The Homemakers' Cookbook and Guide to Nutrition

I will be honest and say this book is new to me. I picked it up just this week in a charity shop for a pound. What a bargain! The Homemakers’ Cookbook and Guide to Nutrition was written in 1946. After flipping through it several times, it seems to be a brilliant book. The significance of nutrition and healthy eating was recognised 80 years ago, but I wasn't aware it was emphasised so much.

I imagine that right after the war, nations were focused on building strength and improving the health of their populations for the new era. This book was published in Washington DC and exudes an American vibe, but in a charming way—similar to The Wizard of Oz in Kansas, where Judy Garland bakes delicious, healthy cookies, wheat germ muffins, or maybe Boston brown bread.

This reminds me of an updated Mrs. Beeton's, but it was quite modern for its time. It includes charts detailing calorie counts, fat content, and other valuable information such as vitamin content in different foods, along with straightforward recipes. Such a book shouldn't be sniffed at; it's a historical document that offers insights into everyday life just after the war—a period focused on rebuilding and moving forward.

One recipe I particularly enjoy is for 'glorified carrots,' essentially croquettes made from cooked, grated carrots and breadcrumbs. Another intriguing one is Berkshire soup, made with canned corn and a surprising addition of two tablespoons of sugar! Sounds interesting…

There really is something for everyone in this book - if you can find one! The sticker on the front says ‘poor’, but I think it’s excellent!

Nico by Nico Ladenis

Nico is a truly classic cookbook, written by a man who many chefs have worked for and are proud to have on their CV. I never did, although I was urged to by my father when he was lecturing at Westminster college in London. Nico had a restaurant just around the corner and he knew the chaps at the college, and they had a good relationship. 

Nico Ladenis was a self-taught chef. He was a trailblazer in the top-end dining scene of London in the 70s and 80s. He was bold, confident and a great cook. A bit controversial and a bit scary, but he had a heart of gold. He passed away last year at the age of 89.

Many of today’s great chefs came through his kitchen, taught to his impeccable standards, and he most certainly changed the way chefs cook now. I love this book for many reasons, but mostly because it’s the type of food I was taught to cook. Times change, and it’s a different world now. You might not have heard of him, but he was an absolute legend amongst us chefs.

Send it up Hot, How to be an 18th Century Cook, Recipes old and new from Castle Howard

I love this little book. I bought it for a fiver from Castle Howard’s gift shop when I visited a few years ago. And what a bargain for all that history! 

It’s such a vast building, it knocked me for six. There are beautiful grounds to walk around and the interiors are just gorgeous. Sadly there weren’t any kitchens to look at, at least none that I could find, but what a place. If you are ever in North Yorkshire, go and drink it all in. 

It’s hard to believe some of the recipes in this book were ever served. There are some tasty ones, but also a few horrors, even for me! Take gammon of badger, viper broth or snail water. They sound more like the lunch menu at Hogwarts than a stately home. 

Despite being one of the wealthiest homes in 18th century Britain, it did serve simple food like roast beef and Yorkshire puddings, and bacon and beans, for which there are recipes in this book. 

I also love the poetry of language in old recipes. For example, a recipe for roast chicken with garlic reads, 

“Chose a fine, large, young fowl, or a very fine capon, or paulard, but be nice in the choice of it, for unless it be in itself excellently good, the care and trouble of dressing will be thrown away.”

What a wonderful way to advise on sourcing the best ingredients. 

Throughout the book lots of lemons and oranges are used—perhaps to mask the flavour of badger—as well as plenty of spices, dried fruits and sugar used in the savoury dishes. I think my favourite dish from the book is a recipe from 1734 for trout with fennel. It sounds like something I’d cook today.

Fäviken by Magnus Nilsson

Fäviken by Magnus Nilsson is a beautifully-put-together piece of art. The book is packed with wonderful images of food, wild meadows, foraged herbs, hanging charcuterie and cooking over fire. In essence, it takes a step back in time to how we used to cook. 

Fäviken was a tiny ‘destination’ restaurant in a remote area of Sweden accessed by ox taxi or skidoo. I know a few folk who ate at this mystical place (that closed its doors in 2019). If you were lucky enough to have dined there, you might have devoured a scallop cooked over charcoal, or some meat from an old dairy cow, hung for a long time, cooked simply and served with something pickled, smoked or fermented. 

The food may appear to be simple, but it is not simplistic. Great care and a lot of attention to detail goes into creating dishes that use few ingredients. I understand this approach to cooking and believe that delving into the past is a great way to see into the future. Young chefs are becoming excited by old skills like fermenting, pickling and smoking, learning techniques from books like this. Old methods can teach us a lot and provide great inspiration. As long as we enjoy the process and we’re not too earnest about it, then I’m all for it.

Edinburgh on a Plate by Ferrier Richardson

This week’s book features yours truly, and also Cafe St Honoré, but before my time. Edinburgh on a Plate is a great book (of course I would say that) featuring a genuinely good collection of recipes from Edinburgh chefs from about 25 years ago. At that time I was working at the Atrium restaurant in the building the houses the Traverse Theatre. I’d been there about a year in 1999 when the book came out. It was a great place to work and very cool. 

Cafe was also featured, with its previous owners Chris and Gill Colverson, who are very old friends. Not much has changed at Cafe since then, but Atrium no longer exists, and I do look a tad older. There are some wonderful pictures of Cafe, and I love reminiscing and re-reading the stories from the other contributors. 

Martin Irons of Martins restaurant is in there, and Roy Brett when he was at Malmaison (before Ondine). Even the late Gary Rhodes when he had a restaurant on Rose Street. And there are many more characters with some lovely recipes. My food has moved on slightly since those days, as it does with time, but the photography from Alan Donaldson does it proud. 

The book was put together by Ferrier Richardson, a great chef who had some fabulous restaurants in Bearsden and Glasgow and was an inspiration to many (and still is). He now has The East End Fox in Glasgow, and I was always a huge admirer of his food. 

Someone recently reminded me that I’m in this book, whilst they chuckled about how young I look. They then explained that they discovered the book in a charity shop. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not… But interestingly, the dishes Chris was cooking at Cafe back then aren’t that far off what we’re cooking today, confirming that Cafe St Honoré is indeed - timeless!

Handwritten Recipes by Anon

This week’s book is a belter filled with beautiful handwritten recipes. It was given to me years ago by my father, who had been given it by someone at the Fishers Hotel in Pitlochry where he worked in the late 1950s / early 60s. It has some age to it as 1860 is written in the first page. It really is a wonderful book. 

It has clearly been handed down through the generations (from around 1860 to the 1960s) and features lots of sweet recipes from toffee squares and sponge cake, to a Christmas plum cake in 1939 and a cake recipe from WWII.  Despite the fact that the handwriting is quite difficult to make out, the way it’s written is very special. I especially love the recipe for Irish stew using mutton chops.

My favourite page however—roughly halfway through, so possibly around 1900—shares a recipe for oven scones, crossed out with the words ‘very bad’ written below it. Brilliant. It shows how recipes aren’t always right, that people sometimes make mistakes, and how human we all are. A lot of these books exist and I wish they could be shared more widely—online perhaps?—as they’re a true account of what folk ate. 

You might not be able to add this particular book to your collection, but I do hope it inspires you to look out your old recipe book and have a flick through it, especially if it was passed down. It will put a smile on your face.

The River Cottage Cookbook by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

The River Cottage Cookbook by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a book that’s never very far away from me. I lent my first copy to someone (I can’t remember who), so I had to buy another. It’s a real cook’s book, but also a book for the gardener, the smallholder, the market gardener, the entrepreneur, and the market stall holder looking to make a few quid by making something. 

I adore this book and have huge admiration for Hugh. He is a real person, a bit scruffy—yes, scruffier than me—and he genuinely cares about trying to get as many people as possible to eat good food. I remember watching the first series of River Cottage and thinking: that’s what goes on in my head, I get that idea. I would love to be able to live off my own land, sell some sausages from my pigs, eat parsnips all day long and chase chickens into their huts every night. 

The book has so much information in it, it's hard to know where to start. There are sections on veg, pork, beef, lamb chicken and yeah, there are recipes included but it’s the stories of why things taste better if say, it’s rare breed, or organic, or grown yourself. 

I still refer to this book a lot, to look up a pickle recipe or a cure for this or that. It is an encyclopaedic cookbook for the thoughtful cook. With a sustainable approach and a nod to using more local and old recipes and dishes. This sits well with me. His section on wild food and foraging is excellent. As are the sections on how to keep chickens or how to start a flock. You really don’t need any other book in your library.

Pâtés and Terrines

Pâtés and Terrines has offered true inspiration to me and is a great book for those who wish to have a good play in the kitchen, have plenty of time on their hands and have access to good produce. The photography is wonderful (Vaseline on the lens?) and yes, it’s all a bit dated now, but there are some very skilful recipes reflecting what we used to make. 

As this type of food was served in buffet-style, it had to look ‘soigné’. For example: a galantine of poultry with a flower—made from carrots, truffles and chives as a stem—accompanied by an aspic-based sauce called chaudfroid.  

There’s much more though. If you consider a pie a picnic item, then a rustic pastry crust with a chunky pork and jelly interior is a very welcome addition to a sunny day in the countryside, served from a wicker basket of course. 

When the book was written, the use of foie gras was normal (having been used since Egyptian times), but due to its production method, it has fallen out of favour. The breakdown of every recipe is brilliant, with easy to follow steps. If you master this book, or several of the recipes, you will be doing very well. I particularly like the veal and ham pie dish, served en croute. 

Written by four authors with vast knowledge, this is a must for the budding larder chef. I still use this book to be inspired and it’s a great addition to any collection.

Great European Chefs by Caroline Hobhouse

The skills and the inventiveness of European chefs are legendary, and the quality of the ingredients they work with is unmatched. Tourists and travellers flocked to Europe’s great cities to experience grandeur, excellence, traditions, originality and flavour. I spent many happy hours as a young chef looking through Great European Chefs—imagining working in some of these exotic places, especially the French restaurants where the greats were cooking: Vergé, Guérard, Bocuse, Meneau, and many more. 

I stuck closer to home and worked at The Peat Inn. It was great seeing David Wilson in the book. David had worked with Verge and a few more legends. Also John Burton Race from L’Ortolan, who I was interviewed by. We spoke about cars, and he offered me a job. It’s also wonderful to see Ballymaloe with Myrtle Allen cooking with proper Irish ingredients, and to know that they’re still doing what they did all those years ago. 

This is a wonderful book and very special as it was one of the last books with the greats in it. I love that there’s an image of each chef, standing in pristine whites, usually with his wife sitting beside him. The person who brought these masters together is Caroline Hobhouse, with photography from Martin Brigade, a well-known friend of many a chef. It’s a classic that will always stay in my mind. 

Some dishes are simple, some are very technical. There’s a pudding made with chicken in Turkey, a gratin of Arbroath smokie, and some very beautiful plates of food from Mossiman. I recommend flicking through it with a good glass of claret.

Wild Food from Land and Sea by Marco Pierre White

This guy has been an inspiration to a lot of chefs my age. He was so cool, different, bad (in a good way), a bit naughty, did things differently, had balls to go against the grain and cooked superb food. Marco Pierre White was on a roll when he produced this book, Wild Food from Land and Sea. It will be in most chefs’ libraries, and my copy is well-thumbed. 

His restaurants were the place to be in the late 80s and 90s. I fondly remember going on a date with the current Mrs Chef to The Criterion at Piccadilly Circus and seeing him sat on a nearby table, eating and speaking on the phone. This giant of a man could not have been more gentlemanly when I nervously approached asking for his autograph on the menu. It was a moment I shall never forget. I bumped into him a few more times afterwards at his other place, The Restaurant, and I always asked for his autograph on the menu. 

He had so many great chefs working for him, among them: Stephen Terry, Gordon Ramsay and Martin Wishart. He had a great team, allowing him to be everywhere. The ‘enfant terrible’, as he was known in the press, cooked very well, after his training with Roux, Blanc, Koffman and Nico. He knew at a young age how good he was. 

This book illustrates his simple yet complex approach to food. He always stays close to the classics and never strays too far away from combinations that work. That’s his secret I think. He does classic cookery with a modern touch, presented simply, but full of flavour. The recipes here are not too scary and the images are just wonderful. His soufflé is perfect, and the recipe for rabbit with asparagus and leeks is like something from a 1970s French cookbook, but made cool. And you can’t get anything simpler than his escalope of salmon à l’estragon: simply a piece of fish with a tarragon sauce, yet a very tricky dish to get right. 

This book came after White Heat, his first publication. It’s a bit like a band’s second album, but he succeeded in creating another masterpiece. I think his food is still very relevant today. 30 years on, and I still absolutely love his books. He’s a true craftsman and a skilled professional. I will talk about more of his books in the future, I’m sure.