Keep It Simple: A Fresh Look at Classic Cooking

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You can actually buy peach tea, which gives this ice-cream its unique flavour. However, if you cannot find any, use an aromatic and floral China tea such as jasmine.

He read archaeology and anthropology at Downing College, Cambridge, where the food was “horrible” but the wines “revelatory”. He spent much of his time there, Elizabeth David to hand, making lavish dinners for student friends – including Rowley Leigh. Add another splash of olive oil to the pan, turn up the heat to medium and saute the peppers. They need to be cooked until slightly brown, not collapsing but with some residual bite. When done, transfer to the colander. Repeat with the aubergines, then finally the courgettes.Remove the mixer bowl and, with the spatula, stir gently, starting from the centre at the bottom and working outwards and upwards while rotating the bowl one quarter-turn. Repeat 3 more times (which means the bowl will have been turned full circle). This is called 'folding' and is the best way of ensuring all the elements are thoroughly mixed without losing lightness by being heavy-handed. Add the prunes and apricots to the tea and put over a very low heat for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and leave the fruit to plump up. The precise type of greens is not important, though dark-green and slightly bitter leaves such as pak choi or Brussels sprout tops are preferable to sweeter and lighter vegetables. Chinese cabbage is not suitable. Cantonese chefs would cook this dish in a wok, but I prefer to use a large and heavy frying pan. This is also an excellent method for cooking spinach or broccoli. Prepare the broccoli: first put a large pan of lightly salted water on to heat - you need very little salt in the cooking water, as the florets retain salt and intensify the seasoning. I once had a review that said everything was lovely except the broccoli, which tasted as if it had been cooked in sea water. Point taken] Split the broccoli into florets and cut out the woody stems and discard. You can find caterpillar infestation, so watch out. Wash and leave to soak in a bowl of cold water. This will freshen the vegetable. Preparation: Measure out all the ingredients and sift the flour into a bowl. Grate 1/2 teaspoon of zest each from the lemon and the orange, using the second-finest grating surface.

Everybody has a variation on the dauphinois theme. This version was first shown to me by Rowley Leigh who was taught how to cook this dish by the Roux brothers, so the pedigree is faultless. It is unfashionably rich, expensive and unhealthy, so very small portions please. Preparation: First, the crumble topping: sift the flour into a bowl with the brown sugar and almonds and combine them using your fingers. Add the butter and continue to work for several minutes until the ingredients are thoroughly blended in and the mixture is very crumbly. Leave to rest for about 20 minutes. When nearing the end of the churning, drain the peaches. As the custard starts to freeze, add them and continue to churn until set. To make the zabaglione: in a large bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar until the mixture is stiff. Then, continuing to beat, pour in the hot melted butter in a thin stream, followed by the vanilla essence and Calvados. Preparation: Make the compote the day before: use a potato peeler to scrape off the zest from the lemon.Thin and bearded, with a faint Lancashire accent and a high-pitched giggle, Little was not the most glamorous of chefs, but in his heyday in the 1980s and 1990s he was one of the country’s most recognisable. He appeared on the cover of Elle magazine and on television in shows such as Ready Steady Cook and Masterchef.

Stand the bowl in the Swiss-roll pan and put the plate or round board on top. Weight this down with about 1.8kg/4lb of cans and chill in the fridge for 24 hours, removing from time to time and pouring over any remaining fruit syrup. The bread should be amalgamated with the fruit. Preparation: Prepare the vegetables, keeping each vegetable separate: only peel the onion and garlic, but top and tail the aubergines and courgettes. Destalk and deseed the peppers. Scald the tomatoes in a bowl of boiling water for 60 seconds, then refresh, peel and deseed. Cut all the vegetables into bite-sized chunks. (If using baby courgettes, leave them whole.) Fusion food does make its mark in this book but it would be unfair to characterise the whole work as that; some dishes may be fusion inspired but others owe clear allegiance to a particular national culinary tradition. The vast array of those national culinary traditions does point in the same direction though: British, Italian, French, Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Morrocan flavours are all here in this publication. I believe the original recipe for Tarte Tatin uses sweet shortcrust pastry, but I like puff pastry and find the bought, frozen variety good enough for domestic interpretations. Anyway, since it will be drenched with sugary juices, the quality of the pastry is by no means the most significant part of the finished dish.

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Drain the prunes and apricots and discard the tea, and add them to the pears. Replace the lid and allow to cool completely before refrigerating overnight. The compote is now ready to serve. I prefer to leave the spices in, but if you do so, warn your guests that they are there for decorative effect. Not everybody likes to crunch on a peppercorn while eating pudding. Serving: Dust the cake with icing sugar and cut into wedges. Serve with seasonal fruit, or a Compote of Winter Fruit (recipe overleaf). The addition of several unpeeled garlic cloves to the roasting juices gives a subtle depth to the flavour. These cloves are delicious: sweet and nutty without being overpowering. A Provencal vegetable stew best served at room temperature, ratatouille should be a very basic preparation and not over-refined. Bad variations (vegetables diced too small, too much tomato, using dried herbs and so on) often debase one of the finest possible combinations of Mediterranean flavours.

Simply printing recipes different in tone to those that had characterised food for a generation however would not, in all likelihood, have garnered Alastair Little the critical acclaim that he received though. This book is self-consciously polemical. Beginning by telling you what you should have in a kitchen (an unusual move for a chef not known from TV appearances) he preaches simplicity and seasonality in cooking. It is these points that people most probably mean when referring to the book's influence. The last of them was developed to a greater degree by another Glenfiddich Award winner: the thoroughly British The River Cottage Year.Now the moment of truth: cover the top of the pan with your serving plate. Holding the pan by the handle (wearing an oven glove because it will still be hot), invert so that the pastry base is now against the surface of the plate, with the rim outside the circumference of the pan. Sit the plate on the table, rap the bottom of the pan smartly with a suitable implement and lift away from the tart. Make the anchovy sauce: split the chilli and deseed it, then dice it microscopically. Put the olive oil into the small pan with the diced chilli and anchovies and heat, stirring occasionally. Simmer for a few minutes, then add the breadcrumbs off the heat. Stir from time to time while the sauce is cooling, or it will set like cement. Taste, adding a squeeze of lemon juice if you find it too rich. The only problem with lemon juice is that it can discolour the broccoli. He eventually became assistant manager at Small’s before moving in 1974 to the Old Compton Wine Bar, where he took over as head chef when the previous one quit. With no professional training, he kept the menu simple and it was here that he began his practice of sourcing ingredients from the small shops and produce markets in Soho. He was educated at Kirkham Grammar School, where he found himself longing for “something more than school food, which I couldn’t stomach. By the age of 12, I was obsessed with what we were having for dinner.” The tart is characterised by the use of halved apples baked in caramel with the pastry lid becoming the base when the cooked tart is inverted to be served still warm. It is one of those dishes that sounds simple and is actually difficult to get right. On average it takes a cook in my kitchen a week of trying before he or she produces a saleable tart. In the restaurant we use a frying pan rather than a cake pan, and I prefer crisp English apples such as Worcester Pearmain or Braemar to Le Golden, which the French choose as a matter of national honour.