Ingredients, Odyssey and Foie Gras - Three New Cookbooks
Posted by Andrew Barrow on Paper Palate
Three new cookbooks have come my way. Actually one is getting on a bit, one is quite new but I’ve seen it mentioned on several blogs already now, while the last is so new it’s not actually been printed yet!
For me the visual is the key to liking a cookbook. I can think of only one (1080 Recipes) where the illustrations take a backseat and really are unimportant. The images in Rick Stein’s French Odyssey immediately captivated; it makes the book visually striking and makes the recipes seem so much more approachable. At the very least you know what the dish is supposed to look like at the end! The recipes in Stein’s book are very approachable - the Marmande Tomato Tart is imminently modifiable and I thought the Sauteed Lamb’s Kidneys on Toasted Brioche was one of the best dishes I have cooked for an age.
In contrast I was so underwhelmed with the photos in Marcus Wareing’s One Perfect Ingredient that I put the book down for two weeks before touching it again. I’m sure the recipes are good — The Passionate Cook has raved about Home-cured gravadlax and I’ve greatly enjoyed the the Lamb Baguette with Fresh Mint Sauce – but it is not a book I would pick up looking for inspiration. Inspiration either photographic or culinary.
The third book has yet to actually appear. Black Pudding and Foie Gras by Andrew Pern is to be self-published soon. Self-publishing might explain the rather high asking price (£35), but from the excerpts I’ve seen, at the very least the food-porn pictures should be worth the asking price. The recipes are in a different league though — dinner party food — with such delicious-sounding dishes as Pressed Terrine of Yorkshire Gammon with Fried Ledstone Quail Egg, Spiced Pineapple Pickle, Mustard Seed Dressing. Which is just a starter!
Rick Stein’s French Odyssey £13 Amazon.co.uk
Marcus Wareing’s One Perfect Ingredient £10.19 Amazon.co.uk
Black Pudding and Foie Gras by Andrew Pern £35 Amazon.co.uk
The photo is of chopped fresh mint, used in the mint sauce for the Lamb Baguette.
Rarely have I read such complete tosh about how to judge a cook book (by its pictures). Did history just leave the building? Does Elizabeth David just not get a look in because there are insufficient oil sprayed pictures in it? And then in the very next breath the reviewer utters the immortal and brilliantly paradoxical: “with such delicious !sounding! dishes”. The bad English continues: “eminently modifiable” is I think more correct, unless of course you meant the iminence of modifications is the key thing..There are then more mixed up tenses - you are sure the recipes are good (i.e. you have not cooked one yet) and then rate the lamb…so you have used it then and the recipe is good. A good review would have focussed on the achievability of the recipes, the clarity of explanation and method for the home chef.