Cooking the books
Elfreda Pownall
In the past famous cooks were content to distil the experience of a lifetime into one book: Hannah Glasse and Eliza Acton wasted little time thinking of the Christmas market. Not so our television cooking idols.
Jamie's Kitchen (Penguin/Michael Joseph, £25) is a sloppily edited book in which brilliant Jamie seems, for the first time, unsure of who his readers are. A helpful spread of pictures shows a simple skill — how to joint a chicken (here miscaptioned 'Boning a chicken' — quite a different process), but a few pages later a recipe for Lobster Tempura involves killing two live lobsters and deep-frying in a wok, a potentially lethal operation. Are we raw recruits, like those getting a new start in his Hoxton restaurant, or brave and experienced chefs picking up ideas?
While Jamie's book is padded out with photographs of the author, Delia's Christmas offering, Delia's Vegetarian Collection (BBC Worldwide £25), is dense with recipes. It is a boon for those who have been afflicted by a member of the family turning vegetarian, but with only 60 new ideas, the rest of the 250 coming from her earlier books, it is mostly a scissors-andpaste job: almost, but not quite, 'one she made earlier'.
Delia has sold more books (about 16 million), but Nigella, now she has conquered America, must be the most famous television cook in the world — certainly the bestlooking. In Forever Summer (Penguin/ Michael Joseph, £20) her contention is that easy summer cooking can be enjoyed the year round. She cranks up the camp factor with such recipes as Gammon with Pineapple, and Slut-red Raspberries in Chardonnay Jelly and her ideas are as good as ever, though there are fewer of them than in her masterpiece How to Eat (Chatto, £17.50). Indeed, devoted fans, and she has legions of those, have noticed a few asides from previous books (Lavender Cup Cakes, for example) that here have been expanded, with beautiful photography by Petrina Tinslay, into full-blown recipes. But then it is a rare cook who never recycles.
Betsy Bell makes no claims to originality in her recipes but her readers certainly know how to eat. Hard up and Hungry (Penyghent, £9,99, for copies telephone 01729 892556) was written for her own impoverished student sons and its simple recipes and sound (but not preachy) advice make it the perfect stocking present for any student who can't cook and has blown a year's allowance on one term's fast food and vodka. 'Serve immediately' is a depressing instruction at the end of a recipe. Temperamental dishes that cannot wait are a bore, useless for entertaining and restricting in family life. Tamasin Day Lewis's collection of dishes that can be made in advance, or are happy to hang around until you are ready, is what she calls Good Tempered Food (Weidenfeld. £ 25). Such deeply satisfying treats as Chicken Savoyarde, its velvety sauce covered with shards of crisp cheese, or the subtly astringent Rhubarb and Passion Fruit Ice Cream make hers the book to buy this Christmas. You will be cooking from it for years to come.
Diana Henry's Crazy Water Pickled Lemons (Mitchell Beazley, £ 20) is almost as good. Her recipes, inspired by the cooking of the Middle East, Mediterranean and North Africa, make you long to cook them. How about Ricotta Ice Cream with Pomegranate and Blood-orange Sauce? Or Catalan Chicken with Quince Allioli? And her Chocolate, Hazelnut and Sherry Cake with Sherry-raisin Cream is the best cake I have made this year, or eaten. But the book is let down by dreary photographs and her long-winded musings can be trying (You know those late-night cravings you get? The ones which compel some people to consider trading their Granny for a tub of Ben and Jerry's?') Buy this one for the recipes.
Nobody would buy It Must've Been Something I Ate (Review. £16.99) for the recipes; they are few and eccentrIc, but this witty collection of essays in which Jeffrey Steingarten searches the world for the perfect ingredient, endures brain scans to discover the origin of Gourmand Syndrome and cooks the head of a 400Ib pig is all done with engaging brio. It is easily worth the price for his list of the nine, best-value bistros in Paris.
Elfreda Pownall is Consumer Features Editor of the Sunday Telegraph Magazine.
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