Cooking the books
Jennifer Paterson
From the pile of cookery books stacked beside me the one I have most cherished this year is Jane Grigson's updated Fish Book (Michael Joseph, £20). Mrs Grigson was working on it up to the time of her death in 1990 and includes her alterations and additions to nearly two-thirds of the original book which I have loved and used for many years. It not only contains every- thing you want to know about the different fishes and how to cook them, as well as the all-important timings, but has charming tales and histories of the fish before each chapter. The Times Cook Book by Frances Bissell (Chatto, £19.99) is a magnificent volume of all her receipts from the Times since 1987. As she is a great traveller, and indeed guest cook to many famous hotels, there is a fine cosmopolitan selection of dishes, as well as
her home-grown ones, which include any- thing from snacks, to preserves and pud- dings, to more elaborate dishes for grand occasions. She writes clearly and with imag- ination on the combination of tastes in food and has an original attitude to the preparation. It would make a splendid wedding present, to be kept and used for years, with notes made in the margin to comply with Miss Bissell's dearest wish (see introduction).
Patricia Wells, who has written three books on French cooking, has now turned her attention to Italy, inspired by her maternal grandfather, who left Italy in 1910. Trattoria (Kyle Cathie, £17.99) is a collection of 150 receipts from small family restaurants visited by Miss Wells over sev- eral years. I could cheerfully eat my way through this book: it is honest, fresh, succu- lent Italian food, dishes passed down from generation to generation to bring joy to the traveller and the cook alike.
Sue Lawrence was the BBC Masterchef of 1991, no mean feat considering those terrible conditions and even worse guest judges all going mmmmm and ahhhh. She has produced Food With Flair (Main- stream, £14.99) in the form of 18 full, three-course menus with suggestions for wines to be served. She also includes favourite dishes from many of our famous chefs. I'm glad to see Eugene McCoy's salmon dressed with mint and cucumber one of the best ways for salmon I have ever had. This is a handsomely produced book, full of good ideas, from dark treacle ice- cream, to pork with black pudding crust, rabbit with black olive paste and potatoes with thyme in a paper parcel.
For those who would wander further afield there is a vast new edition of The Complete Asian Cookbook by Charmaine Solomon (Grub Street, £20). It contains 800 authentic Asian receipts, real Asian food created with minimum of fuss in a western kitchen from readily available ingredients. What more could you ask? There is also Ken Horn's Illustrated Chinese Cookery from BBC Books (£15.99) with new and lighter dishes which have emerged over recent years from the kitchens of Hong Kong and Taiwan. BBC books also offers us the second part of Mireille John- ston's French Cookery Course (£16.99). This time she concentrates on the regions of Ile de France, Normandy, Languedoc and Roussillon, South West, Lyonnais and Savoie and Val de Loire, all with their own character and cookery styles. Full of good stuff and an excellent chapter on sauces.
There are two books for vegetarians. Entertaining with Friends (Piatkus, £9.99) by Simon Hope, who runs the Food for Friends restaurants, is a collection of over 150 of his most popular receipts. There are ideas for entertaining children, dinner par- ties, buffets, picnics and barbecues, even a vegetarian Christmas, which reaches the depths of depression in my soul — nutty brussel sprouts indeed! How- ever, there are many good ideas for other days, I dare say. The other one is from Hamlyn, The Vegetarian Cookbook for veg- etarians and vegans (£7.99): 240 new calorie-counted dishes, each one with a cook's tip and illustrated with coloured photographs.
There are quite a few of these almost coffee-table paperbacks. The Illustrated Escoffier (Mitchell Beazley, £12.99) and the excellent Poultry & Game by Ian McAndrew (Mitchell Beazley, £14.99) with very good drawings for plucking, trussing, drawing, singeing and skinning, and marvellously original ways of cooking the different species. Then there are three separate Mrs Beetons, published by Ward Lock: Main Course (£9.99), Fish & Seafood Cookery (£8.99), and Baking (£8.99). These are all about tried and tested methods, reliable and easy to use. Good presents for undergraduates.
The best stocking-filler, and a must for anyone who has never read him, are the two paperbacks by Edouard Pomiane, Cooking in Ten Minutes (£5.99) with a fore- word by Raymond Blanc and Cooking with Pomiane (£7.99) with a foreword by Eliza- beth David, both from Serif. Pomiane was not only a great chef, he was also a philoso- pher with an hilarious sense of fun. He lectured at the Institut Pasteur and was one of the best food broadcasters in France. You will love him and his writing.
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