Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
It sounds like your path to becoming a chef was fairly complicated! What was it that sparked your interest in doing this as a career?
It was something that I never thought I was going to do. But, after finishing my philosophy degree, I took a year off and went to the Cordon Bleu Cookery School here in London. I loved it. So I have stayed in London ever since.
I did a short Cordon Bleu Cookery course myself – the food is very different from the kind of food I have eaten at your restaurants. How would you describe the kind of cooking that you do?
It’s not an easy question to answer, because my food doesn’t fall into a very clear category. It’s food that very much reflects the sort of ingredients that grow in a very sunny climate, so there are strong flavours and colours, and there’s a lot of freshness. There are lots of herbs and things that really enjoy the sun. It sounds a bit cheesy, but I call it sunny food!
Sounds lovely! Your first choice is On Food and Cooking, by Harold McGee, which seems to offer a scientific approach to eating.
Yes. This is the book that I use when I need to come up with a very technical solution to what I am making. Cooking can be very intuitive, but, especially with food writing, you often need to get to grips with what it is that you are actually doing, so that you can have a deeper understanding of it. This is a very technical manual. Let’s say that I need to see what happens during the process of steaming, or poaching, or frying; I always go to this book. McGee is very clear and to the point. Despite the fact that he is quite technical, it’s never boring.
How did you first hear about him?
I got this book as a present from a good friend of mine a few years ago. It is a sort of a classic. It is the most immediate reference book that many chefs go to when they need to know something technical. For example, Heston Blumenthal is quoted on the cover, as are a few other big-name chefs. There are a lot of chemistry and scientific details involved, which I like.
Deborah Madison is another American cook – in fact, she’s one of America’s leading cooks. Your next choice is her book, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.
A few years ago, I got the brief to write a vegetarian column for The Guardian. I’m not a vegetarian, so I wanted to write the column as a challenge – and I must say it was a bit of a challenge. The idea of having to cook exclusively with vegetables was initially a difficult concept. To start with, I had plenty of ideas, but after about six months I realised I was sort of running out of things.
This book gives you loads of pointers about flavour combinations, and ways of putting vegetables together. It’s not groundbreaking; it’s not anything you haven’t heard before. But it is very extensive. Deborah Madison uses everything and goes over all methods and all the ingredients. The writing is very light and simple – not at all challenging. Often, you get food writers that make things a little bit complicated, or too long-winded, but she is very simple and very clear.
What is one of your favourite recipes of hers?
I love her gratin recipes – all the recipes in her section on gratin are very good. I think in one of them she uses rice, so she does throw in things that are slightly unusual, but it’s very approachable.
Did she inspire you to create new vegetarian recipes? Because you are enjoying huge success with your latest book, Plenty, in which all the recipes are vegetarian.
Plenty is really a result of my Guardian column, and it offers a selection of the recipes I’ve presented there. But people like Madison and other food writers inspire me because, in many ways, they are the antithesis to restaurant chefs, who write very technically. The Green Cook Book is another great book she did, and, with all of them, the general idea is that you cook not to show off but rather to feed and nourish. I love that idea.
Let’s go to the other side of the coin with your next choice, The River Cottage Meat Book, by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
There are a million cook books that I like. I have a huge library full of books, but I wanted to choose a selection of books that convey different things. What I like about this book, which is similar to my previous two choices, is that it is very serious and thorough.
Yotam Ottolenghi’s path to the world of cooking and baking, where he is now a popular authority, has been anything but straightforward. Having completed a Masters degree in philosophy and literature whilst working on the news desk of an Israeli daily, he then made a radical career shift, moving to London in 1997. He started as an assistant pastry chef at the Capital, and then worked at Kensington Place, Launceston Place, Maison Blanc and Baker and Spice before starting his own eponymous group of restaurants/food shops, with branches in Notting Hill, Islington, Belgravia and Kensington.
Barbecues, picnics, tea on the beach. Twenty-four photos of eating outside from around the world, taken by Magnum photographers. Includes shots by Capa, Cartier-Bresson
"I know it's wrong to covet my neighbour's ox, so I make a serious effort not to. My neighbour's chips are a different matter. For here is an unarguable truth: Food always tastes better when it's come off somebody else's plate"
Absolutely everything you might ever want to know about the techniques of chicken butchering, and the sensibility required for it. With pictures. If you don't want to know, look elsewhere
We live in an age of classy, costly kitchen equipment yet less and less time is spent cooking. With better paid jobs than our grandmothers, "perhaps we’re spending so much on our kitchens precisely because we’re using them less"
