50) ‘ DoeS the world need more recipes?’ asks Nigel Slater in his third volume of Kitchen Diaries.
the answer is yes, if they are as inspiring and beautifully written as these. Slater is a passionate advocate of food as one of the great civilising pleasures, and his writing is so sensual it is tempting to read his book straight through.
But it would be a shame not to eat as well as read. If the prose is exquisite, the recipes are homely: a peri peri chicken pie to warm up a cold night, or a comforting dish of gnocchi dolcelatte.