Neil’s cookbook of the week: Living and Eating by John Powson and Annie Bell

I remember going through my cupboard when I was little, and tidying my toys: Action Man, Lego, cars. They were all tidied and put back neatly, nothing was thrown away. I stopped playing with Action Man decades ago, yet still can’t believe that, when we got together, Mrs Chef decluttered our flat by throwing away my Action Man Jeep and Lego. I understand, but I miss that Jeep. I don’t think cleansing by decluttering is always a good thing.

This week I bring to you ‘Living and Eating’ by John Powson and Annie Bell. I really like this book for various reasons, mainly because it is how I would like to live (but we all know that I am too scruffy and messy to have that sort of lifestyle). I adore their simple approach, modern design, and kitchen that continues outside into their garden. The sheer beauty of ‘simple’ is here in spades, and yes, it is a cookbook, but it is so much more.

It is a lifestyle book, like a glossy magazine, Homes and Gardens or Vogue. It is a way to live, simply, with nice things around you. There is no need for stuff. The dishes they create, on simple plates, focus on the beauty of simplicity.

As cookbooks go, it is concise with a good few recipes of which I have tried a number, and they are delicious. The section on vegetables is brilliant and as I love veg and sometimes need inspired, I go here to have a look. One day, after we win the lottery, we will have a wonderful old place somewhere like Suffolk or Hampshire where Tinto will be able to run free. We will live like this, and there will be no room for clutter, mess or anything that is not necessary. Yeah, who am I trying to kid!

Another reason I love this book is because my two boys gave me it in 2007—not sure if it was for Christmas, Father’s Day or a birthday gift—and it has always been an aspirational book with beautiful images of cool, minimalist interiors and food. I insist you cook the butter roasted herbed chicken recipe before doing anything else after reading this. It is a Patricia Wells recipe, a woman I admire a lot. This book is a firm fave of mine, and we should all flick through it from time to time. It is food that is both elegant and homely at the same time.

Neil’s cookbook of the week: Wild Harvest by Nick Nairn

The book this week is one that many of you will have in your collection. ‘Wild Harvest with Nick Nairn’ is a book that I may think about from time to time, but rarely get out. So, this week I took it from the shelf and flicked through it. I was transported back to my twenties in the mid ‘90s. This is the type of food I still like to cook.

It's a good book—I think this was Nick’s first cookbook—he went on to write more. It is important to me for a few reasons. After cooking on The Royal Scotsman, I was asked to be the chef at Braeval where Nick cooked and these were some of the dishes I was cooking there in 1997, although it feels like yesterday! It was a good time to be cooking in Scotland and Nick was at the forefront of that. He was young, energetic, self-taught and cooked really good food. He was using pigeon and other wild foods that many would steer away from. He had ambition and went on to be a good businessman with Nairns in Glasgow, where I also worked, and several other businesses including cook schools.

All this was a long time ago, but the food still feels fresh to me, and it would not look out of place on a menu at Cafe right now. Nick is a good old friend, and we don’t catch up enough. There's a group of chefs from that time who worked with Nick, who went on to do great things. Nick’s then wife Fiona, really made me feel at home, and used to tell me I looked so much like him, although I am not so sure. The recipes are easy to follow with classic Nick dishes like his carrot, honey and ginger soup, a dish I still make, the Braeval tablet, and his superb saddle of lamb with tomato and basil sauce.

I really enjoyed working at Braeval, it was two years of learning my own style, playing with food, trying to make my own mark, and in beautiful surroundings. It was almost the perfect restaurant, well, almost...

Neil’s cookbook of the week: Tried Favourites Cookery Book by Mrs E W Kirk

This is a fantastic book. ‘Tried Favourites Cookery Book’ by Mrs E.W. Kirk has so much in it for such an unassuming book. Very modern for the time, this edition is from 1942, with some classic old Scottish dishes. It feels very Scottish but has an influence from America and further afield too. There are countless recipes from sheep head broth and hare soup (and a vegetarian version!), to fish custard and chicken merinds (?) - a form of battered, crispy deep-fried chicken pieces.

This book will show you how to roast a goose, to prepare a ham, to make countless biscuits, cakes, and all sorts. But interestingly, it has a good section on laundry work and housekeeping with a good recipe ‘to promote the growth of the hair’ and what to do if your chimney is on fire!

My copy (which I can’t recall where I got it) has those wonderful hand-written entries inside, and pieces of paper with scribbled, hurried recipes: one for sponge and a one page of notes headed as suitable for war-time rationing. It’s an absolutely fascinating insight into what was going on in average kitchens at the time of the war. With the odd advert for Oxo and other ingredients, and a stove maker in Newhaven Road here in Edinburgh, it’s a really interesting book to flick through for inspiration and to delve into our past.

Neil’s cookbook of the week: A Scottish Feast, An Anthology Of Food And Eating by Hamish Whyte and Catherine Brown

‘A Scottish Feast, An Anthology Of Food And Eating’ is a wonderful book, gifted to me a while back by the creator/ editor of the book, Hamish Whyte. An extraordinary book which delves into our past and recent history of what we ate at various times and places for various reasons. It is an interesting factual book with records showing how poor the average family were, eating potatoes three times a day, with a pinch of salt and pepper and animal fat if you were lucky, and usually sprinkled with oatmeal to fill you up. And on to the posh dining tables of Edinburgh society, where lots of claret and fine food would have been eaten.

In this book there are poems relating to the subject in question or food item. Reading this book is like being Dr Who, jumping around like a time lord in different decades and eras. It is absolutely fascinating. Tales of what a traditional Skye kitchen was like in the early part of the 19th century.

I love how it reads ‘The fleeces of sheep which had been found dead on the mountain nailed on the walls to dry. Braxy hams were suspended from the roof, strings of fish were hanging above the fireplace, the door was almost continually open, savoury steam of broth and potatoes filled the air with peat smoke and dogs snarling and snapping Shepards legs sat at the table.’ Another entry is ‘A Good Scotch Haggies’ by our well-known Mrs MacIver. And a wonderfully written recipe for petticoat tails by Margaret Dods. The wording is hypnotic, the way it transports you to that place and makes you imagine you are there in your fancy regency attire, looking like a dandy supping from a cut glass and eating off pewter.

I love this book and thank you Hamish for the gift. Sadly Catherine Brown, who also edited this book, is no longer with us. She was a good friend and a huge inspiration. This is a lovely go-to book for a quick read and to dip in and out of.

Neil’s cookbook of the week: Eating to Extinction by Dan Saladino

The threat to us all with drought and warming temperatures is something we see on the news and think it won’t affect us, but the earth is warming at an alarming rate which is worrying. The threat to our food and what we are able to eat is also worrying, and the old adage, if you don’t use it, you lose it should be remembered. Dan Saladino has written a fabulous book called ‘Eating to Extinction, The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them’.

This book is a great read, it brings out the activist in me, makes me want to use more local, seasonal produce and furthermore, makes me want to tell more people about the great history, recipes and food we have here. Dan is a great guy, and I was involved with him on a Slow Food project a while back. He is a broadcaster and programme maker at BBC Radio 4 and The World Service and covers many food related subjects.

This is not a recipe book, but it delves in to the history, back story and archives about how certain food items are at great danger of becoming extinct. The research that has gone into this book is very impressive. The power of how food can make countries great, how food can showcase human creativity and invention, account for the rise and fall of empires and expose the causes and consequences of disasters, like flood and fire by intensive farming and bad land management, the historical side of grains, all fascinates me.

One subject he touches on is the small village in northern Turkey that he finds, which some 12,000 years ago first started cultivating grains mainly wheat. Dan focuses in different chapters on wild cereals, vegetables, meat, sea, fruit, cheese and so on. Bringing it closer to home, he talks about beremeal from Orkney which I mentioned earlier. Very tricky to find but production is mainly milled on Orkney at Barony Mill. A classic bannock can be made and served with good unpasteurised cheese, and a drizzle of honey, or served simply warm with some rich good butter whilst still warm. There is too much to tell you about this book, and many stories of interesting, almost lost food and drink items, so I suggest you order a copy and read it.

Neil’s cookbook of the week: Your Place or Mine by Jean Christophe Novelli

As many of you are aware, I have quite a few cookery books, many of which I have bought from shops, some old book shops, some from new, a few online from an auction site, some gifted from friends, and some inherited from my dad.

A great place to look for old cookery books is Janet Clarke Books. Janet is a specialist in books on gastronomy and has been trading old books for some time and is extremely knowledgeable about old cookbooks and food generally. Look at her website - www.janetclarke.com - there is something there for everyone.

This week’s book is something more modern, although still a book from 1998, ‘Novelli, Your Place Or Mine?’ is a book from my past that I used to stay up late at night and read, gazing at the images of the food and dreaming about creating these beautiful plates of food myself.

Jean Christophe Novelli is a culinary artist, a very good cook and many years ago, had a string of restaurants. Sadly, he didn’t manage to keep them afloat, but at the time, with his thick French accent he was up there as one of our great chefs. A good friend of Marco Pierre White, Novelli was never off the television. He brought something new and cool to cookery, and yes, it was probably a bit cheesy, but he could cook and developed the classics with a modern style. He became well known for his sugar springs, made by twisting caramel around a knife-sharpening steel to make a spring shape; he uses them a lot in this book, like his party piece, his signature.

I like his food in this book, rustic but well executed, his daube of beef looks incredible and confit duck leg with a garlic crust looks delicious. But it is his desserts that I think folk remember him for. I made his tiramisu for Christmas, and everyone loved it. A dish I used to make at the Atrium all those years ago. Doesn’t time fly…

Neil’s cookbook of the week: The Practice of Cookery by Mrs Dalgairns

This week is a belter. It is a very rare old cookery book; one I have acquired only quite recently. ‘The Practise of Cookery’ by Mrs Dalgairns was printed in Edinburgh in 1831, which makes it almost 200 years old. I find this staggering, holding this book in my hand. It reveals so much about life back then. A time when there was terrible poverty, and yet this book has recipes for lobster and a calf’s head soup recipe.

Back then, a lot of folk couldn’t read and had basic manual jobs, but of the few who were educated well and could read, some were sent to a cookery school of which there were several here in Edinburgh in the 1800s.

This book was a real find and will be an investment I am sure, and the condition of it is incredible. It is from a time when you were sent off to learn how to be a cook and a lady and have a knowledge of how to run a house. This isn’t just a cookery book; this will instruct you in to how to clean your mop heads and brushes and how to make all sorts of wine. The word catsup instead of ketchup is used a lot, and tomata for example, bizarre spellings of things.

Considering this was printed not too long after the war with France there are quite a few nods to French-style cookery terms, and it is very concise, with a very good number of chapters about preserving. So being thrifty was a necessity back then. How to pickle and what to do with eels and how to make red herring, all very interesting. Some very good Scottish dishes, and lots of recipes for cakes and biscuits. It is a very good book indeed, one I am very chuffed to have found. If you see one in one of those old bookshops you stumble across, buy it.

Neil’s cookbook of the week: Est Est Est Cookbook: Marriages by Donovan Cooke and Phillipa Sibley-Cooke

This book takes me back to a time when me and other chefs were all following the same things, reading the same books, working in the same places, and following each other’s styles. Est Est Est Cookbook: Marriages by Donovan Cooke (formerly Roux Waterside Inn, Harvey’s) and Phillipa Sibley-Cooke (formerly Quaglino’s, Canteen) is up there as one of my favourite modern cookery books. Coming from the same generation as these chaps, and having worked in the same places, I have admired them for some time now. The food is so London from the ‘90s, and it was so refreshing to see their restaurant, Est Est Est in Melbourne, at a time when Australia wasn’t quite ready for the Brit Pack (as they were called).

I was cooking in Oz in the early ‘90s and found some of the British influences had reached down under, but it took a good few more years of British influence and Aussie chefs working in London (for Roux or Marco) before returning to make a big change.

It was a great time, when food was proper and classic, with no Scandic influences. It was clean, relatively simple, and not a tweezer in sight. There’s a clean look to the food in this book, no more so than in the pyramid of chocolate. You can tell a mile away that Cooke had worked for Marco—there are elements of him throughout this boo—in a good way. If you know Marco’s books, you will understand what I mean.

This is clever food, well executed, beautiful to look at and very tasty. You don’t get food like this anymore and I miss it. It was a golden age of cookery which modernised the classic French food we were taught; and the cool chefs at that time, made it cool. I hope someone opens a restaurant near me one and cooks food like this. I will be at the front of the queue.

Neil’s cookbook of the week: Classical Recipes of The World

Classical Recipes of The World from 1954 is a great book to use as guide to almost anything you need to know in cookery, with an A to Z like Larousse Gastronomique. It is full of interesting stats, facts and details that we may not know, or perhaps have forgotten. If you are studying, this is a good book to take to bed every night to get to learn culinary terms and dishes, when various events happen in the culinary calendar and how to write a menu to make it sound more appealing. 

Henry Smith has written a number of good books around food. This is a great one. It is full of fascinating facts, sometimes unrelated to food. For example, on my birthday, 7th October, in 1777 was the battle of Saratoga, and Charles XIII of Sweden was born in 1778. I love how Henry is obsessed by the historical culinary calendar. It shows how dishes have, yet haven’t, changed much over the centuries. 

Welsh rabbit, or rare bit, was well known to Italian cheesemakers long before English cookery books were printed. It called on the old Roman way of cooking called Platina style. He was the librarian to the Vatican, who it is claimed, wrote the first ever cookbook, which was later copied by the French. At this time in the sixteenth century, Italians, (the Florentines and Catherine de’ Medici) were teaching the French the arts of hospitality, as practiced in Italy at the time. Perhaps we should all look to Italy as the home of haute cuisine and modern gastronomy, which was then copied by or taught to, the French. 

Henry goes on to write “right up to the fifteenth century France had little, if any, superiority over the great kitchens of England’s palaces, castles and colleges. The French exploited the Italian art of cuisine”. I love how he dedicated the book to his wife, and at the end writes, “so little time—yet, so much to do…”.

Neil’s cookbook of the week: The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie

Another great way to kick start the New Year is by pulling a book off the shelf with a lovely history attached. The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie is a great example of how people used to eat in the higher societies, offering a great insight into what was eaten 150-200 years ago. 

I love the different sections, with concise recipes included. It really is a good read. The section on curries is absolutely fascinating with a Barbados curry from 1891, a very simple dish with mace and curry powder. 

This book is a collection of recipes from different folk who, I must assume, visited the large house and over the years a repertoire was created. With so many soufflé recipes it must have been quite a time to be eating in these large houses. There is always a French influence in cookery at this time, from when large, wealthy houses employed famous French chefs to cook for them. But there are some excellent recipes for barley soup, gnocchi using semolina and simple home-cooked dishes.

The names of some dishes fascinate me, like Rabbit Pish Pash. A rum omelette sounds fascinating and calves head, turned out of the mould is very interesting. There are also lots of game birds in detail, as many would have been shot on the estate and handed to the kitchens to deal with. 

It takes me back to my youth, working at Ballathie and Kinnaird where many hours were spent in the plucking sheds with a hoover strapped to my back. A classic, and a great read, it was apparently, Elizabeth David's favourite cookery book. In the introduction I read, “I would defy anyone not to become a better cook for reading it”. I agree.