Ruth Mott’s Favourite Recipes

Ruth Mott’s Favourite Recipes, Heart Warming dishes from BBC’s Victorian Kitchen Cook, may surprise some of you as it isn’t a glitzy, cool or trendy book. It’s a book I’ve had for years, given to me by some very dear friends as a birthday gift.

Years ago, I remember watching the television programme The Victorian Kitchen Garden with Ruth Mott the cook, and Harry Dodson the gardener who brought her the most incredible produce from the walled garden just outside the kitchen door. I fell immediately for this wonderful cook. There was a dish that stuck in my mind, where she took mutton chops and dipped them in egg and breadcrumbs and to this day I drool over that dish. She also made a leek pudding with a suet crust; nothing fancy, just proper food using vegetables from the garden, kept so simple. The sound of her cutting through a big, fat leek, hitting the wooden chopping board with her knife, is engrained in my head.

Ruth was born in 1917 and lived a busy life with her television career taking off when she turned 70. In 1970 she went to work as a private cook at a big house in Berkshire and spent the next 18 years cooking there, using old recipes from Victorian and Edwardian times. In 2001 she was a consultant historical cook for the film Gosford Park. Ruth passed away at the age of 95. What an innings. A chef/ cook who could show us all a thing or two.

This is a book I hope young chefs pick up and get something from. There’s a charm about the recipes. The images are very ’80s, but still lovely to look at.

Memories of Gascony by Pierre Koffman

This week I bring you a fabulous book by Pierre Koffman. Memories of Gascony is a masterpiece, full of stories and recipes that sit just right with me. As a young chef it was one of those books I read often: in kitchens, staff accommodation or in bed until the small hours, thinking about all this rich, decadent, yet essentially peasant food. 

Possibly because I was far away from family and feeling a bit lonely and sorry for myself, this book really made me feel at ease. Foie gras, duck, pork, beans and goose fat all still make me salivate to this day.

I was mesmerised by the different the lifestyle of people in south west France in the 50s and 60s. Pierre talks fondly of his grandparents and how people cooked, offering us a slice of history. It’s a rich insight into that rural part of the world and how people (without much money) ate not merely to survive, but to be happy.

Pierre came to London in 1970 to work at Le Gavroche with the Roux brothers, later becoming Head Chef at The Waterside Inn in Bray. Within 6 years of opening his own restaurant, La Tante Claire in London, he had earned 3 Michelin stars. This book is still a great read, and continues to inspire many a young chef.

White Heat by Marco Pierre White

My book of the week is a classic and one that changed my way of thinking about food and cookery. White Heat by Marco Pierre White was gifted to me by my brother Rory for Christmas in 1990. It has always been a source of inspiration—more a piece of art than a recipe book.

Marco stormed onto the London restaurant scene in the late ’80s, described as an ‘enfant terrible’. They weren’t wrong as he ran a tough kitchen. He called it the SAS of kitchens at the time, and a young-faced Gordon Ramsay worked there.

He was different, not the classic, pristine chef in whites; he was cool. This was a ground-breaking book that appealed to the younger generation of chefs and was frowned upon by older folk. He was a rock-star chef with scruffy hair, but educated and with an innate understanding of flavour. Young cooks idolised him and we all started wearing butcher’s aprons because he did. 

His food is so well thought out and presented. Pigs’ trotter ‘Pierre Koffman’ for example, learned from his time at Tante Claire with Koffman. Also tagliatelle of oysters with caviar, and a simple glazed lemon tart worthy of 3 Michelin stars.

This book was a vanity project, and he states in the book that no-one is cooking like him in Britain, and he was right. This giant of a man had worked in the best kitchens in the land and condensed all this knowledge into a restaurant called Harveys in Wandsworth. I called him up one day for a job, and he told me to come to London. The job was mine, but I never went. I got nervous, but I guess we all have regrets.

It’s a great book, with stunningly beautiful photography by Bob Carlos Clarke, including action shots and divine plates of food. I have eaten his food many times and have never been disappointed; his legacy is quite something. This book will always inspire me—it’s timeless.

The Great Chefs of France by Anthony Blake and Quentin Crewe

This week’s 'Book of the Week’ is a blast from the past. As a young chef I read this cover-to-cover a lot. It’s not just the recipes that I get into in a good cookery book, but the stories. And there are many fabulous anecdotes in The Great Chefs of France by Anthony Blake and Quentin Crewe. 

It’s a book that delves into the life, minds and culinary genius of some of France’s greatest chefs. Everyone that I had heard of in my early career was in this book. Troisgros, Guerard, Pic and of course, Paul Bocuse. I’m still inspired by it.

Bocuse was a giant amongst chefs, quite literally as he was a big man. He worked for many great chefs when he was a young man learning his craft, in the days of opulence. I had the luck to meet him in 1999 at the Michelin awards in Greenwich. It was a memorable day. There’s a photograph of him in this book standing to attention behind a table laden of wine and books, next to a very Napoleon-esque image of himself, wearing full chef whites and a cheeky grin. It says a lot about him: cheeky, professional, traditional, yet accessible. If you do get the chance, and you enjoy a good cookery / reading book, then do get a copy of this.

PRACTICAL COOKERY BY CESARI AND KINTON

I must start off this new section with one of the first recipe books I bought when I started cooking in 1986. It’s the go-to bible for many a cookery student, wearing terribly fitting chef whites, a long, white apron and a tall hat. Practical Cookery by Ceserani and Kinton is a book that contains so many easy-to-follow recipes with good instructions. It’s one I still go to today to remind myself that food doesn’t have to be complicated, but must have flavour and taste great.