Well, they’re my favourites…
Alright, I’ll admit that title is a bit disingenuous, cook books are deeply personal things, favourites are held onto for years until the spines crack and pages are rendered illegible under stains from spilled ingredients. How can I presume to know what the best ones are in this overcrowded sector? So this is a list of what I regard as the best 10 best cookery books, which could well be the next persons worst.
All of this should be prefaced by describing myself as an ambitious and lazy cook, and yes those two things can coexist quite well together thank you very much. Ambition in the sense of wanting to cook something delicious and impressive, and lazy in the sense of if there’s a shortcut, I’ll take it. An example here is the Sunday roast, what other meal involves so many pans and oven dishes? Plus the complicated timing mathematics to make sure it all arrives edible and hot. I’d traybake the veg and cook the chicken over the spuds, I won’t cheat on the gravy though, home made stock and red wine make it sublime.
So I really like cook book authors who acknowledge this reality, my favourites are by chefs who are unashamedly indulgent in their concoctions. I know we all have to reduce salt, restrict butter and avoid red meat, however I’m also able to thoroughly ignore those healthy mantras in everything I cook. How do you think chefs get Michelin stars? They cook everything in butter and wine. Or they did, in the good old days.
So the following crop of cookbooks are my favourites, because I go back to them time after time and also that the authors allow their personalties to percolate through every page.
My Ten Best Cookery Books
Countryman’s Cooking by WMW Fowler
I’ve already reviewed this at greater length, suffice to quote another review from The Telegraph from years ago by Elizabeth Grice “So red-blooded, so gloriously politically incorrect and so unfashionably informative that it slices clean through the genre like a meat cleaver”. It’s chock full of outdated views and opinions, Fowler was a barking eccentric and I love it! It’s the one I go to for basic direction and solid recipes.
Floyd on Britain & Ireland by Keith Floyd
The late Keith Floyd was the first celebrity chef that let it all go, Delia Smith was always in control, Robert Carrier was busy being entrepreneurial, but Floyd was out there living and doing what he loved. It generally went wrong, but being half-cut most of the time let him gloss over his cock-ups in style.
…on Britain and Ireland acompanied his TV series travelling around the British Isles and Ireland discovering regional treats and talented chefs. His shows were sometimes chaotic, spontaneous and felt very real, chefs looked on aghast as he blundered through demonstarting the cooking of one of their signature dishes. Yet this was the heart of his success, he was an eccentric character yet never let his ego take over. The joy was in discovery and sharing other cooks brilliance, compared to the curent crop of scripted and styled to the nines TV chef shows they were more like a Louis Theroux documentary. Plus they were often hilarious, his narration felt off the cuff and self deprecating, yet every single recipe in his books really works and is (generally) straightforward to reproduce.
Let’s Eat by Tom Parker Bowles
Parker Bowles is a great food writer and Let’s Eat contains the recipes he cooks at home, so they are presumably what he dishes up for mum Queen Camilla and step-dad King Charles when they drop in for a spot of supper. He’s honed them to a level of perfection that means the book is one I trust to go back to again and again. Another plus is that he confesses to being too lazy to make his own puff pastry, and who can be bothered to fart about doing that when the shop bought stuff is so good?
The fish pie is particularly good and his treacle tart is sublime. If you have the time try his beef bourguignon, you’ll probably only ever do it once as it takes ages and requires a pig trotter, but the results are certainly impressive. You could leave the trotter out, it’s tossed before serving anyway.
To be honest it’s the simplest recipes that are the winners, his spin on welsh rarebit is worth a go and the chicken and mushroom pie is a quick and economical dinner.
The River Cottage Cookbook by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Fearnley-Whittingstall extended the idea of celeb chef to create the ‘Lifestyle Chef’ when he created his Escape To River Cottage TV series in 1999. The brilliance of this idea was that he tapped into a whole range of dreams and desires from escaping the rat race, getting back to nature, and creating your own dream rural escape. In his tatty clothes and long hair he looked every bit the new age rustic carving out his own hard won bucolic dream.
This was partly artifice, as Fearnley-Whittingstall had been to Eton and then Oxford, and River Cottage was already his holiday home in Dorset on the Slape Manor Estate near Netherbury. Yet he won out by being down to earth and calling in experts when he needed advice. Later series saw him build it up into an estate and lifestyle brand, but that first few episodes had a slightly rough and ready magic about them. The book that accompanied the series has a wealth of information on the animals, vegetables and fruit that he grew, encouraging the reader to look beyond the clingfilm wrapper that everything comes in from the supermarket.
Floyd On France by Keith Floyd
What, another one by Keith Floyd? Well yes, because his love of France comes through on every page, and if you can’t be bothered to read all of Elizabeth David’s books it is a perfect grounding in French cooking. At the time of writing the accompanying 1987 TV series is available on the BBC iPlayer, watching it proves that he was a master of being able to do virtually anything with a glass of wine in hand.
His devil may care attitude means there’s never been anyone quite like him. After Floyd’s death in 2009, the chef Antony Worrall Thompson said: “I think all of us modern TV chefs owe a living to him. He kind of spawned us all.”
From The Oven To The Table by Diana Henry
The newest book on my list, Diana Henry is a genuinely gifted cook who eschews the lifestyle trend that bogs most modern cookbooks down in the search for good food, cooked well but with the emphasis on simplicity. You don’t have to source exotic ingredients and spend hours prepping and cooking with these recipes, the emphasis is on one tray wonders chock full of flavour.
I constantly dip into this and her other brilliant book ‘Simple‘ every recipe turns out well and impresses friends whilst being so easy to prepare. Being bone-idle this is nirvana to me.
The Game Cook by Norman Tebbit
Despite being a Tory and one of Thatchers acolytes Mr Tebbit has managed to put together a really rather nice little cookbook about game meat. The hardback is the perfect size (i.e. it doesn’t take up half the worktop) and is enhanced with some great mezzotints by Debby Mason (who also contributed some of the recipes). His recipes are all straightforward and full of flavour, and it covers more than just the usual pheasant, grouse and venison. There are brilliant rabbit, hare and fish recipes here too. And actually the ones he’s devised for pheasant save it from being the dried out apology of a meal that it can so often nose dive into.
This epitomises something else I find important in a cookbook, that it is a pleasure to hold and browse through, something that opens up new avenues and possibilities.
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
I know it’s not a cook book, but this brilliant exposé of the realities of the restaurant trade prove that lots of chefs are dreadful narcissists and shortcuts are taken at every level. Comforting for anyone reaching for the Oxo rather than fogging the kitchen up by boiling a cauldron of bones for hours.
A love of food and the ritual of its preparation drips from the page. Bourdain’s TV programmes also took a deep dive into discovering real food, not necessarily posh restaurants, but real people cooking really good food around the world.
Real Food by Nigel Slater
Nigel Slaters books are basically comfort blankets, he writes about food in such a delirious dream-like way that they become mesmerising. I’m not even sure that I’ve actually made any of the recipes in this one, but it sits there on the shelf as if it owns the kitchen. In my mind I drift around a perfectly designed kitchen-diner that looks out onto a lush and compact courtyard just like Nigel’s, a refuge away from the horrors of real life. My fridge is stocked with artisanal treats and my saucepans are like old friends. Life is spent cooking up treats for friends that just wander by at the right time and never out stay their welcome.
It all helps deal with the reality of the washing up that hasn’t been done, kids who constantly ask ‘what’s for dinner’ and a fridge full of wilted veg and unidentifiable left-overs.
Feast by Nigella Lawson
So now we turn to Nigella; Feast is a set of recipes for occasions throughout the year from all over the world. Nigellas recipes always veer towards the complicated end of the spectrum and seem to involve more washing up than I like, but this book has some wonderful meals in that are worth the work, of all her books this is the one to cherish.
Coming before her descent into self-parody (micro-warve-hay and knowing winks to camera anyone?), there is a serious enthusiasm to it that propels you through the complicated prep and makes it all worthwhile.
Which is the top pick?
If I could only choose one to keep from this 10 best cookery books list it would have to be Diana Henry’s From The Oven To The Table as every single dish is a winner. Prep is always straightforward and most cook in one dish or pan, several of them have become staples in our household. So go and buy that, or any of the other eleven that she has written!
Images: Iain Hazlewood
