Why do we love Italian food so? Two cookbooks give us the answer

Everyone seems to love Italian food. Even people who don't consider themselves foodies will have eaten pizza and their store cupboards will contain the likes of pasta and tinned tomatoes. This is a cuisine that has won over the taste buds of the world...

Perhaps this is why there is a constant stream of Italian cookbooks on the market and it might also be why two of them arrived in my postbox recently (one courtesy of Quadrille Publishing and the other a prize in a competition run by the very lovely Irish Food Bloggers' Association).

 Neither could be classed as a typical cookbook. The first - The Real Flavour of Tuscany - is very unusual. Its subtitle - Portraits & Recipes from 25 of Tuscany's Culinary Artisans - already gives you a hint that it is far more than a collection of recipes 

Instead, it gives an insight into the cooking culture of this region through the eyes of some of its most celebrated food producers.

There's chef Gianluca Paoli who rises at 6am to heat his 200-year-old cast iron stove so that it will be hot enough to cook his famous arista (or roast pork loin). Gianluca tells of how he became a cook and describes what he calls the 'traditional but extraordinary' food he aims to cook in his Florentine restaurant. He also shares some of these recipes, including the one for that fabulous pork.

There's beekeeper Roberto Ballini who recommends his chestnut honey to be served with pecorino cheese and figs.

There's 70-year-old shepherd Salvatore and his son Giovanni. Salvatore has tended his flock of sheep since the age of seven and now Giovanni makes all sorts of cheese from their milk. The pair share recipes for simple dishes such as braised red peppers.  

There are many others. Massimo Biagi grows 800 different types of chilli and tells us how to cook the classic spaghetti with garlic, olive oil and chilli flakes. There's a young farmer who grows olives, saffron and irises. He gives a recipe for saffron chicken, which is the only dish I have yet to cook from this book and which was tender, flavoursome and simple.

Each of the stories make you hunger to visit Tuscany and devour its food. Reading about beans being fed, one by one, into an empty potbellied bottle of wine, covered with water and flavoured with sage, garlic, salt, peppercorns and olive oil and then left to simmer in the dying embers of the fire overnight made me want to hop on the next plane to Italy. Seeing as that was impossible, the next best thing was being given some recipes to try in my own kitchen in Dingle. 

This book demonstrates just why Italian cuisine has become so popular. It's a peasant cuisine that is based on fine, simple ingredients that have been cooked by people with an awareness of tradition and a respect for quality. I have yet to finish reading about the different food producers in this book as I'm savouring their stories. And I have yet to cook anything apart from the saffron chicken. But that was so good that I'm looking forward to cooking much more.


The second book - Dunne and Crescenzi - is different again.
In 1999, a café and deli specialising in Italian food opened on South Frederick Street in Dublin and it has since become hugely popular with fans of Italian food and wine in the city. I have never visited it but I have heard tell of the quality of the food here: food that is local, seasonal and always of the highest quality and food that brings together the best of Irish with the best Italian products and the traditions of Italian cuisine.

The book is divided into chapters based on a traditional Italian menu. There are antipasti such as the irresistible sounding buffalo mozzarella, aubergine and prawn stack.
There are soups which range from a simple minestrone to a butternut squash, scallop and almond soup.  

 Salad options include such tempting treats as warm chicken salad with pancetta and peppers and orange and fennel salad. This section of the book also includes useful recipes for dressings, sauces and reductions.

Next up is the primi piatti or recipes for pastas and risottos and gnocchi. This book tells you how to make fresh pasta as well as how to create dishes like spinach and ricotta tortelli with parmagiano cream and balsamic reduction. There are simpler dishes too like penne with tomato, garlic and chilli. 

 Main courses range from pan-fried hake with cherry tomatoes to more impressive dishes like chicken roulade with mortadella (a type of salami), spinach and pine nuts.  

There are also side dishes – contorni – such as courgettes with leeks, raisins and pine nuts.  

Finally, there are desserts which include classics such as tiramisu and pannacotta and lesser known favourites such as ricotta and cherry tart or limoncello and peach cake.

The last few pages of the book are made up of a page on coffee and what the Italian terms for coffee mean; a page on wine; and nine pages of suggestions for wines to go with each of the different recipes.

With its easy to follow recipes, its full-page colour photographs, chatty introduction to each section and wine suggestions; this is a book that makes up for the fact that I've yet to visit this popular Dublin eatery. It makes me want to eat there the next time I'm in the city but in the meantime, I can practice recreating their food at home. 

 The Real Flavour of Tuscany by Lori De Mori and Jason Lowe and Dunne and Crescenzi by Eileen Dunne Crescenzi are cookbooks which show just why the world continues to have such a love affair with Italian food.

Addendum: last night, I made a leek and winter squash risotto from The Real Flavour of Tuscany and it was the perfect winter warming dish for a November's evening.

I have a lot to learn...

I'd never heard of Peggy Porschen before her book landed in my letterbox. But I was instantly smitten by how pretty it was and very much taken by its title.

'Peggy's Favourite Cakes and Cookies... to make every occasion special' - doesn't that sound like the perfect book for an enthusiastic baker like me?

  

I flipped to the back of the book to find out more about Peggy and was impressed by her credentials. A German lady who moved to London to study French patisserie; she has become cake maker to the stars. Her previous clients include the likes of Elton John, Stella McCartney and Madonna; all of whom have bought cakes from Peggy Porschen's Parlour in Belgravia.   

There's obviously a lot I could learn from Peggy. Her book is bursting with beautiful photos of the most fabulous-looking cakes and cookies. Rather too fabulous, perhaps, for a learner such as me. A learner who has yet to take a course in sugar craft. A learner who sells cupcakes that are nicely - but very simply - decorated. A learner who doubts she will ever succeed in making anything look as good as these cookies: 

 

Or these cakes:

Or this one:

Or this:

But should I be so defeatist? Should I not just think of this as a challenge?  If I master the basics, as explained by Peggy, I might be surprised by what I could succeed in doing.

The final section of this book is devoted to these basics. Here, Peggy lists the equipment necessary to make her cakes and cookies. Once again, I feel disheartened because I don’t have very many of them. 

However, I persevere and read Peggy’s recipes for sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, Victoria sponge, rich dark chocolate cake, marble cake, sugar syrups, buttercream frosting and chocolate ganache. I go through the sections, complete with pictures, which demonstrate how to line cake tins, apply the perfect fondant icing, dip cupcakes, make royal icing and how to pipe different patterns and shapes such as sugar daisies, daffodils and rosebuds. 

There’s a lot for me to take in and it can seem overwhelming at times but by the time I’m done, I think I can do it. I’ll start with some of her more simple-looking recipes – perhaps a marble cake covered with a chocolate ganache and decorated with sugar flowers.

This is definitely not a book for the novice cook. No, it’s a book for enthusiastic bakers with a degree of experience. It’s also a book that has inspired me to try harder, learn more and make more beautiful cakes. Thanks, Peggy! 

A cookbook to love (and a magical chance to win!)

Sometimes you know that it has to be love.

From the moment I heard that Kerstin Rodgers (the cook behind one of London's first and best known supper clubs, The Underground Restaurant) was writing a book, I knew I'd love it. And, as soon as I laid eyes on the book, that love only intensified.

I should make some things clear before I continue:
1. I've never been to Kerstin's supper club. But everything I've heard about it makes me want to go. She's the type of cook I most admire: someone who cooks from the heart out of a simple desire to make people happy. My next trip to London is definitely going to coincide with one of her supper nights.
2. I've been thinking about starting a supper club of my own for a while now. I tried to start a revolving supper club in Dingle last winter but seeing as nothing came of it, I approached this book with the thought that it might just convince me to set one up, London-style.

Anyway, back to the book. And isn't it lovely?

Underneath its dust jacket, it's even lovelier.

Kerstin begins the book with a story of revolution. The first revolution in food was the French Revolution which led to chefs from the households of a destroyed aristocracy opening the world's first restaurants - places where anybody who had the money could pay to eat.

London in 2009 was ripe for a new food revolution and Kerstin was one of its figureheads. An idealist with strong political beliefs and a single mother keen to make money working from home, Kerstin had seen home restaurants in Latin America and thought they could work in London. She - along with Horton Jupiter of The Secret Ingredient Supper Club - was the first person in the UK to open a restaurant in her own home.

Kerstin's politics are reflected in the food she serves in her living room. She doesn't eat meat and, as a result, never serves it. However, she does serve things that restaurants simply wouldn't have the time to make, such as towering Croquembouche. And because she knows what it's like to be strapped for cash in London, she offers reduced rates for those on benefits.

For Kerstin's restaurant is an extension of her life. It's all about her do-it-yourself attitude, her belief that everyone has a right to good food at a reasonable price and her mission to improve the image of vegetarian food.

Her life in food is an interesting one and the book is full of her stories. She starts with the chocolate butterfly cakes she baked in nursery school. She tells of the copy of 'Good Housekeeping's Children's Cookbook' she was given aged eight, from which she learned how to make macaroni cheese and peppermint creams. There are tales of childhoold holidays too when her parents introduced her to snails, horse and never-ending, ten-course Italian feasts.

Kerstin became a photographer after leaving school but continued to cook. She cooked at anti-G8 camps using food scavenged from dumpsters; in vegan cafés; and in squats such as the swimming pool changing room she once lived in with a boyfriend.

All of which eventually led to her opening The Underground Restaurant and now writing this book encouraging us all to follow her example.

The book tells the story of her supper club and offers practical tips about how you can set up your own - everything from how to publicise it to advice on how to arrange payment. These tips are invaluable for anybody who might be thinking of following in Kerstin's footsteps.

But it's the recipes that will win everyone over to Kerstin's book. Such wonderful recipes, most of which I can't wait to try.

There are cocktails and nibbles, including Harry Potter Butter Beer and dukkah (a nutty Arabian dip) that I'm planning to serve with Kerstin's homemade pitta breads.

Of her starters, I'm dreaming of her savoury yoghurt granita and yuzu ceviche - white fish 'cooked' in citrus fruits.

There are soups such as the Thai green spinach soup; fabulous salads such as the mint, coriander, onion and pomegranate cachumber (an Indian salsa); vegetarian main courses such as tinda masala and Kerstin's 'really good' mac and cheese; instructions for how to cure your own salmon; a fantastic stargazy pie; meat dishes from London's other supper clubs; and the most amazing desserts.

Is there anybody alive who wouldn't drool over this giant pavlova drizzled with salted caramel?

Kerstin finishes the book with her piece de résistance - a section devoted to her themed menus. There's an Elvis night complete with deep-fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, cheese 'n' grits and pecan pie.

There's a midnight feast where all the food is black. And there's a flower menu where every dish contains edible flowers and is as pretty as a picture.

All of Kerstin's recipes come with a short description of where the recipe is from, how she created it and who she learned it from. This brings you into her world and makes you feel as though you know her. In fact, the way she describes her recipes makes you feel as though she's cooking right beside you - just as all cookbooks should.

At the very end of the book, Kerstin gives a list of all the supper clubs she knows of in the UK, Ireland, Europe and worldwide.

This book should come with a warning. Actually, it should come with several warnings.
First of all, you should know that the recipes contained within its pages are going to make you want to cook, cook and then cook some more.
Secondly, after reading Kerstin's descriptions of the communal nature of supper clubs and the introduction they give you to the cooking of different cultures, you are going to want to explore all of the supper clubs in the world.
Finally, you may just decide to open one of your own. I'm seriously considering it. Watch this space!

Before I sign off, I must tell you that this wonderful cookbook came my way courtesy of the Fairy Hobmother, a good fairy that prowls the online world generously spreading fairy dust wherever he goes. I won't tell you who he is but he belongs to http://www.appliancesonline.co.uk/ and if you leave a comment below telling him what you'd like him to buy you from Amazon, he might just make your wish come true!

Meet Prannie Rhatigan, a lady with a mission.

People can be so inspiring, can't they?

This is what I found myself thinking when I spoke to Prannie Rhatigan (great name, right?) a short time ago.

Prannie lives in Sligo and is the author of a wonderful book called 'The Irish Seaweed Kitchen'. With this book, she is hoping to revive the age-old Irish tradition of seaweed harvesting. You may have thought the Japanese were the world's most passionate fans of seaweed but for generations, Irish people used to comb our shorelines for edible seaweeds such as carrageen, sea spaghetti and duileasc.

It was Prannie's father who taught her all she knows about seaweed. He would bring her to the beach to collect seaweed; starting with sleabhac (the traditional Irish name for nori, also known as sloke and laver) after the first frosts of Christmas and continuing throughout the year with alaria, kelp and many other types of seaweed.

She has fond memories of this time. "It was always great fun," she remembers. "Even as kids, there was a tremendous satisfation in careful harvesting, watching the purple-black glistening prize slowly fill the basins. Before the winter evening closed in, we piled back into the car, chugged and bumped up the track to the main road and into the village, where we drew to a halt outside the door of my father's favourite public house; bearers of great treasure. In we trooped and very soon, my father was benignly dispensing little portions in bags to old men in big overcoats who normally huddled over a pint but now became animated at the thought of fresh sleabhac."

However, even when Prannie was a child, the practice of harvesting seaweed was dying away. "By the 1970s, we were among the very few families who harvested from the shore," she says. "I think folk memory still associated it with extreme poverty and the famine."

Her passion for seaweed never abated and she has since become something of an expert in sourcing, identifying, preparing and cooking it. So much of an expert that her family and friends urged her to write this book.

They love my seaweed recipes and kept telling me I should write them down before the knowledge was lost," says Prannie. "So, I finally did."

The result is a book that features 150 recipes covering everything from soup to sushi by way of beetroot and sea lettuce salad and even chocolate and seaweed cake. Most of the recipes are Prannie's own. Others come from her family and friends. And still more come from well-known chefs and cooks such as Darina and Myrtle Allen, Richard Corrigan, Rick Stein and Alice Waters.
But this book is much more than simply a collection of recipes. In it, Prannie captures many of the traditions and folklore associated with seaweed. She tells her readers how the Brehon Laws of the 5th century mention duileasc as a condiment to be served with bread, whey milk and butter (I, for one, would love to try this!). She talks about a survey carried out in Connemara in 1938 which found that the local people ate 32 different types of seaweed.

Prannie also informs her readers about how to source, identify, prepare and store seaweed. She does this because she really wants them to go down to the shoreline and pick some for themselves. "Seaweeds are tasty, healthy and nutritious," she says. "I've always known this but now I really want to pass it on to others. I want everyone to realise just what a living treasure we have on our shores."

She has me convinced. I'm planning to harvest some seaweed the next time we have a new or full moon (the best times to do so, apparently).

Even more excitingly, I'm planning to cook with it. Depending on what type of seaweed I find, I might try seaweed crepes with prawns, laver bread cakes with duileasc or Rick Stein's recipe for black bream steamed over seaweed with a fennel butter sauce.

Yum.
Seriously yum.

If any of you have cooked with seaweed and have any recipes or advice to share, I'd love to hear all about it.

Nigel Slater's 'Toast' and memories of my mother being mortified by her children

A drizzly Saturday morning spent poking through odds and ends at a car boot sale resulted in this haul:

I was excited to read them all but Nigel Slater’s food memoir ‘Toast’ was top of my list. I've been meaning to read it for absolutely ages.

It turns out to be a surprising book. It tells the tale of a boy born with a passion for food to parents who care little about it. Nigel was born 15 years after his older brothers. His mother developed asthma while pregnant with him and was a sickly – though loving – presence in his childhood. His father was well intentioned but had a terrifying temper. Nigel craved their love and attention and this craving is represented in his hunger for food.

His mother – “a peas and chops sort of cook” – cooked plain food badly. She burnt the toast every morning. Her rice pudding was always too milky. And the icing on her Christmas cake was once so hard his father set about it with a hammer and chisel.

She was baffled by her son who would spend hours fantasising about the dishes described in a cookbook he found hidden at the back of the bookcase: dishes such as gammon steak with pineapple and cherries, steak and kidney pudding and stuffed eggs.

The highlight of Nigel’s week was visiting Percy Salt’s grocers with his mother. Its hams, kippers, sugared almonds and fresh pineapples delighted Nigel. He loved it so much he would often play at being a grocer and selling cheese to his imaginary customers.

Nigel’s warmest memories are those that involve him making food with his mother: the sound of raw cake mixture plopping into the cake tin, rubbing butter into pastry for jam tarts and flipping pancakes on Shrove Tuesday before sprinkling them with granulated sugar and Jif lemon juice.

Other memories are bittersweet. Nigel wrote a school essay in which he described marshmallows as the nearest food to a kiss. When Nigel’s mother dies, his father remembers this and knowing that Nigel will miss his mother’s bedtime kisses most of all, leaves marshmallows on his son’s bedside table every night for two years. There are funny moments too. 1960s Britain was a different world when it comes to food and Nigel captures this perfectly. He talks about parents’ pride in possessing an item as glamorous as a grapefruit knife and the first time they ate grilled grapefruits – a fruit nobody they knew had ever eaten.

And then there’s the first time they cook spaghetti bolognaise. They panic as the strands of spaghetti escape through the holes of the colander and they decide that the parmesan cheese must be off because it “smells like sick”. So traumatised are they by the entire incident that they never speak of it again.

Food was also defined by class. Crisps, baked beans, chips, sandwich spread, ketchup, bubblegum and HP sauce are among the items that never feature on the Slater table.
But Artic Rolls – those tubes of vanilla ice cream covered in jam and sponge – were considered the ultimate in food as was a grapefruit spiked with cocktail sticks bearing cubes and cheese and pineapple.

Nigel’s life changes after his mother dies and so does what he and his father eat. His father never ate his favourite foods – tripe and onions, liver and bacon, cauliflower cheese – again.
In fact, the pair hardly eat at all until Mrs Potter enters their lives.

Mrs Potter becomes their cleaner and eventually Nigel’s stepmother. She is a fabulous cook and brings delights such as homemade parsley sauce, Victoria sponge cakes and pork chops with apple rings into their lives.
However, she is possessive of her culinary skills and reluctant to share them with budding chef Nigel. When he shows prowess at making her Victoria sponge, she never shows him how to make anything again.
Not even her lemon meringue, which attains the status of legend in this book. Nigel describes it as having a “warm, painfully sharp lemon filling, airy pastry and a billowing hat of thick, teeth-judderingly sweet meringue.”

There is so much to savour in this book besides the fabulous descriptions of food. Nigel’s classes in home economics, his first jobs in catering, his exploration of his sexuality; these tales are interwoven with stories of the relationships that shaped him and the food that made him into the cook he is today.

While reading this book, I couldn’t help but think back to the food memories that have shaped my own life.

The scrambled eggs my mother would make when I was sick as a child: hot buttered toast made a little soggy by the slightly milky scrambled eggs on top. To this day, this is all I want to eat whenever I’m ill and nobody can ever make it taste the same.

The dish of brown rice with umeboshi plum and tahini sauce my boyfriend made to impress me early in our relationship: I was a strict vegetarian then and I loved its mix of sharp and smooth flavours. However, I wasn’t particularly enamoured when he told me he had learned how to make it when he took a macrobiotic cookery course to impress a previous girlfriend. Still, I suppose the dish counts as a success for him: it helped him score on at least two occasions!

Meringue and mortifying my mother: the stations are still a popular tradition in West Kerry. The local parish priest comes to your home and holds mass there, blessing your house and all who live in it.
After the mass, there is usually a lunch of sandwiches, salads, roast meats, poached fish, cakes and such. The priest and all of the neighbours are invited.

I was about six years old when a relative of ours invited my parents, my two younger sisters and I to her stations.
The custom was that everyone invited to stations would bring along a contribution: usually a cake of some sort. My mother made a cake and when we arrived at the stations, I was told to leave it in the room where the other cakes were being stored until after the mass.

My jaw dropped when I opened the door to this room. Every single surface was covered with cakes and desserts: fruit cakes, chocolate cakes, meringues, cheesecakes, mousses… You name it and it was there.
Returning to my sisters, I whispered the wonders to be found in this room. Our overwhelming greed meant that within minutes, we had sneaked away from our parents and into this room.
Then, we went on the rampage. Mouthfuls of chocolate mousse, spoons of strawberry soufflé, slices of sponge…

We were beginning to feel a little ill when we heard our mother’s voice calling for us. As the handle began to turn on the door, we started to feel even worse.
My sister was hastily licking the sticky, sugary crumbs of a cream-filled meringue from her lips when my mother’s face appeared, along with the shocked face of the woman hosting the stations.
My mother was never more embarrassed. We had never before been in such trouble. But it was worth it for those cakes.

One last memory: my father is a farmer and when I was growing up, it was common for local farmers to come together and help each other making hay, silage and harvesting crops. Instead of spending money that was scarce hiring extra farmhands or machinery, they shared energy and effort in lending each other a hand.

The kitchen of our house would be frantic on these days. Huge vats of stew bubbled on the range, along with pots of potatoes, while loaves of bread baked in the oven. I always thought my mother had made far too much food but when the men came in from the fields – big and strong and sweaty – they would drink bottles of Guinness (those old-fashioned black glass bottles that were always kept in the cupboard under the kitchen sink) and would finish off the bowls of stew, heaps of potatoes and mounds of bread and butter in record time.

These are the memories that came to me as I was reading this book. I’d love to hear yours. What were the flavours of your childhood? What are the culinary highlights and lowlights of your life to date?

Please do share. And if, like me, you have yet to read Nigel Slater’s ‘Toast’, you should do so soon. It’s a treat.

Old cookbooks, new lessons

I love old cookbooks. I love them because of the insight they give us into life as it was lived years ago. My boyfriend inherited his mother's copy of 'Mrs Beeton's Family Cookery' and I've spent hours leafing through its quaint descriptions of life in the England of the 1950s/60s.

Take this for example: "The spirit of the home is mainly the business of the housewife. It is hers to inspire a feeling of comfort and happiness, to see that all runs smoothly, that meals are punctual and well cooked and the house kept clean, tidy and as beautiful as possible, and that the well-being of each member of the family is considered."

For me, these words conjure a time when much remained to be challenged, where a woman's place was most definitely in the home. She was expected to be like the lady on the cover: perfectly groomed, in charge of a house that was spick and span and able to produce what look like multi-coloured meringues at the drop of a hat (or should that be polka-dotted oven glove?)

While I could continue talking about Mrs Beeton (and one day, I may devote a post entirely to her), today's post is supposed to be about someone else entirely.

Quadrille Books have recently issued a new series called 'Classic Voices in Food'. It's a series that offers an insight into the tastes of times gone by through republishing some of the most popular cookbooks of the era.

One of these is 'Madame Prunier's Fish Cookery Book'. Madame Prunier came from an illustrious line of restaurateurs. Her grandfather Alfred Prunier opened a restaurant near the Madeleine in Paris in 1872 and quickly gained a reputation for his fine fish and shellfish. His son Emile continued the family tradition with a restaurant on Rue Victor Hugo, which Simone - or Madame Prunier - took over on his death.



Simone decided to bring her fine fish to London in the 1920s and opened a restaurant on St James' Street which soon become the most renowned seafood restaurant in the city. During her time in London, she discovered the English had a peculiar attitude to fish. They were wary of it. They were reluctant to cook it at home. And beyond a few familiar favourites - cod, salmon, eel and smoked haddock - they were very unadventurous. This book is her attempt to win the English over to eating more fish.

It is divided into eleven sections. The first chapter contains useful information on buying fish and shellfish and tells you everything you need to know about examining a fish for freshness. It also gives clear and precise instructions on the basic rules of cooking fish: how to grill, fry, poach and braise as well as how to make different types of court bouillons, batters and pastries.

The second section is devoted to garnishes, many of which can be adapted for use in a wide variety of dishes. There are potato dishes such as Pomme Duchesse (potato purée with salt, pepper, grated nutmeg, butter and egg yolks); instructions on how to make a mushroom duxelle; recipes for aspic and much more.

Section three opens with a plea to the English to embrace sauces. She assures them that a sauce can make all the difference to a dish. And what sauces she suggests! There's a range of savoury butters - including recipes for everything from anchovy butter and almond butter to beurre blanc, horseradish butter and truffle butter. There are many sauces including classics such as béchamel, béarnaise and hollandaise and more unusual sauces such as fennel sauce, shrimp sauce and gribiche.

Next up are hors d'oeuvre. From Madame's suggestions, the ones I'm making soon are toasts spread with her fish butters, soused herrings and anchovy fritters.

Her soup chapter is just as illuminating. She says that the only fish soup popular in Britain at the time was oyster soup. I've never even heard of this soup and will have to find out more about it. In the meantime though, I might also try Madame's clam chowder, crab bisque and her oyster and okra soup.

The two chapters devoted to freshwater and ocean-going fish are informative and inspiring. Madame starts by telling her readers about the fish. For example, she says that bream can be lacking in taste and so needs a highly seasoned accompaniment. She then suggests a huge range of recipes. One that I'm planning to try very soon (because it's one of my favourites) is skate with black butter and capers.

The next chapter may not be quite as useful for modern-day cooks. Madame admits that her readers are unlikely to cook turtles, terrapins, frogs or snails but she gives us recipes for them just in case. While some of you are bound to be enthusiastic cooks who have explored with using frogs' legs and snails, I doubt if many of you will need to know how to slaughter a turtle, what to do with the carapace and the flippers and then make a soup with the leftovers. In the unlikely event that you do, Madame Prunier is here to tell you.

The second to last chapter is devoted to some of the restaurant's most popular dishes. There are recipes for fish omelettes, Boston tournedos (steak served with six poached oysters), sheep's trotters, chocolate pots, kirsch mousse and orange pancakes. You know me and my sweet tooth. I'll have to try some of Madame's desserts for myself.

The final chapter is a note on pairing fish with wine and has quite classic suggestions.

Overall, I found this book to be a revelation. I expected it to be entertaining, offering an insight into a bygone age in London through the medium of food. This it most certainly did but I didn't expect the food to be quite so enticing. Turtle soup aside, I picked up lots of useful information about fish and discovered lots of dishes that I simply have to try. Thanks to Madame Prunier, I can't wait to read the next book in the 'Classic Voices in Food' series.

French Country Cooking: discover traditional French dishes with the Roux Brothers

One of the best things about being a food blogger is occasionally receiving cookbooks in the post. I recently received a copy of 'French Country Living' by the Roux Brothers; a cookbook that aims to showcase the best of regional French cooking and a cookbook that seems to have been made for me.

I used to live in France and have first-hand experience of just how proud the French are of their regional dishes. I have a particularly warm memory of a friend's mother's showing me how to make aligot in her kitchen in Rodez in Aveyron. She mixes Tomme cheese, mashed potatoes and garlic together in a huge pot, transforming it into a cheesy, garlicy, stringy, elastic dish of wonderfulness. (My memory of this dish is so tantalising that if I can lay my hands on some Tomme cheese, I'm going to have to try to recreate this dish for myself very soon.)

Such memories meant that I was predisposed to liking this book. Added to this was the fact that the book is written by Albert and Michel Roux, two brothers and chefs of impeccable pedigree who transformed British cuisine from their kitchens at Le Gavroche and The Waterside Inn.

Flicking through the book, my first impressions were that this was really traditional and very rustic French food. Perhaps a little too rustic for me. Lamb's brain with capers, anyone? Or pig's head soup?


I prefer my food on the light side and usually choose fish and vegetable-based dishes and light sauces over red meat, butter and cream. But my boyfriend (whose tastes are the exact opposite) happened to be looking through this cookbook with me and he ooh-ed and aah-ed over almost every recipe.

As we proceeded to look through the book together, I soon found plenty of dishes to entice me too. The overall design of the book charmed me as well. It was perfect for a Francophile like me.

The introduction tells us how the brothers came to be so passionate about food. They reminisce about their particularly well-fed childhood, enthusing aobut their mother's dandelion salad with bacon, her blanquette of veal and her waffles. These two world-renowned chefs admit that her food remains their favourite to this day.

They recall their father's charcuterie business too and how they could tell the day of the week from the smells emanating from the shop. If it was ham with parsley, it must be Wednesday...

The recipe section opens with a chapter on the basics. Their idea of the basics includes pastry (shortcrust, flan, sweet, short, puff and choux); brioche; bread; chicken, veal and fish stock; mayonnaise; almond cream; creme patissiere; and sorbet syrup.

Of these, I'm definitely going to try the bread, brioche, mayonnaise and the sorbet syrup (which the brothers use for moistening sponge cakes - a tip I can't wait to try on cakes of my own).

The rest of the book is divided into twelve regions. Each section opens with an overview of the region and its culinary traditions. The butter, cream, cheeses and cider of Normandy; the lamb and shellfish of Brittany; the fine wines and truffles of Guyenne; by the time you've finished reading about them, all you'll want to do is hop on a plane to France and eat, eat, eat and eat.

A dozen typical recipes from each region follow each overview and every chapter ends with a list of ingredients indigenous to that particular area.

I've earmarked lots of recipes from this book (and my boyfriend has also selected some that I'd probably never have chosen). Here are a few of our favourites:

Sole poached in cider with mussels, scallops and shrimps (my choice)

Sautéed veal kidneys (his)

Morel tart (my choice, with a nod of approval from him)

Entrecote steak with red wine, bone marrow and shallots (his choice)

Confit de canard (his)

Gateau Basque - a custard tart (mine)

Spatzle - noodles from Alsace (we both love these)

Ham cooked with hay (us both)

Peppery biscuits (me)

Catalan duck with Seville oranges (us both)

Bouillabaisse (us both: who after all, could resist this classic?)

Grape tart (sweet means that it has to be me)

In some ways, this isn't a fashionable book. French food has fallen out of vogue in recent years as popular taste has embraced new flavours from other countries, particularly from the east.

But in many other ways and judging from the reaction both I and my boyfriend had to this book, French food will always be popular. Chefs who trained in France have shaped our palates and taste buds for decades and French ingredients and cooking techniques are still at the heart of how we cook. With its focus on the quality of ingredients and simple but precise cooking techniques; French cuisine - at its best - simply can't be beaten.

This book reminded me how varied and enticing French food can be and I can't wait to start cooking.

Romantic relationships, being 33 and cupcakes

Ladies aren't supposed to reveal their ages but - in conclusive proof that I'm definitely not a lady - I'm about to reveal mine. I'm 33 and so too are several of my friends.
What I'm beginning to realise is that 33 seems to be the age at which women of my generation start to feel the pressure. The pressure to settle down with a man they love and start a family.

Today is Valentine's Day and in the past few days, I've had several conversations with my single friends about this. In fact, since the year began, I've had countless conversations about love, the lack of it and what this means for a woman in her thirties.

Some of my single friends are beginning to worry. A few of them are on the brink of panic. And the older they are, the more anxious they are feeling.

It's not just my single friends either. In the past two months, I've consoled friends who have been casually and cruelly jilted. I've congratulated others who have joined dating agencies in a pro-active attempt to meet men who are ready for commitment. I've listened to one friend who is seriously unhappy in her marriage and another who has just finalised her divorce proceedings.


Here's what I've learned from their many different experiences:
1. Men - grr! - have it lucky. Most of them are blissfully oblivious to the ticking of a biological clock and they can sail through their thirties, forties and even fifties without feeling any pressure at all.

2. Love is ridiculously difficult to find.

3. Even if you do find it, you'll soon that the sentiments behind the Beatles' 'All You Need is Love' aren't quite truthful. You need a lot more than that if you want your relationship to succeed: you need commitment, honesty, a willingness to devote time and care to each other and quite a lot of luck.

If you've got someone to love who loves you back, tell them just how lucky you consider yourself to have them (today and every day).

I'm not going to utter any tired clichés to those of you who are single and wish you weren't. What I will say, however, is that people who are confident and happy attract other people. So, take time to focus on yourself. Take part in activities you enjoy: travelling, painting, scuba diving, salsa dancing, astro physics, whatever. Become the person you were meant to be and you will attract all sorts of like-minded people; friends and maybe even potential loves.

In the meantime, here's a cupcake:

And not just any cupcake, a sticky toffee cupcake with salted caramel buttercream from Fiona Cairns' 'Bake & Decorate'.

This recipe makes 12 cupcakes.

Ingredients for the cakes:
180g dates, pitted and chopped
1tsp vanilla extract
180g self-raising flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
80g unsalted butter, softened
150g light muscuvado sugar
2 eggs

Ingredients for the buttercream
125g white caster sugar
80ml double cream
1/2 tsp salt (or to taste; I actually added a little more)
1 tsp vanilla extract

160g unsalted butter, softened
200g icing sugar, sifted

Place the chopped dates in a heatproof bowl, pour 180ml of boiling water over the dates and leave to soak for 20 mins.

Preheat oven to 180 degress/ 350 degrees F/gas mark 4.

Sift the flour and the bicarbonate of soda into a bowl and set aside.

Cream together the butter and sugar for 5 mins or until the mix is light and fluffy.

Add the eggs gradually, beating between each addition and slipping in 1tbsp of flour about halfway through to prevent curdling.

Lastly, fold in the remaining flour and the date mixture, to which you have added the vanilla extract.

Spoon into cupcake cases and bake in the oven for 15 to 20 mins (until the tops spring back when pressed with a finger).

Leave to cool.

While the cakes are cooling, dissolve the sugar and 60ml of water in a small, heavy-based saucepan over a gentle heat.

Once dissolved, turn the heat up and boil the syrupy solution.

Wait for a few minutes, watching the syrup carefully. As soon as it changes to a caramel colour (like strong tea) and becomes a thicker consistency, remove it from the heat and, standing well back, add the cream. (It may splatter a little and you may think it has gone wrong but it hasn't.)

Keep stirring and add the salt and the vanilla.

Leave to cool.

Cream the butter and the icing sugar for 5 mins or so and then add the caramel.

Pipe this icing onto the cupcakes and you've got gooey, sticky, sweet toffee cupcakes with a sophisticated hint of saltiness.

Happy Valentine's Day to you all!

I love cake

I love making (and eating!) cakes. I've always loved them and the reason for this is not just because they taste great (although they do). It's because I love seeing that greedy look that comes into people's eyes when they spy a luscious chocolate cake. I love the way so many people feebly protest that they simply shouldn't before digging into a slice of cake, licking their plate clean and then asking for seconds.

I also love the way that cakes are a treat. I love that they are special; that people celebrate with cakes; that people use cakes (especially cupcakes) as a pick-me-up when they are feeling down; and that turning up at someone's house with a cake makes you especially welcome.
I suppose a lot of this goes towards explaining why I set up a cupcake and sweet treats stall at Dingle's Farmers' Market, where I make cupcakes like this:

As a result, I'm delighted with the current fashion for baking. I've been tuning in to Lorraine Pascale's 'Baking Made Easy' on BBC1 (where she truly does make baking cakes, bread and tarts seem simple). I've tried her lemon cream millefeuilles which were delicious.

So, you can imagine how delighted I was to receive an advance copy of 'Bake and Decorate' by Fiona Cairns in the post. What a perfect cookbook for me!

Like Lorraine's TV show, this book aims to show even the most inexperienced of bakers how to create delicious tasting and wonderful looking cakes. From fruitcakes to chocolate chilli cupcakes, Fiona shares techiques and tricks to make it all seem easy.

I'd never heard of Fiona Cairns before and immediately wanted to know who she was. This is her first cookbook but she is a very experienced baker. Her company produces 750,000 (!) cakes a year for the likes of Waitrose, Liberty, the Ritz Hotel, Harrods, Selfridges and Fortnum and Mason in the UK. She has also been commissioned to make cakes for Bono, Sinéad O'Connor and Paul McCartney. Ooh er!

So, is her cookbook any good? My first impressions are positive and I love the girly cover. I'm also taken by her introduction where she talks about the comfort, pleasure and luxury of baking; how cakes are not essential but are vital for our souls. (She sounds like a woman after my own heart.)

She also brings back some of my first memories in the kitchen; memories of helping my mother bake cakes, hoping I'd get to lick the batter off the wooden spoon. In a family of seven children, this was a hotly-contested treat!

Fiona aims to bring pleasures like this back to our lives. She wants to make baking and decorating cakes as enjoyable as the eating of them and she encourages even the least confident among us to give it a try.

You can start with something simple, like a Victoria sponge or a no-cook chocolate tiffin. Follow the instructions carefully (baking is a precise science) and you'll soon discover that you can do it.

You can then move on to more elaborate creations. There's a range of chocolate cakes (because you simply can't have enough chocolate cake recipes!) including a dark chocolate mousse cake and this wonderful flourless chocolate hazelnut cake:

There are other tempting treats too such as white chocolate and cardamom rosewater sponge, sticky ginger cake with lime buttercream, lemony crunch cake, fruit cakes, pistachio and orange blossom cake and so much more.

There are also cupcakes. I'm eager to try the sticky toffee cupcake with salted caramel buttercream and the mint chocolate cupcakes.

And that's not all. There are also recipes for macaroons, meringues, biscuits and shortbread.

The first half of the book is devoted to baking while the second gives you tips on decorating. This includes everything from how to apply fondant smoothly and how to make crystallised flowers and leaves to how to use gold leaf and lots of ideas for using nuts, flowers, sweets and ribbons.

At several stages in the book, Fiona shares tips and advice. She recommends using golden caster sugar instead of white for flavour (something I always do in my own cupcakes). She says that you should always use ingredients and equipment that is warm or at least at room temperature. And she even gives advice on saving the inevitable disasters.

I've earmarkeed several pages in this book already but first on my list are the sticky toffee and salted caramel cupcakes followed by the chocolate mousse cake. I'll keep you posted on my progress!

Everyone needs some inspiration at this time of year...

Has normality resumed for you? This morning, we took down our tree, stored the decorations in their boxes for another year and now my boyfriend and I are readying ourselves for the return to work tomorrow. Part of me regrets the passing of the slow, langourous days of Christmas but another part embraces the hopeful start of a brand new year.

Yet another part of me cheers the end of Christmas meals. We had a full house this Christmas and at times the amount of meals that needed to be prepared felt like too much. Turkey. Ham. Stuffing. Brussel sprouts. Mince pies. Chocolate. Chocolate. And more chocolate. Looking back on it, it seems like all I've been doing for the past week is eating food and pondering ways of using up the mounds of meat, potatoes and vegetables that have inevitably been left over after each meal.

You would think that I'd be tired of thinking about food. But I'm not and the credit for this has to go to Niki Segnit, author of 'The Flavour Thesaurus', one of the best books I found in my stocking this Christmas.

I'd been looking forward to getting my hands on this book for quite some time and although I've only read a very small section of it so far, I already know it's going to live up to my expectations.

So, what is a flavour thesaurus, I hear you ask. Judging from what I've read so far, this is a book for people who have browsed through lots of cookbooks and followed many different recipes. People who want to be more creative and adventurous with their food. If you want to be exposed to new flavour combinations and experiment with tastes that you may never even have considered before, this is the book for you.

After all, as Niki Segnit says, who would ever have thought lamb would pair so well with apricots, port with Stilton or foie gras with Sauternes? It required someone with imagination to match these ingredients and teach us all that there could be such a thing as alchemy of flavours.

The book is divided into different taste sections; ranging from roasted to sulphurous, spicy and marine . So far, I've read the roasted section which focuses on chocolate, coffee and peanuts and I'm halfway through the meaty section which features chicken, pork, black pudding, liver, beef and lamb.

It's a very small section of the book but I've already been struck by so many ideas. I'm going to experiment with chocolate, maple syrup and bacon cupcakes. (How do you think these will go down at my stall in Dingle Farmers' Market?) I'm going to try a chocolate cardamom tart (I'm salivating at the thoughts of that already). And I'm even going to try adding chocolate to savoury sauces. This is something they do in Mexico to lend a smooth and slightly bitter undertone of flavour.

I'm not expecting to like everything I try (and I am certainly not tempted by the idea of jugged hare - in whcih the animal is cooked in its own blood with dark chocolate!) but I'm looking forward to having my tastes challenged and to learning some new approaches to food.

This is a book I'd recommend to all of you who may be feeling tired of cooking after the many elaborate meals of Christmas. It's a book that will once again make you feel excited about food and the many wonderful possiblities it can offer.

Here's hoping we all have a very happy, healthy (and flavoursome!) new year.

Phase 2 in the mission to convert my boyfriend to curry

Regular readers will remember that I recently reviewed 'I Love Curry' by Anjum Anand. You'll remember how taken I was with the breadth of recipes covered in this book. It has everything from bite-sized appetisers and all sorts of curries (made with vegetables, fish, seafood, poultry and meat) to Indian breads, vegetable side dishes, rice dishes and lots of different dips and raitas.

You'll also remember how I was hoping to use this book to convert my English boyfriend to the appreciation of curry. Despite the fact that he hails from a land where curry is worshipped, this man maintains that he HATES curry.

Chillies? Yuck, he says. Lentils? My tummy can't handle them, he maintains.

I refuse to accept this situation and I am on a mission to show him just how wrong he is about curry. I took my first step towards victory when I cooked Anjum Anand's creamy tomato fish curry last night.

I chose this recipe because it is described as being mild. It seemed easy to cook midweek. And from the glossy picture printed alongside the recipe, it looked delicious. It appeared to be the perfect recipe with which to launch my attack.

I assembled my ingredients and got to work. (The sheer amount of ingredients might lead you to think that this recipe is complicted but rest assured that it isn't. Most of the ingredients are spices and all you need to do with them is measure them and add them to the sauce.)

Ingredients: (to serve 4)

1 tsp turmeric
Salt
500g firm white fish steaks (halibut is recommended but I substituted monkfish.)
7tbsp vegetable oil
6 cloves
6 green cardamon pods
12 black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1 small onion, finely chopped
4 tomatoes, quartered and seeded (I didn't bother seeding mine)
10g fresh root ginger, peeled weight
6 fat garlic cloves
1/4 to 1/2tsp chilli powder
1tbsp ground coriander
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
3/4tsp garam masala
2tbsp single cream
Handful of fresh coriander leaves, chopped

• Rub half the turmeric and a good pinch of salt into the fish and leave to marinate as you cook the sauce.
• Heat 5tbsp of the oil in a non-stick saucepan. Add the whole spices and the bay leaves and once they have sizzled for 10 seconds, add the onion. Cook until golden brown.
• Meanwhile, blend the tomatoes, ginger and garlic until smooth, adding a splash of water to help, if needed.
• Add this paste to the pan with the rest of the spices (except the garam masala) and some salt to taste.
• Cook over a medium flame, stirring often for 10 to 12 minutes, until the spice mix starts to release oil droplets. (I'd never seen this happen before and was unsure what to expect but you can't miss it.)
• Reduce the heat and brown the paste for a further 6 minutes to intensify the flavours.
• Add 500ml water and bring to a boil.
• Reduce the heat and simmer for 6 or 7 minutes more.
• Taste and adjust the seasoning.
• Meanwhile, if you're using halibut, it's time to fry the fish. Heat the remaining oil in a frying pan until hot and add the marinated pieces of fish, cooking on both sides for 2 minutes, until golden brown. Add the fish, the garam masala and the cream to the curry and simmer for another 3 minutes while the fish finishes cooking and absorbs the sauce.
• If you're using monkfish, it doesn't need to be fried. Add it to the curry directly along with the garam masala and the cream and simmer for 5 minutes or so until cooked.
• Taste, adjust the seasoning and serve scattered with chopped coriander.

I served this with nutty brown rice and some crunchy sugar snap peas.

The verdict? Because the recipe involved frying the whole spices and giving the curry sauce time to develop, there was a real depth of flavour to this dish. Layers upon layers of flavour in fact. I loved it.
And the curry-hating boyfriend? He loved it too!
Score:
Curry-hating boyfriend: 0
Sharon (with the help of Anjum Anand): 1
I think this is a war that can be won...

I love curry. The question is: can I convince my boyfriend that he loves it too?

I have a problem. My boyfriend is English. You would think that would mean that he loves curry. It is, after all, supposed to be their national dish.

But no. He can't eat chillies. His stomach can't handle lentils. And he refuses chickpeas. So far, this has meant that he rarely - if ever - eats curry.

I, on the other hand, love it and I've been trying to convert him for years. I've had very little success to date but thanks to the delivery of a new cookbook, I think I am finally in with a fighting chance.

I Love Curry by Anjum Anand promises 'the best Indian curries you'll ever cook' and from my initial perusal of the book, I think it might be right.


This cookbook aims to broaden our knowledge of just what is meant by a curry. From the tomatoes, dairy products and garam masala of north India to the coconut, tamarind and mustard seeds that are popular in the south; there are more than 50 main courses to try. Some are hot. Others are mild. But all can be adapted to suit different palates, even those of chilli/lentil/chickpea-refusing boyfriends.

Anjum also wants us to understand that a curry can be much more than one main dish. At its best, it's a feast with rice, breads, chutneys, raitas and vegetable side dishes. The book contains some of her favourite recipes for these essential side dishes, many of which she learned from her Punjabi-born mother.

You'll find many familiar favourites here; from chicken tikka masala to vindaloo. There are lots of new dishes to try too, such as lamb chops with dried pomegranate or Bengali mustard fish.

Anjum starts with some tips for cooking Indian style. She tells us how to cook whole spices in hot oil at the beginning of the process. She advises on the importance of the onion base. (Did you know that the more you cook them, the deeper the flavour of your curry? Brown them for lamb or chicken curries but don't cook them beyond a golden colour when you are working with more delicate flavours such as fish.)

Anjum also has tips regarding garlic and ginger, cooking with tomatoes and yoghurt, slow cooking and leaving the bones in meat and fish for flavour. She also recommends cooking curries the day before you eat them so that the flavours intensify overnight.

The first recipe section is what Anjum calls 'bites': appetisers that she first started to cook with her mother as a little girl. I've already marked the spicy prawn cakes, steamed pea cakes and puchkas (small, crisp hollow balls of semolina pastry filled with potatoes, chickpeas, yoghurt and two chutneys, one sweet and sour and the other herby) as ones to try.

The curry sections are split into vegetable, fish and seafood, poultry and meat. From these sections, I've earmarked the Punjabi yoghurt and dumpling kadhi, the Bengali mustard fish and the creamy, nutty lamb curry with dried figs.

Most of the recipes are illustrated with wonderfully tempting photographs. You simply couldn't resist cooking something like this. Could you?

The final sections are devoted to vegetable side dishes, breads, rice dishes, salads and raita. I'll definitely be trying my hand at the naan bread with garlic and coriander butter and the many variations on raita.

The book ends with a section on spices and how to use them.

With this new book to help me, I'm going to continue my quest to convert my boyfriend to the joy of curries. I'm going to start with the Punjabi yoghurt and dumpling kadhi. I'll keep you updated on progress...

A cookbook that won't rebuke you: Diana Henry's Food from Plenty

I have a strange relationships with cookbooks. Those moments when I flick through the pages of a new cookbook, earmarking the recipes I'll try first and fantasising about how good they will taste are some of my favourite moments of all. However, the moment I add a new cookbook to my already groaning kitchen shelves is an especially guilty one.

I can feel the other books rebuking me silently.

"You haven't finished cooking recipes from us," they scold. "We still have lots more to offer you. Why are you moving on to something new?"

I always listen to them and resolve not to buy any new cookbooks until I have experimented with the recipes in those I already have. Sadly for my ignored cookbooks, this resolve never lasts for very long. After a long day at work, I'll find myself browsing Amazon for the latest titles. If I happen upon a bookshop, I'll automatically head for their cookery section. And if I'm in TK Maxx - which I was on Friday - I always check out their book section.

This was where I found 'Food from Plenty' by Diana Henry. Diana is a food writer for The Sunday Telegraph and has written several other cookbooks such as 'Cook Simple' and 'Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons'.

I'd never heard of her before but I'm now a convert. The idea behind this book is a simple one: creating good food from what is plentiful, seasonal and left over from previous meals. It's a book that chimes with the times we now live in as more people try to avoid wastefulness and rein in their grocery bills while still eating healthy food.

Diana starts with an excellent section on Sunday roasts. As well as giving advice on the basics of roasting techniques, she also includes interesting riffs on roast chicken, pork and lamb. Cherry and goat's cheese stuffed chicken, anyone?

She also devotes a section to what to do with the leftovers. I usually make a chicken, ham and mushroom pie with the remains of my roast chicken but the next time I might try Diana's chicken noodle soup or chicken and parsely risotto.

The rest of the book is divided into sections on vegetables, pulses, grains, fish, meats, soups, food that can be foraged in the wild, desserts, eggs and recipes based on using up stale bread. There are also inserts on choosing cuts of meat for flavour and economy and the different uses of grains and pulses.

All of Diana's recipes are straightforward. She chooses meat and fish that is cheap and sustainable and she cooks it in a way that maximises its flavour, combining them with ingredients that you are likely to have in your storecupboard in any case.

This is one book that won't be sitting unused on my bookshelf, seething with resentment whenever I add something new. Since I bought it on Friday, I've already cooked a Persian herb chilau (an Iranian rice dish that has a crunchy crust and lots of mint, dill and parsley) and a Middle Eastern shepherd's pie with a spiced parsnip crust.

Earmarked recipes: orange and pistachio pilaf; barley, spinach and mushroom salad; mackerel with spiced rhubarb relish; and cauliflower with fried breadcrumbs, capers and anchovies.