The Game Cook Book

This is not a book about games, nor does it imply that the cook is game for a laugh. The subtitle gives us more information; these are recipes inspired by a conversation in a butcher’s shop, about the cheapness and flavour of game, and the fact that most people don’t know how to cook it.

The surprise author of the Game Cook Book is one Rt. Hon. Norman Tebbit, a keen amateur cook. Now, while not signing up to Mr Tebbit’s political views, I think on the whole he is not a man who would misinform his readers. The book was a present from our neighbours and friend, perhaps to help us explore the cookery of the various creatures that can be shot and eaten locally.

This is an extreme version of being a locavore. The helpful introductory paragraph adds more detail. Mr Tebbit was always interested in cooking. When his wife was injured and crippled in an IRA bomb attack, he became the main cook. He lists many of my favourite recipe books as his inspirations.

In recent years, Britain’s attitude to food has changed. In a world that is becoming more eco-aware, ‘organic’ and ‘corn fed’ meat is gaining popularity at the expense of immoral, processed food. And yet strangely, ‘game’ – strictly speaking any bird or animal living wild, which is hunted for food – remains on the fringes on many people’s diet. Many people would rather pay twice the price at a supermarket for a comparatively tasteless chicken.

Tebbit, a keen amateur chef, uses The Game Cookbook to showcase his favourite game recipes featuring pheasant, partridge, duck, grouse, woodpigeon, woodcock, deer, rabbit, hare and more. Whether the recipe is a relatively simple casserole or a more challenging creation such as pheasant with apples and cream or rabbit with white wine and mushroom, Tebbit’s easy to follow style produces consistent results. The book also includes a concise guide to game, advice on kitchen equipment, handy conversion charts and individual hints on the various game included.

We have now tried a couple of recipes from the book, including a fine recipe for pigeon with cabbage and wine. I think it would also work well with goose, so we have to test that as well before I log it on this website. Having this book, I feel prepared for whatever should be brought home late at night by amateur hunters. I have to add that this is mostly rabbits and geese, and while to book has many recipes for rabbit, the goose has been ignored. I am going to try some of the other pigeon recipes with goose before I report back.

Final Score: Highly commended.

The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater

I borrowed this recipe book from my neighbour Angela and ended up buying another copy. The book recounts how Nigel has cooked through the year, talking us through his menu choices, the celebration of seasonal foods, and the way he adjusts recipes and ideas to suit. It makes great cooking easy. He suggests taste combinations, and he brings to life the joy of eating. 

The Kitchen diaries. There are several, I only have the first. 

Elizabeth David: French Provincial Cooking

This is not a modern recipe book. There are no pictures. A lot of the quantities are sketchy, and some of the writing is about the history of dishes, references to other cultures. But this is a classic. I was so pleased it was reprinted and is still available. It conjures the resonance of meals past, it brings to mind flavours and atmospheres, it tells you how to prepare ingredients just so. The adverbs are well chosen, and it encourages experimentation. 

It was first published in 1960, her fifth book. She lived in France with a French family whilst studying at the Sorbonne, and when she returned to the UK, she set herself to learn how to cook. 

The first paragraph tells you about her love of food and of discovering how to cook. ‘Staying in Toulouse a few years ago, I bought a little cookery book on a stall in the Marche aux puces held every Sunday morning in the Cathedral Square. It was a tattered little volume, and its cover attracted me.’

It is still available widely, describing how to cook simple French food well, and how to attempt the more complex dishes with a bit of knowledge. 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/137599.French_Provincial_Cooking 

Curry Easy

Madhur Jaffrey has been teaching me how to cook Indian food since I got my first flat at university. First there was a series of her recipes in the Sunday Times, or was it the Observer. The recipes looked at the authentic tastes and styles of cooking around India. Then I acquired a copy of ‘Eastern Vegetarian Cooking’, which was a sensation when it was published. 

I had enough fabulous recipes to think I didn’t need another recipe book for Indian food, but then Curry Easy came along. Bright and modern, the recipes are pared down and quick to cook. Each recipe comes with a little context and some serving suggestions. The instructions are easy to follow, and the dishes I have made so far are delicious. The index is good as well, listing recipes by ingredient as well as by name. 

Just about perfect. 

Nightingales and Roses

When I was 10 years old, we moved to Teheran. My dad is a civil engineer, and he was working for Sir Alexander Gibbs, specialising in dams and irrigation. The Shah of Iran was investing in infrastructure, building the Lar dam in the Alborz mountains, to the north of Teheran. 

We lived in north Teheran, in a dilapidated house that belonged to a dentist. It had a walnut grove, cherry trees, red and white mulberry trees, and a pomegranate tree. It was lovely. Our family employed Zara, a woman from Tabriz in the north west of Iran, to help out. She cooked us traditional Persian food. 

Particular favourites included Lubiya Polo, barbary nan, thick white yoghurt sold in blue-glazed earthenware bowls, nougat, salted pistachios, chicken stuffed with walnuts and plums. Zara showed us how to wash long-grain rice and cook it so it formed a delicious buttery crust at the bottom of the pan. I’ve longed to try these dishes again, and I’d love to revisit Iran to eat these dishes as an adult. 

It is only in the last few years that I have been able to find recipe books for Persian delicacies. Nightingales and Roses has to be the best. It is written by Maryam Sinaiee, who was born in Teheran, and only moved to the UK in 2011. She writes a food blog, and keeps alive the very strong tradition of Persian cookery. The book takes care to explain the balance of ingredients, how meals are structured and how the seasons bring their own flavours. The recipes are easy to follow, and any new techniques are well explained. 

An excellent book. 

 

The QUICK After-Work Vegetarian Cookbook

My copy of the Quick After-Work Vegetarian Cookbook is so old the binding is going, and the pages are getting a little yellow. To my shame, I only ever made two recipes in it; Mexican rice, and cheesy polenta. I have recently tried some of the other recipes and they have been excellent. The ingredients are generally easy to source locally, and the cooking techniques are easy too. There are over 120 recipes to choose from, including such classics as Fettucine with carrot carbonara, and Balaton Hotpot

I hadn’t realised, until I searched online, that this is one of a series of books, including an Indian version, one for summer ingredients and another for the winter. I am tempted but my recipe book collection is rather large. Although the recipes aren’t glamorous, they are tasty and filling; I would say that this would be an ideal first recipe book for any vegetarians, as they head off for pastures new. 

Dear Francesca

I bought this book, ‘Dear Francesca‘  for myself for Christmas, along with a bag of cooking essentials from Valvona and Crolla, an Italian shop in Leith Walk in Edinburgh. Valvona and Crolla has been an institution in Edinburgh since 1934, and when I was a student there in the 1980s, no picnic was acceptably provisioned until we bought something there. The shop is fabulous, long and with high ceilings, hung with hams and with shelves loaded with carefully chosen produce. 

I was delighted when they opened a small cafe at the back, and delighted again when they started selling their stock online. I’m now delighted a third time with this book. 

Written by Mary Contini, from one of the many Scottish Italian families in Edinburgh, this book tells the stories of the families that came from impoverished areas of rural Italy, from the countryside near Rome. They bought with them a direct knowledge of the ingredients they had produced from the land, and the recipes that can be made from them. They changed the food culture in Scotland. 

There are ice-cream parlours, fish and chip shops, delicatessens and restaurants, linked together from that period. A special treat when we went to visit my grandparents, was to call at Luca’s ice-cream shop in Musselburgh. All round Scotland, Italian families brought their values – use fresh local ingredients, waste nothing, honour tradition and quality, cook with style. 

The book is not a classical recipe book, more of a history and demonstration of regional food. Mary Contini successfully weaves together the family stories, the history of Italians in Edinburgh, the food and the recipes. Many of the ingredients called for in the book are in the Valvona and Crolla store cupboard hamper. 

I’ve tried out several recipes from the book, divine, simple and authentic. Her descriptive language for cooking techniques has taught me more than most. A good gift to myself and a good gift to others. 

 

Moro, the cookbook

I was excited when this book was published, a collection of recipes from Spain, North Africa and the Levant. The ingredients are simple, and the recipes are easy to follow. The flavours are outstanding. 

The story behind Moro, the recipe book is a tale of two people both called Sam, a husband and wife team who own Moro restaurant in London. They were already in love and inspired by Moorish influences on the food of Spain and the Mediterranean, so when they married, they took a camper-van and went on a food adventure, researching techniques, flavours, and the culture that brings the food to the table. 

In 1997, they opened their first restaurant in London, and in 2010 they opened their first tapas bar, Morito. They also have a news page on their website that occasionally showcases other recipes. There are other recipe books as well, since this first one: Casa Moro, Moro East and Morito. 

I was so excited to visit, can’t remember the year, but I can remember that I had their outstanding Seville Orange Tart. There are several of their recipes on this site from the first book, but you’ll just have to get your own copy. 

Jamie Oliver – The Naked Chef

This is the first recipe book that Jamie Oliver released, the cover has him looking fresh-faced and fashionable. I hadn’t seen the television programmes, but he was everywhere, it was hard not to be aware of the impression he was making at the time. The naked recipes aimed to strip food back to the basics of technique, good ingredients, and a twist of modernity. 

Unfortunately, he rather put my back up. I can’t work out exactly why. You don’t have to be young and trendy to cook, just like you don’t have to be a man or a woman, old or young. Anyway, I got over that little hurdle and tried out the recipes. The next hurdle is that most of the delicious fresh ingredients that he specifies are not available in the co-op, or have to be transported for miles and miles, so they are not as fresh or as fancy. 

The saving grace is, however, that if you do find a recipe in the book for which you can assemble the ingredients, the food is really delicious, and the directions are easy to follow. I haven’t got rid of the book, and I’m using it a little more. 

If you want to see what the hype was all about, and why I still have the book, it is available second-hand if you google, or available new here:

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-naked-chef/jamie-oliver/9780141042954 

 

Italian Food, by Elizabeth David

Elizabeth David started writing about food in the 1950’s, inspired to learn about and describe the food she tasted first as a student at the Sorbonne in Paris, and then when she lived in countries around the Mediterranean. Her books are not like most recipe books. The food is described in context, aimed at an audience for whom this was exotic and new. The recipes recall the regions where they come from, the fresh ingredients at the heart of the cuisine, and the places she first tasted them.

The recipes sometimes lack exactitude,  but they also offer the options for easing the recipe to account for the ingredients to hand. They teach you to cook and to taste, and to learn about food. There are few illustrations, mostly sketches of implements, and the recipes are very many. This is a book that remains influential in the development of post-war cookery in the United Kingdom, such is its ability to explain and inspire. 

I have many recipe books, but if I am stuck for something new, if I have an ingredient I want to test, I will often pull this book off the shelf, and find myself leafing through the pages. I commend it to you. 

It is available from many online book sellers. I like the review on the Waterstone’s website (click to link to the book page)