Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many

Product Information

Many chapters grew wildly such as fish, a chapter that could have been twice the size until Louise calmly explained about the flow and balance of the chapters. The fact that the chapter on blood oranges contains just two recipes, one of which is a drink, or that halfway through the book you stumble across information on stand up graters purely on the basis that equipment begins with the letter ‘e’ just reflects the singular nature of Lee and his approach to everything. To prepare the pears, peel and core them, then chop into small randomly shaped pieces and toss in the lemon juice to avoid browning. The Mediterranean bistro will offer hearty ‘home cooking’ and interiors inspired by Francine Weisweiller’s Jean Cocteau-clad Villa Santo Sospir on the Côte d’Azur. You’ll recognise John Broadley’s intricate yet bold black and white illustrations from the menus at Quo Vadis if you’ve been fortunate enough to visit the restaurant (and if you haven’t, I’d highly recommend rectifying that particular situation, especially now as the restaurant has just been refurbished and expanded).

There’s no claim of quick and easy recipes, that it’s the only cookbook you’ll ever need or that it’s yet another of that irksome and ubiquitous ilk, the cookbook for ‘every day’. Simon and Alistair had a huge impact on Jeremy’s cooking and approach to good ingredients, eventually giving him the skills and experience needed to become a head chef. Some ingredients that might prove tricky if you are reliant on Lidl (or even Waitrose) might include fresh artichokes, samphire, monk’s bread, Tropea onions, Roscoff onions, Treviso, Tardivo, Banyuls vinegar ‘very, very good chicken’, ‘excellent duck’.Over the years he has developed close relationships with suppliers, meaning he has access to the very best produce. Me and my three siblings assumed this was normal, so it was quite a shock when we went to other people’s houses! So, in us, the likes of David had a following, but they didn’t get the wider attention they deserved until, perhaps, the 80s. A recipe we tested for chicken with pineapple and ’nduja successfully married ingredients from Calabria and the tropics in a dead-simple traybake that was so delectable we made the dish twice.

Keeping an eye on your supply chain is a full-time job, so we tend to look to a very good greengrocer who knows where to get things like the best lemons from Sicily,’ he explains.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 want to encourage someone that they can go into the kitchen and not be punished with an arduous process, but think they can go in and in half an hour make something absolutely delicious— scrambled eggs on toast, even better if you have anchovies and capers. Place the fillets of hake in a deep ovenproof dish, lightly season with salt and white pepper and lightly dress with a soup spoon of olive oil.