Allan Bay - A Discovery.

One of this year's parcels under the Christmas tree was a slim volume by an italian food writer by the name of Allan Bay. The book is called 'Cuochi si diventa 2' (which loosely translates as 'Cooks are made, not born'), and is pretty good. The man himself has an interesting history - having spent much of his adult life selling machinery to manufacture light bulbs, in his mid-forties he decided to become a food journalist, rapidly gained a foothold in a number of reputable italian publications, and before he knew it, had been appointed as Professor of cooking at the University of Pavia. Which is presumably a lot more fun than spending one's days pondering the vicissitudes of light-bulb-making machines.

 His style is irreverent and enthusiastic, and he has a curiosity about food which leads to a number of worthwhile culinary departures, all of which are based on a solid foundation of traditional recipes and techniques. The book is mostly a list of actual dishes, but is interspersed, generally amusingly, with sections of 'rants' (I approve...he calls these items 'Political incorrectness') and  'raves', which are his personal culinary weaknesses... He also has a series of one-pagers which he calls ' Si fa, ma non si dice', which means ' It's done, but not talked about' -  which are commercial ingredients which come in bottles and tins and which most self-respecting cook would never admit to having on their pantry shelves...but, of course, we all do. Things like stock cubes, and Worcester sauce, and Colmans Mustard. Allan Bay's list includes things like Campbells tinned soup, and Nestlé sweetened condensed milk. I thoroughly approve - although, I'm immediately reminded of the disapproval at Belforte that met my admission last Christmas that the rosemary sauce I'd just served for fettucine included a teaspoon of chicken stock powder (Knorr); sometimes, it's better just to lie!

Tonight's dinner:

 Tart of Celeriac, Gruyère & Pancetta.

Salsiccie with garlic-roast tomatoes.

Lemon Curd ice-cream.

Paula Wolfert

...is the choice for this year's Christmas menus. It wouldn't be entirely accurate to say that I've just re-discovered her, since her 'Cooking of South West France' has never gone long unused...but I've just got hold of second-hand copies of her 'Mediterranean Cooking' and 'World of Food', both of which are excellent. The former is like coming across an old friend, since I'd forgotten that we had a copy of the book in Greece about twenty five years ago, but it got 'stored' in a steamer trunk during the move from one house to another, at one point, and never again saw the light of day. For all I know, it's still in Alex Koundouris' outhouse, in Syros...along with some pictures (of which I was quite fond, I remember) and a large blue glass platter that had come from Christina Karamanlis. Ah, well...

Wolfert is an extremely good resource. Not herself an instinctive creator of new dishes, she is - or certainly was, at any rate - excellent at hunting out good things from other people. In her writing, she comes across as perhaps slightly humourless, but for all that is pretty thorough in her approach. I suppose my only criticism of the recipes would be her tendency to take them verbatim from her source and not subject them to a common-sense filter - for instance, she will happily have you go through the laborious process of making pats of thyme butter, only for them to be added subsequently to something else in a hot pan; which of course means it was a complete waste of time to have combined the butter and herbs into pats in the first place, since they can just be added separately to the pan and will have exactly the same result. Oh, and there was another recipe where she talked about stirring some ingredients together with a wooden spoon until thoroughly amalgamated 'always stirring in the same direction'. Hmmm. Perhaps not. That sort of instruction IMHO falls into the category of whistling while you stir in order to ward off the evil spirits.

Bearing in mind the one caveat always to subject them to a 'does-this-make-sense' filter, the recipes in general are first class. Already, in the past few days, we've had an excellent tourte of guinea fowl and artichokes, an apple clafouti in blackened cabbage leaves, fettucine with anchovies and toasted breadcrumbs, Wolfert's version of chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, and risotto with dry sherry and parmesan. And Christmas is yet young!

Tonight's Dinner:

Sformatino of Roquefort & Walnuts

Duck, Boned and roast with Bitter Orange under the skin; Courgettes, sautéed with Thyme.

Christmas Pudding; Brandy Butter.

Richard Olney...

...is someone to whom I owe an apology. Several years ago - having known his name for ages, but never actually having read anything he'd written - I finally got round to investing in one of his earlier books 'Simple French Cooking', and was so underwhelmed by the first recipe of his I tried that the book went straight onto the unreachable upper shelves, and I think I wrote rather a scathing blog-post at the same time, in which I consigned him to Outer Darkness.

I shouldn't have done.

The Technical Department recently referred me to an article Olney once wrote on the subject of Bouillabaisse, in which he so perfectly captured the essence of his experience ('memory distilling the limpid blue sky and the intermingled scents of the sea air, the bouillabaisse, and the cool fruit of the wine into an abstract symbol of well-being') that we spent the next half hour reminiscing about lunches of grilled fish and sea urchins consumed in clifftop tavernas, and endless wine-filled afternoons in the Greek islands of thirty years ago, before the terrible influx of cement-mixers and mass tourism.

And so, 'Simple French Cooking' was brought down from the shelves, dusted off, and I gave it another go. Quite apart from the recipes, Olney's writing is a real pleasure...and there's a splendid section on 'improvisation' where he acknowledges the value of recipes committed to print, but at the same time says that the point of understanding the rules of cooking is so that you can make it up as you go along and work, to good effect, with whatever you have to hand (leftovers, that week's bargains in the market, whatever happens to be at the back of the fridge..). Reading between the lines, I suspect that Olney was one of that tribe of bons viveurs who lived on the smell of an oil-rag, but did so with a richness and appreciation of the truly good things in life that escapes many people who have never had to worry about how to pay the next fuel bill!

The reason for my earlier disappointment, it now seems clear, was my own fault - I'd made the mistake of choosing a recipe from his dessert section, and in practice Olney (much like Pierre Franey, and in fact probably also like Dr Pomiane himself) was not a man for desserts. His preference was clearly for some decent cheese and another bottle of good claret, and the grudging and awkward appearance of desserts in the book at all was almost certainly against his better judgement and at the insistence of of a stubborn editor.

An example of his skill can be found in the perfection of his version of scrambled eggs with cheese: 6 eggs, 3 oz grated Gruyère, and 5 fl oz of vermouth which has been simmered with 2 minced garlic cloves for half an hour beforehand, and then strained before being added to the eggs and cheese; seasoning to taste; whisk gently, whilst cooking with 2 oz of butter for ten minutes or so in a double boiler, until it has the consistency of lightly whipped cream. Serve, garnished lightly with chopped parsley.

Not grand, probably not dinner-partyable, but ye gods, is it delicious!

Tonight's Dinner:

Basil Risotto.

Lamb, stuffed with Anchovies; Fava beans à la crème.

Roast Figs and Raspberries in Port.

Quote of the week...

Nothing whatsoever to do with food, but probably the reason why I end up having so many arguments with the security morons at the airport:

"However good a law is, it is invariably clumsy. This is why its application should be disputed or questioned. And the practice of doing this corrects its clumsiness and serves justice."

It comes from John Berger's excellent novel 'From A to X' - a perfect gem, which I've just finished.

And the other book which rates highly on my list, currently, is Raymond Blanc's 'Blanc Vite', which forms the underpinning to our ongoing weight-loss regime. I've had a copy for many years, and a number of recipes from it have been regulars on my list for some time. It was written after Blanc had had a mild heart attack, I think, and focuses significantly on healthy eating. In practice - and if you can ignore the tedious pontifications of his attendant dietician which pepper the text - it works excellently within a low-carb diet. Where he uses fructose, I substitute Splenda, and in place of marscapone or crème fraiche I use double cream. The recipes are good and interesting, and it means being able to eat well even as the pounds fall off - which they appear to be doing. He's a little one-noted when it comes to desserts in this book - many variations on stewed fruit, in practice - but it's easy enough to vary them in menu planning by the inclusion of dietarily sound things like soufflés and phyllo tarts and mousses. So highly do I think of the book that I've bought a second copy to take with me back to Italy next week - amazingly, the going rate for a second-hand copy (of the paperback!) was £104 on both Amazon and Abe, so I was pleased to be able to snaffle a copy on ebay for a tenner!

All the indications are that Massimo has indeed worked magic re the contract for the fourteenth century farmhouse in Pisa - although the situation was much more complicated than we'd realised, and has involved a convocation of the church curia, and the demise of Pisa Football Team (with much wailing and gnashing of teeth from its loyal fan base). All being well, we can sign a lease next week, once a few final legalities have been dealt with...

Tonight's dinner:

Sweet & sour salad of Cucumber and Prawns, with toasted Sesame seeds.

Blanquette of Lamb. Cavolo Nero, sautéed with Garlic.

Strawberry Soufflé.

Anna del Conte

I'm revisiting Anna del Conte's earlier works, which I have in Italy in the form of 'Secrets from an Italian Kitchen' and 'Entertaining al'Italiana', and which have now been combined and republished in a new format, under the title 'Amaretto, Apple Cake and Artichokes'.

Highly, highly recommended.

With frequent literary references and the provenance for her recipes often reliably cited as specific eighteenth and nineteenth century italian authors, del Conte is the italian version of Jane Grigson, with all the four-square stature that that suggests. These recipes date back a few decades now, and there are some things which a decent modern editor (if such a thing even exists in food publishing, these days - which I seriously doubt) would probably change - the repeated use of ring moulds for presentation purposes, for example, smacks rather worryingly of the late seventies, and I suspect that del Conte's sweet tooth would be reined-in a little if the recipes were being produced for the first time now (she uses a third more sugar in her meringue mixture than I feel comfortable with, for one thing, and her recipe for chilled zabaglione with strawberry purée is good, but would be even better if the sweetness was reduced significantly).

Marcella Hazan comes across as much more of a practical 'hoofer' than the rather more intellectual Ms del Conte, and I wonder how they got on in practice - Anna was the editor for the first UK version of Marcella's 'Classic Italian Cooking', about thirty years ago, so it's to be presumed that they did actually have to deal with each other. It may be that La Hazan is more accessible for somebody who is still feeling their way, but for anybody who is confident in the kitchen, then Anna del Conte has a great deal to offer. Particular gems from the current collection are her recipes for Fennel with Pistachio Sauce, and for Lemon Risotto (which I noted from bookshop browsing that Nigella Lawson quoted in one of her many books, and then proceeded comprehensively to make a complete dogs dinner of the recipe!) ; del Conte's recipe for Celery purée is good, but you need to use either proper italian celery or else the organic variety, as ordinary british celery doesn't have enough flavour; and her sauce for Duck with Balsamic vinegar works much better with roast pork tenderloin than with duck breast (in general, I wouldn't bother with Italian recipes for duck - the quality of beast available in Italy is generally quite poor, and so no decent recipes have evolved for dealing with it).

Tonight's dinner:

Sformatino of Fennel, with Gorgonzola Sauce

Lamb Mentonais, with Endive braised with Orange

'White' Tiramisu (made with White Rum and Milk, rather than Kahlua, and incorporating crushed Meringue, along with the Savoiard biscuits.)

It's a day...

..for watching the rain monotonously soak the garden, dripping from the few leaves that still cling to the pergola, and from the skeletal branches of the Cacci tree. In the distance, the rain is dimly audible beating incessantly on the lanterna over the central staircase, and from the front of the house the sound is of overflowing gutters and of downpipes splashing noisily into the street.

Definitely it's a day for staying indoors as much as possible, and my exchange this morning with the damp flower-seller in Borgo Stretto was limited to a hurried agreement that yes, the weather was awful, although not as cold today as yesterday - except it was pretty nippy first thing this morning, come to think of it - and that'll be quattordici euro, grazie! And then back home, pdq, to warmth and reviving coffee.

A day for browsing the latest additions to the kitchen library: Pino Luongo's 'Tuscan in the Kitchen', and the last in the red-gingham collection of recipe books (which are a bit questionable, frankly, but turn up the occasional gem - this particular one, of recipes from Switzerland, has a recipe for apples baked with cream and brown sugar which is simplicity itself, yet deliciously indulgent). The Tuscan book looks good - although I imagine its eccentric decision not to specify quantities for ingredients must have most readers confused if not actually irritated. It's the sort of detail you don't notice when skim-reading in the bookshop, and only find out once you've got it home. I christened it last night with a papardelle sauce made from garlic, aubergine, peas, pancetta, mushrooms, red wine, and tomatoes - pretty much in whatever quanities I felt like - all cooked down into a thick and delicious sludge. It was good; the bitterness of the aubergine and the earthiness of the mushrooms offset the tomatoes very well (sometimes tomato can be a bit one-dimensionally sweet, IMHO). For next time, I think I'll add chopped olives and take it more in the direction of a puttanesca .

The Brazilians are in, doing things to the Salone and the master-bathroom-to-be ( hitherto referred to as 'the chaos room', in deference to the Technical Dept's use of it as a junk-cum-lumber-cum-workroom), in preparation for the tiler to arrive and start laying new floors on Monday. The Brazilians are a lot better house-trained than they were when they first started turning up (and god knows, they should be, after however many years it's been now)...but even so, there was still a trail of cement footprints down the centre of the staircase after they'd left*. All things considered,it's probably a good thing I'll be in Serbia for most of next week, when the worst of the floor-laying maelstrom should be happening!

*since writing that, the TD has confessed that in fact they were his footprints. Definitely a good thing that I'm heading for Belgrade!

Tonight's Dinner:

Pithiviers, stuffed with Cod

Grilled Duck Breast, with sautéed Aubergine

Bitter Orange Soufflé

The Grandfather of all Food-bloggers....

Pierre Franey. A name that was certainly well known in the States in the seventies and eighties - and may still be now, for all I know - but which achieved little renown further afield. I first came across his 'Sixty Minute Gourmet..' books in the late eighties, I think, and what a breath of old-school fresh air they were, too! Sensible, practical, knowledgeable, down-to-earth recipes for seriously good food that could be made and consumed as part of a normal daily existence....

Franey came from a small town in Burgundy, exposed to the domestic and cultural culinary influences that would have been normal in a french country town in the pre-war years, and went on to work first at the Restaurant Thenint on the Place de la Republique in Paris, and subsequently to train at the Restaurant Drouant. Several years later, and with a Boys-Own-Story quality to it all, he found himself cooking at the French Pavilion at The New York World's Fair in 1939, and stayed on in the States as a war refugee, after France had fallen to the Germans. The forties and fifties saw him cooking at Le Pavillon, in New York, and subsequently at La Côte Basque, and then at some point in the sixties he was invited to contribute a daily food column to the newly re-vamped New York Times. Hence, his position arguably as the first foodblogger....

I think at some point he did a stint as one of the early TV chefs, but for the most part - in addition to the inevitably ephemeral columns - his output was limited to a small raft of books: something on Classic French Cooking, written in collaboration with Craig Claiborne, a couple of books produced in conjunction with Bryan Miller, who was the then restaurant critic for the New York Times, and some TV spin-offs like 'Cooking with Friends' and 'Cooking in France'. But, to my mind, his most valuable contribution were the two 'Sixty Minute' books, '60-Minute Gourmet' and, not surprisingly 'More 60-Minute Gourmet' - both of which are distillations of what he felt had been the best from his daily columns. The recipes are excellent, and the overall approach is efficient and no-nonsense: unexpected gems like a purée of Broccoli or of Green Beans - which appear inexplicably to have sunk without trace subsequently - or his myriad recipes for various shellfish, or quick and easy methods for dealing with classic and possibly otherwise daunting dishes. The second volume introduced a section on desserts - somewhat grudgingly, I suspect; he reads to me as definitely from the 'good cheese and some more red wine' school of diners. Otherwise, although all is good, the really stellar stuff comes when he writes about fish and crustaceans.

More than just his recipes, though, I find I resonate with his general approach. Having owned the book already for many years, it was only recently that I got round to reading the introduction to '60-Minute Gourmet', and found myself repeatedly tapping the page with a forefinger of solid agreement at what he was saying:

• Buy for your kitchen the best equipment you can afford; two knives will suffice to start with, rather than the whole set available - but make sure they are two good knives!
• Be organised in the way you cook: to quote Franey himself: "Always keep in mind that clutter is is distracting, a hindrance, and an enemy of time"
• Clear up as you go along...
• Always have a can of tomatoes in the cupboard, and a tube of tomato paste....
• Leftovers are a wonderful thing, and should be treated as the makings of future meals..
• Plan menus so that you aren't in the kitchen for great tranches of social time...
  

Etc, etc, etc.....

In fact, there's much in Franey's approach which reminds me of the great Doctor Pomiane himself, not least Franey's choreographed description of the steps involved in making a fish chowder, which has distinct similarities with Pomiane's famous riff in 'Cooking in Ten Minutes' that begins 'When you get home, before you even take off your coat, put a large pot of water on the stove to boil: whatever you're cooking, you'll need it at some point!"

In his introduction to 'Cuisine Rapide', one of the two books he wrote with Bryan Miller, Pierre Franey extols a style of home cooking which is 'efficient, accessible, and refined'. I think Pomiane would have approved of that, as he would have approved of Franey's clear belief - not explicitly articulated, but obvious from his writing - that good food is there not to be centre-stage but to provide the background to good conversations, good friends and the things that make life worth living.

Which is, of course, as it should be.


Tonight's Dinner:

Pasta Oscura, with an agrodolce Ragu

Salmon & Lemon Fishcakes; steamed Pak Choy

Apple and Blackberry Pies.

A Gem........

One of the packages left under the tree for me this Christmas was an early edition of Alice B Toklas' renowned cook-book. Although, over the years, I've occasionally come across references to recipes from it , I confess I've never before actually seen a copy - and it is an absolute delight! Doubly so in that it is an early enough edition to contain 'her' recipe for 'Haschich Fudge', printed before the publishers realised what it actually was and hastily pulled it from all later versions....

In fact, it was a recipe given to Toklas by a friend of hers, an artist called Byron (or Brion, or Brian - nobody seems entirely clear on the detail) Gysin (or Gysen, as he appears in the Penguin edition). Alice B, in her innocence, included it in full, and the people at Penguin - presumably, equally wet behind the ears when it came to recreational drugs - faithfully reproduced it in the published work. It was only when some slightly more savvy reviewers got to grips with the text that the truth emerged, and the red faces that followed must have been a sight to behold....

To anybody who lived through the seventies, the recipe is nothing more nor less than a variation of Hash Brownies!

It's too long to include here in full, but the highlights of the text - which Gysin airily describes as something 'which anyone could whip up on a rainy day' - are as follows:

'This is the food of Paradise - of Baudelaire's Artificial Paradises: it might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies' Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR*........' .'.....Euphoria and brilliant storms of laughter, ecstatic reveries and extensions of one's personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected. Almost anything Saint Teresa did you can do better if you can bear to be ravished by un évanouissement réveillé.......'

* Daughters of the American Revolution.

And on, and on...

The whole thing is made even more delicious by the fact that the recipe is featured in a chapter of 'recipes from friends', where the other contributors are people like 'The Late Lord Berners', 'The Princesse de Rohan', and various, presumably high profile, knights of the realm. It's hard to tell, but Alice B doesn't immediately strike one as somebody with a great sense of humour, and it seems unlikely that she appreciated the joke once it had been revealed. One could say it serves her right for lazy editing.......

Ho hum.....

Tonight's dinner:

Tart of Aubergine, Anchovies and Parmesan

Saltimbocca alla Romana, with Carrots in Marsala

Orange & Ricotta Cheesecake

Falling towards Christmas.....

Christmas appears these days to have become largely about food - or at least, food is a significant manifestation of the general excess that surrounds the celebration of Christmas. Perhaps it was always so......but I suspect not. If it had been, then a good deal more food-based traditions would have sprung up around it than have done, and the raft of recipe books which focus exclusively on Christmas would have more to talk about than they patently manage to do. Every year, more appear in the bookshops, falsely promising the answer to the perennial challenge of what to cook for an entire household 'at celebration' for a period of ten days or so.... and a skim of their contents is enough to show them for what they are: shams!
Oh, they include enough recipes to get you through the period alright, but there's nothing particularly Christmassy about them, as they desperately grapple with the fact that traditional Christmas fare is effectively limited to three or four things: Turkey (we always have Goose...); Christmas Pudding; Mince Pies; and Christmas Cake. Beyond that, it's pretty much a free-for-all.......and inevitably the writers of the books substitute 'luxury' as a stand-in for 'celebratory' and the resulting onslaught of references to sturgeon, and smoked salmon, and caviar, and aspic, and crystallised ginger, and preserved fruits is enough to make your liver take fright merely at the thought of such unashamed binging.

Elizabeth David's 'Christmas', though is quite another matter - as you'd expect. She manages to avoid a bah-humbug approach, and at the same time doesn't fall into the slightly hysterical nuances of 'surviving' the experience that have become an accepted norm these days for dealing with complicated social devoirs....('How to survive the family holiday...', or 'How to survive your Mother-in- Law coming to stay', or other equally silly themes, when the sensible response to such situations if they fill you with such dread must be 'Don't have one', and 'Don't ask her'!).

ED's approach to Christmas is exactly the no-nonsense practical one that you would expect. The reader is left with the strong suspicion the David doesn't have much time for Christmas, but recognises that there isn't much opportunity for ignoring it unless one chooses to become a complete hermit. Despite the fact that she refers to most Christmas food as 'cloying', the book nevertheless provides methods for dealing appropriately with Turkey and Goose, as well as suggestions concerning Beef, Pork, and Duck, Pheasant and Tongue, for those who've had enough of the afore-mentioned. She hasn't made Christmas Pudding in thirty-five years, and hopes 'never to have to do so again', but nevertheless includes two different versions, both of which come with the David guarantee of quality. Likewise, Mincemeat, Brandy Butter, and Stuffing......... And all interspersed with the usual pithy bonmots that make her take on life so crisply refreshing (well, at least for those of us who have reached grumpy-old-person time of life, at any rate....)

ED's particular opinion of Christmas fare, though, is probably best summed up by her aside that one of the most positive thoughts about Christmas is that 'when Christmas morning dawns, for four whole days there won't be any shopping to do....'coupled with her statement that 'if I had my way.....my Christmas Day eating and drinking would consist of an omelette and cold ham and a nice bottle of wine at lunchtime, and a smoked salmon sandwich with a glass of champagne on a tray in bed in the evening!' Which strikes a chord.

And I can't finish without quoting in full her wonderfully jaundiced put-down of those nattily creative ideas for dealing with leftovers that have graced every 'Golden Hands for Cookery' publication practically since Christmas began: '...if any of those marauding bands of persons who apparently roam the countryside calling themselves unexpected guests appear at my door - well, they'll have to make do with an omelette and a glass of wine to help them on their way to their next victims. I think I'd feel less nervous anyway offering them this sort of food than I would if I'd made a lot of little surprises with names like Pantry Shelf Fishbits and Fantastic Belgian Meatballs and Festa Turkey Nut-Logs. I didn't make them up, I swear I didn't, I read about them in a desperately sad American cookery book all about leftovers'.

Read it! I promise, you'll laugh out loud at least once every three pages, and smile wryly in agreement at least once in between.

Tonight's (still resolutely unfestive) menu:

Funghi Trifolati.

Baked Bream, with Anchovy sauce. Endive wilted in Butter.

Cherry Tarts

Book of the Year......

It seems that everybody goes in for this as the end of the year approaches, so I suppose I'd better throw in my six penn'orth, and shout about My Book of 2007.....

In fact, this isn't one book, but the two books which have (so-far) been produced by one person: Galton Blackiston. My parents went for lunch at Morston Hall (Galton Blackiston's Norfolk restaurant) to mark my father's not-quite-'zero' birthday in June, with the end result that I received copies of both volumes of GB's oeuvre downhill of that lunch - which was apparently excellent in every way. I have to confess, I'd never heard of him before - although when I googled him, he seems quite high-profile... (a result of not having a TV, I suppose - a lot of this stuff passes one by!)

I was initially discouraged by the enthusiastic puffs for these books from Delia Smith and Simon Hopkinson respectively - and, to be honest, the appearance of their names writ large on the front covers would normally have dissuaded me from looking further, had I merely seen them on the shelves in a bookshop. This is one occasion, however, when a man shouldn't be judged by the company he keeps........and my initial lukewarm reaction was soon and very definitely overcome.

Quite a few months after they arrived, neither book has actually made it to the bookshelf, since they've been pretty much 'in use' for that entire period. I've now worked my way through a significant chunk of 'A Return to Real Cooking...' and am making forays also into 'Cooking at Morston Hall..' and have found the experience very rewarding, and definitely more-ish. There have been a couple of rather ordinary things - his meat section leaves me rather cold - but only one distinct thumbs-down (a Parsley Salad, which read well on the page but in practice was almost inedible - but then he attributes it to Simon Hopkinson anyway, so my case rests...) and a number of things which have been really very good indeed: Crab Tart, where the introduction of sautéed spring onion between the white Crab custard layer, and the brown meat which lines the tart shell adds a whole dimension to the dish; Cod, baked with a Herb Crust, with a thin coating of horseradish sauce between the fillet and the crust - delicious! The vegetable section in both books is excellent, as are his chapters on fish. Desserts are good - reliable and mouth-watering - and the peripheral stuff which focuses on things like breads and biscuits are very good indeed.

For a time, I found myself wondering quite what it is about these recipes that I like so much - and in advance of actually recommending them, I think I've managed to pin down my reasons..... to a degree. Without being particularly creative or innovative, Galton Blackiston has an ability to identify what is essentially good about a dish - flavours, textures, combinations - and then sets out exactly how to produce the dish in a way which plays to its strengths. He's that unusual being: a great recipe writer - the recipes in his books are no-nonsense, practical descriptions of how to achieve very good results with efficient use of both time and resources. Additionally unusual is the sense one gets that he has learned much in his years in a restaurant kitchen, and is faithfully transcribing that knowledge and experience onto the page - translated (and tested) for use in a domestic environment.

I've already got a lot of pleasure from these books, and with more yet to come. Highly, highly recommended.......

Tonight's Dinner:

..........is Sarah's responsibility, in Dolphin Square.

Time of Trial.....

Of course the challenge presented by the growing pile of as-yet untested books isn't limited to where they're going to live, and dinner menus this past week were significantly devoted to giving a few of the recipes a test flight, to see whether the books actually merited the bookshelf challenge anyway! The main publications under review were Moro (2), Richard Olney's Simple French Food, and The Chocolate Bible (Christine Macfadden's version, rather than The Chocolate Bible I've known and loved for many years by Christian Teubner).

From Moro, the highlight was definitely roast Skate Wing, closely followed by Lamb roast with Honey; Olney's contribution was a dish of Chicken with Fennel and Garlic, and something from his dessert section; and the Chocolate contributions were a Phyllo 'coil' of Chocolate with chopped dates and ground almonds, and some individual steamed Chocolate puddings with apple and Cranberries inside.

And the verdict? Moro got a definite and resounding thumbs-up. I like their style of cooking - in many instances the main ingredients are very little mucked around, and are cooked very simply, either baked or roast or grilled, and the interesting accents come from the addition of a well-flavoured sauce at the end. The Chocolate Bible got qualified approval - the recipes as they stand are a little too close to nursery food for my liking, but they provide an interesting basis from which to work thereafter. For instance, next time, I'll add some praline paste to the steamed puddings, to lift them to another level; and I'll adopt the chocolate-date-almond combination to be used in an entirely different way (the Phyllo 'coil' seemed deeply questionable as a presentation method - a kindly critique would say it looked like a worm cast; an unkind one might be rather more graphic....)

And Mr Olney? Well, there was a bit of a surprise. He's been on my hit-list for longer than I care to remember, and has been enthusiastically mentioned in passing over the years by many of the greats. I don't really know why it's taken me so long to get around to him......And, having now done so, I'm afraid the jury remains out. The Chicken dish - which read splendidly on the page - should have been great....but somehow wasn't. I excused it on the basis that the chicken was naturally rather flavourless. The dessert - Pudding Creme aux Pommes - was........odd. Bread pudding, with a layer of cooked apple over the top, effectively. Alright, if you like that sort of thing, I suppose. Frankly, I concluded, having looked through the rest of the rather slim dessert section, Mr Olney was not a desserts man.....So, I expect I'll give him another go...but maybe not just yet.....which perhaps speaks volumes.

Tonight's Dinner:

Tartes aux Moules (Pomiane version).

Pork Chops with Mustard Sauce, and Broccoli Puree.

Pommes Normande with Vanilla Ice Cream.

Roasting Success.....

Like many people, I suspect, I grew up with an idea of 'Roasting' as a mystical ritual that was associated with ceremonial meals - Turkey, at Christmas, and Beef or Chicken on Sundays. It was clearly a long and complicated process, in the course of which wonderful aromas would gradually and hieratically permeate the house. As a result, I developed a disproportionately cautious approach to the practice, and gave it a wide berth literally for decades. Until the advent of Mrs Kafka, that is. In 1995, she published her bible on Roasting - justifiably greeted with rapturous enthusiasm by the New York Times, when it first appeared - and in one go the mystical bubble was pricked. Her approach is so simple it hardly seems worth explaining: turn your oven up to 25o degrees C, and whatever you want to roast, zap it in there and it will be done practically before you've had time to think about it (generally around half an hour, in practice....). Crisp, caramelised skin, combined with a succulent interior. Best done using an oven with a self-clean function, as this method ends up with quite a lot of fat on the inside of the oven...... For me, this has meant that roasting has lost all of its mystique, and in fact - rather than being a highdays and holidays thing - is the most likely choice for post-cinema, or any occasion when I want to cook something quick and uncomplicated. How times have changed!

In his book on Meat, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall adopts a variant on the same approach, where he tempers Mrs Kafka's method with a second stage at a lower temperature to ensure that the inside of the roast is properly cooked. Both methods then benefit from a period of resting (under foil) to allow the juices to go back into the meat; generally, I finish roasting in time for the start of dinner, and then let it rest during the first course. The Fearnley Whittingstall method is appropriate for pieces of meat of a size appropriate for more then three people, and after your 30-40 minutes at 250 degrees C, you should then lower the temperature to 190 for a further twenty minutes or so, before resting.

Of course there are other ways of doing it. Carrier, in his New Great Dishes of the World , has a recipe for roasting beef which involves roasting it for five minutes per pound in a 250 degree C oven, then turning the oven off, and letting the meat sit for two hours in the cooling oven before you open the door. It works. The result is splendid - we did it for Christmas dinner two years ago. But I did feel as though it should have been accompanied by incantations and a few sacrificial offerings to the Lares and Penates at the same time!

Dinner Tonight:

Beef Salad, in Sesame Dressing.

Haddock, in Coriander and Lemon, with Creamed Curried Puy Lentils.

Pear Souffle