A talented writer, broadcaster and campaigner, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is widely known for his uncompromising commitment to seasonal, ethically produced food. His books, journalism and series for Channel 4 have earned him a huge popular following.

Hugh started living in the original River Cottage in rural Dorset in 1998, determined to start growing and rearing some of his own food. His steep learning curve was documented in the Escape to River Cottage series (1999), which won him a big audience. Following this success, and the publication of The River Cottage Cookbook (2001) which won several awards, he was able to establish River Cottage HQ near Bridport in 2004.

Originally a collection of mucky cow sheds, the property was transformed into a rustic, welcoming venue with a professional kitchen, thriving vegetable garden and small collection of livestock. It became the location for a range of River Cottage events and courses designed to promote the “grow your own” philosophy and provide an environment where people could discuss, eat and learn about really good, well-produced food. It was the base for the fourth series, Beyond River Cottage (2004)

In 2004, Hugh published The River Cottage Meat Book to wide acclaim. It has become the definitive meat cookery manual for a new generation and won the André Simon Food Book of the Year Award in 2004.

Newly published in North America are a series of smart, novel-sized River Cottage Handbooks. You can find out more about Hugh and the River Cottage farm, books and TV show at www.rivercottage.net

On Cookbooker, I’ve written about my love of The River Cottage Meat book in some detail; it’s one of my transformative cookbooks.

1. What was the first cookbook you owned?

Cooking is a Game You Can Eat by Faye Maschler. A brilliant and fun collection of easy kids recipes – including how to customise a tin of baked beans, and one of the best and easiest fudge recipes I know.

2.    What cookbook would you say had the greatest impression on you?

Very hard to choose between French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David, and The Constance Spry Cookery Book. Every half-serious cook should have both within easy reach.

3. Could you talk a little about any recent cookbooks you’ve found particularly interesting or inspiring?

I’m really going nuts for Yotam Ottolenghi – both the original cook book [Ottolenghi: The Cookbook] and his new book, Plenty [Amazon UK link]. It’s  odd because his style is so different from mine – but perhaps that’s what appeals! Yotam’s recipes are so seductive and enticing, so thoughtful about aromatics and combinations of textures. For a while I thought it all seemed a bit complicated. But once you’ve lined up the ingredients it all comes together very nicely, usually without too much fuss. I totally get it now. In particular I’d say it’s changing the way I use spices, seeds and nuts in my own cooking.

What’s next for you in the realm of cookbooks?

I’ve just started work on the next River Cottage cook book. I don’t want to give the whole game away, but perhaps I can reveal that here won’t be a huge amount of meat and fish involved…

David is the author of The New Portuguese Table: Exciting Flavors from Europe’s Western Coast, which won the 2010 IACP First Book/Julia Child Award and for which he received the 2009 National Leadership Award from the Portuguese-American Leadership Council of the United States (PALCUS). When not agonizing over his next book, he writes about everything from champagne to Welsh food to high tea to being a super taster for publications including the New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Saveur, Bon Appétit, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Pastry Art & Design, Food Arts, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Post, Charlotte Observer, epicurious.com, and Ridgefield Magazine, where he was the food editor for three years. He’s also the resident food geek at The Morning News. David is a frequent guest on the Martha Stewart Living Radio program, Living Today, hosted by Mario Bosquez, and often reads his work on public radio’s food program The Splendid Table hosted by Lynne Rossetto Kasper. He’s a regular guest on WTNH-TV and was profiled on Radical Sabbatical on Fine Living Network.

Do you remember the first cookbook you owned?

Yes. It was the Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls and it had a boy – I believe he was frosting a chocolate cake – he had a chef’s hat on and the girl was looking on with such admiration.

So that was an influence on you?

Absolutely. My mom used to work at a grocery store – Fernandes – she was a courtesy booth girl. She brought it home one day and I remember flipping through it and just loving it. When you’re Portugese you always have two kitchens, because you never want to mess up the one upstairs since guests will be looking at it. We had ours downstairs and that’s where my mom did a lot of her cooking, and that’s where I learned to cook from my mother and grandmother. Continue Reading »

Following up on my last post (books I’m currently reading and cooking from), I’m posting about my stack of ‘to-do’ Cookbooks. These are books I’ve been intrigued by, but have yet to delve into.

All the books noted below have been provided as review copies by publishers (when I’m approached, I ask publishers only to send books I’m actually interested in – it would do nobody any good for me to attempt to review a Rachel Ray title, for example, as it’s just not my thing. I may also experiment with reviewers other than me in the near future.).

Sausage, Victoria Wise

I’ve been very much interested in sausage the past few years, since my eyes were opened to the potential of the food by two things: first, here in Nanaimo there’s a great sausage store, aptly named ‘The Nanaimo Sausage House’. They hand-make a wide variety of sausages (the store smells amazing) and I’ve been regularly buying their Breakfast and French Breakfast sausage for years. Secondly, when I bought a quarter pig this winter, a substantial part of it came in the form of sausages. I was surprised when I cooked the first batch, as they were not like the sausages I was familar with – instead of a fairly smooth, homogeneous interior, they were very rustic – roughly ground meat, flecked with a good percentage of fat and only a tiny amount of seasoning. They tasted intensely porky, and have been incredibly useful – not only have I cooked them for breakfast, but I’ve used them as a handy source of ground pork. They are excellent uncased and cooked in Spaghetti Bolognese, for example.

The idea of making my own sausages had seemed intimidating before; I had visions of complicated machinery and wrestling with intestines. Sausage aims to demistify and simplify the whole business. Wise promises to have you creating a wide variety of sausages, all without casings and with no grinding or stuffing machinery required. Considering she has vegetarian sausages (wrapped in cabbage leaves), as well as veggie and meat burgers, and meatloaf, her definition of sausage is fairly broad. Purists may be appalled, but I’m intrigued: I can see this book being a good ‘gateway’ to the world of sausage, and perhaps working my way up to the whole grinder and casing business one day. If so, her first book, American Charcuterie, is probably a good one to graduate to (though there are a number of others out there: charcuterie has seen a renaissance the last few years). Continue Reading »

This is the first of an irregular series of articles about cookbooks I’m working through. These are the books that have come off the bookshelf and are either being actively cooked from or are being added to my ‘to-cook’ list for the very near future. I’ll also be writing soon about new books I’m interested in, but which haven’t made it into active rotation yet. If any books have been provided as review copies by publishers, this will be noted in the article.

The Perfect Scoop, David Lebovitz

The original ice cream tour de force, I’m just getting into this as summer approaches (or at least threatens to approach, considering how damp it’s been on the West Coast so far). I made his Philadelphia-style chocolate with a 66% cacao chocolate I’ve been trying out, rather than the unsweetened chocolate he recommends and it was almost too dark for my kids; a very adult flavour. I have a feeling they might have balked at the original version, but as an adult dessert it gets high marks.

He’s comprehensive enough to provide Philadephia-style recipes for the major flavours, which is handy if you’re in a hurry (recipes with a classic custard take longer to cool before putting in your ice-cream maker). He also has a great introductory section which goes into detail about equipment, ingredients and techniques, including lots of custard advice.

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I’ve had a laptop in my kitchen for several years now. At first it was mostly for checking email and doing a little work when I was away from my home office, but pretty soon I started to use it while cooking – I keep family recipes on it and use Epicurious and other recipe websites regularly.

However, most people I know don’t keep computers in the kitchen. And let’s face it, when you’re cooking do you really want to get tomato sauce splattered on the machine that also holds your quarterly expense reports?

With the rise of e-book readers and smartphones, there are lots of options now for technology in the kitchen, and my laptop is rapidly being supplanted by my iPhone and the new iPad. Here’s a roundup of the current state of the art.

E-book or App?

Mario Batali e-book on the iPad

What’s the difference between an e-book and an App? An e-book, at least for now, is an electronic copy of a paper book. Usually the publisher generates an e-book file from the same material used to make the paper book, so what you see on the screen is very similar to what you see on paper. An app, on the other hand, is a software application, just like a computer game or word processor is a software application. Which means it’s not limited to looking, or acting, like a book.

The most well known e-book reader is Amazon’s Kindle, which seeks to replicate the ink-on-paper experience by using a type of electronic ink. Many readers praise the Kindle for this – it’s easy on the eyes and provides a long battery life.

However, for now at least, the Kindle is restricted to only providing an electronic copy of the paper book experience. Yes, there’s some searchability, and a few other bells and whistles (it can read out loud to you). But a book is pretty much just a book with a Kindle. You turn pages, you read the words. It even requires a book-light for nighttime reading.

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My review copy of David Lebovitz’s newest book, Ready for Dessert arrived recently, and I’ve just started baking from it (the Ginger Cake is amazing, by the way). In our recent interview with him he said “The Chocolate Chip Cookies are a standout. I’ve been making them for over two decades and I’ve not found a better one.” Aha, I thought, when the book arrived – an opportunity for a bake-off!

I set out to test his recipe against two recent contenders for the top cookie honors – Thomas Keller’s recipe from Ad Hoc At Home (of which he writes “this is our version of what is arguably the best cookie ever”), and the famous New York Times recipe from 2008, which was developed after an epic search by David Leite, of Leite’s Culinaria, who called these “the consummate chocolate chip cookie.”

This is a completely subjective test, of course, but I did rope in some tasters to help out. And who could pass up a chance to eat a lot of great cookies in the service of (pseudo) science?

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What Makes a Good Cookbook?

By Celia Sack

What makes a good cookbook? The answer to this question is the one on which my business depends.

A good cookbook will be your road map, your sherpa, through the hills, dales, and steep climbs a recipe may take you on. A well-written recipe will not only instruct you in ingredients, measurements, and cooking times, but will teach you skills you can use over a lifetime in the kitchen. A great cookbook will explain recipes in a straightforward, easy-to-understand way, without dumbing down the process. Shortcuts are fine once you’ve mastered the longer version, but like hiking, it’s better to gain confidence by taking the marked trail before veering off into uncharted territory.

Aesthetics are important, too, if for no other reason than simple inspiration. I can’t help myself: I always judge a book by its cover. A beautiful cookbook cover calls to me. It seduces me. I can’t resist opening it. Once inside, I look for some telltale signs. Some people only like cookbooks with photographs – fair enough. If that’s what inspires you, go with it. Personally, I get inspired by an author’s headnotes: her father and mother made Devil’s Thighs together every Sunday night while the kids mixed martinis, or an author’s recipe for blackberry jam cake with sherry sauce that begins with the history of German winemakers’ emigration to Missouri.

I also look for recipes that are one page long, two at most. My skill level and time allotment doesn’t allow for much more than that, and if I buy a cookbook I’ll never use, I’ll just get down on myself. When choosing a cookbook, set your goals and know your limitations when you walk into the bookstore.

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