Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many

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The huge rise in interest in food in recent years has books appearing with such speed that keeping up with the new is in itself a great occupation. Photography changed the production of books dramatically. Now a book illustrated with a couple of ink drawings and the occasional frontispiece may well seem challenging beside a lavishly photographed volume. It is worth pausing to consider whether reading a recipe alongside a glorious colour photograph depicting the dish might diminish the imagination slightly? Subsequently possibly the writing is diminished too. A beautifully written instant classic that is every bit as exuberant and delicious as the man himself!’ Nigella Lawson Ah, years of writing columns for the Guardian, other broadsheets and a fair few journals had taught me much. The most important quality was a genuine and honest approach avoiding myriad pitfalls. Most importantly, taking nothing for granted and ensuring a place in the finished manuscript. There were too a wealth of memories from years watching my Granny and my Mum in the kitchen cooking for her family which were easily tapped being buried deep in our, my siblings and my subconscious. You’ve done some TV (Great British Menu obviously but I also remember a magazine programme on Channel 4 I think to which you contributed recipe demonstrations including what I recall as an historic version of mushrooms on toast – hope I haven’t misremembered that!) but isn’t it high time you had your own series? Could Cooking be the perfect springboard for that? Heat a griddle or frying pan over a high heat. Lay the spring onions on the hot pan to blister, turning after 3-4 minutes to blister the other side.

Lightly flour the surface and roll the ball into a rectangle, about 40cm x 20cm. Fold this in three and turn 90 degrees. Roll into the same sized rectangle again and fold in three. Cover and refrigerate for 20 minutes. Repeat this two more times, turning each folded rectangle 90 degrees. Chill the pastry for an hour, or overnight, or freeze for future use. Thank you. Tis such a great honour. And, well, as it happens, there is to be another ,4 th Estate having just commissioned a second book. We barely touched on puddings, and I can say no more as the scraps of paper covered in thoughts once again litter desk and floor at home.I have often thought about a copper mould for making this lovely dish, as pleasing to look at as it is to eat. A wider, shallower cake shaped and cooked in a cast-iron skillet or frying pan is as delicious as those cooked in hatted moulds. For his spirit boundless spirit alone, Lee should be classified as a national treasure. Likewise, this book is one to treasure. After working for a few years in a Scottish country house hotel, Jeremy made the move down to London and landed a job at one of the most exciting restaurants of the 1980s. ‘Terence Conran was starting to take his restaurant business very seriously and had the brilliant idea to choose Simon Hopkinson as his head chef and partner at Bibendum, a restaurant on Fulham Road housed inside the old Michelin UK headquarters,’ explains Jeremy. ‘Cooking with Simon was a revelation; at the time, everyone was beginning to understand produce and we saw the birth of British cooking. After that I got to cook with Alistair Little, who worked in a very different style in a very different kitchen. He’s been a great friend ever since.’ Oh Telly…well thank you, you certainly know how to make a cook blush. I love telly and think often of Michael Smith, Claudia Roden and Madhur Jaffrey who presented cooking with such ease, charm and style. Should the stars align, perhaps something charming in the loveliest kitchen with the glorious family we made when turning a manuscript into a book?

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 130C fan/gas mark 2. Spoon the marmalade over the bottom of the tart case. Heap the frangipane in little clods over the marmalade. Strew the chocolate over the frangipane. Insert a small knife into the cake for doneness; there should be no resistance. Remove the cake from the oven, press down lightly with a frying pan one last time, then let sit for 5 minutes.

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Cover the dish and bake in the hot oven until done, say 15-20 minutes. Remove from the oven and keep warm. Any residual juices left in the dish can be added to the sauce. A glimpse at Lee’s bookshelves provided within the book give as good as clue as any to the kind of chef he is and the type of cooking that inspires him. While a few modern books can be seen – Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat​, Nuno Mendes’ Lisboeta​, and St John’s Complete Nose to Tail​ to name but three – his shelves sag under the weight of far older, well-thumbed books from the likes of Julia Child, Jane Grigson, Elizabeth David and Madhur Jaffrey. As he describes the recipes in Cooking​ himself, this is home cooking rediscovered after a lifetime spent in professional kitchens. It is as much indebted to Lee’s Dundee childhood as his years at the stove in smart Sassenach restaurants. And while many of the recipes in the book were developed in professional kitchens, it is home cooking, and the home cook, that his book is about, and for. He starts with the ingredients, always, and keeps things simple, also always. The book is as much a hymn to nature’s fecundity as it is to the pleasures of preparing food. It is arranged alphabetically, and Lee exults in seasonal vegetables from first, artichokes (“kitchen thistles”) to last, wild garlic (“a most exuberant not to mention abundant leaf”). Along the way he indulges in biscuits, blood oranges, chocolate, fish (“shiny darlings lifted from the deep”) offal, potatoes and soup, among other delights. It’s been a great adventure, but I underestimated entirely what it would take,” he admits. The pressures of writing daily menus and working in a busy kitchen meant that structuring a whole book seemed overwhelming. Lee hastens to add that at least it didn’t take 20 years to put together, like Alan Davidson’s Oxford Companion to Food.