Pot Luck
HOME MADE COUNTRY WINES. Collected by the Farmers Weekly, (Hutton Press, 3s.) JEAN CONICS COOKERY CLASSES. (Peter Owen, 21s.) JAMES BEARD'S FISH COOKERY. (Faber, 21s.) LA CUCINA. By Rose L. Sorce. (Cresset Press, 18s.) CURRIES OF INDIA. By Harvey Day and Sarojini Mudnan i. (Nicholas Kaye, 5s.) REDUCE AND ENJOY IT COOKBOOK. By Elaine L. Ross. (Peter Nevill, 10s. 6d.) IT is characteristic of the cookery books currently published in this country that they are not concerned with any kind of British cooking : the only one out of the present batch (itself chosen from a larger number) to deal exclusively with the homely product in the homely way is a booklet on home-made wines—which can be highly recommended. The others are all directed towards varying, in those houses where foreign food is accepted, the basic slag of British cooking with exotics from across the sea. Of the nine books here reviewed six are directly in aid of this trend; they are guide books to non-British way of cooking. Even Advanced Cookery, which is a textbook used in a well-known Scottish college of domestic science, consists almost entirely of French-style recipes, often of a rather elaborate and expensive kind. This is production which is notable for the business-like clarity of its layout.
Jean Conil's Cookery Classes is, in his publisher's words, 'designed as a complete cookery course for beginners [and] re- places a long series of lessons at school.' The great thing to be said for this book is that it is thoroughly and honourably professional, The course that it offers is one which it is a little hard to imagine a solitary beginner actually going through with stage by stage—or indeed embarking on—but for, say, the recently married young woman with a serious interest and genuine ambitions in cookery the book offers a means of rising to a very high level of competence in the cuisine bourgeoise.
James Beard's Fish Cookery is a noble piece of work produced with a bewitching elegance which makes it seem cheap at a guinea. It tells you just about everything that you can do with fish in a practical everyday way (including practical everyday luxuries). It is sensible, accurate, and well written. But it is American, and from the British point of view this is a rather serious defect. While manY of Mr. Beard's recipes are perfectly feasible, very many others are not. Not only is it of little use to tell us how to, barbecue a sword' fish steak, it is not even helpful to tell us to make our favourite barbecue sauce to go with it. But one can disregard—or read for pleasure—notes on croaker, pompano, and minorca gopher steIN while admiring a book which would certainly make a sumptuous present, Among the regionals What's Cooking in France is to be noted, It is brief, simple and cheap, but if the apprentice who does not . Conil really mastered , what an achievement that would be!
La Cucina is much more elaborate. There have been a number of books of Italian cookery published fairly recently in this country and La Cucina is an acceptable if not absolutely essential addition to the list. The publishers very properly explain that the author is an American of Italian parentage and that the work was originally prepared for use in America and has now been edited for use in this country. This is rather a long way round, but there are manY excellent things here all the same.
Cooking the Chinese Way is of- course a true exotic, but the recipes are really not at all difficult to manage once the principles of Chinese cooking are understood. For anyone who wants some- thing different in the way of food from time to time it is excellent policy to take a bold plunge into Chinese food and Mr. Lo's pro- fessional guidance is clear and authoritative.
Curries of India is another exotic, a very specialised piece of work but brief and businesslike and an excellent five shillings' worth for the adventurous.
Reduce and Enjoy It is a guidebook to life on 1,600 calories a day. It is needlessly elaborate and wordy, but it does give the basic information about how to combine reasonably agreeable
food with a reasonably agreeable waistline. SEPTIMA TAYLOR
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