“Cookery books of the year” |
| Posted: 02 Jan 2011 05:59 PM PST As the locavore tide reached its high water mark, it's been an intriguing year for cookbooks. Which have you found most useful or inspirational?  Rene Redzepi's Noma is a book for the cook who likes a project. Photograph: Ty Stange 2010 was an odd year for cook books. Several I had eagerly anticipated were disappointing, and those I had no expectations of surprised, delighted and even excited. One of my favourite books of the year is the Moomins Cookbook. Beautifully designed, full of original Moomin illustrations and quotes and some excellent recipes. It's an accessible introduction to Finnish food and a book which actually made some children I know excited about cooking. It's everything the inaccessible Noma Cookbook isn't. I loved it, but was also incredibly frustrated by it – due to the specialist kit needed the dishes are nigh on impossible to recreate at home. I know it's not really the point of this sort of book, but looking at the photographs made me feel like a child squashed up against the sweetshop window; unable to get in. John Crace's hilarious Digested Read is just too close to the mark. Redzepi is the King of the Locavores, and with the Noma Cookbook that particular movement probably reached its peak. I think we're now moving away from books which focus on the local and seasonal, which have so dominated the past few years. This has to be a good thing - there is only so much you can say about our own produce without being repetitive, and going foraging to discover more outlandish ingredients is unrealistic for most of us and is even causing controversy with environmentalists. An alternative to foraging is to use ingredients which either went out of fashion centuries ago, or that have been newly introduced. So we have Jekka McVicar's Herb Cookbook (there's an extract here) guiding us through growing and using every herb you can think of and a few more you may not have such as stevia, Good King Henry and rock samphire. Similarly, Mark Diacono's A Taste of the Unexpected doing the same for olives, almonds, goji berries, even Szechuan pepper. Mark blogged about his approach to growing your own on WoM a few weeks ago. I'm not usually a fan of books which simplify cuisines, but Madhur Jaffrey's pared down and reworked dishes in Curry Easy lack nothing. I was also completely won over by Thomasina Mier's Mexican Food Made Simple when someone gave me a pot they'd made of her smoky and delicious chipotle en adobo (again, you'll find some extracted recipes here). My favourite baking book came from the US. Tartine is beautifully shot and, more importantly, has an excellent sourdough method and a spectacular section on what to do with any bread surplus. For other ideas on what to spread on your bread, once you've made it, take a look at The Book of Marmalade, one of the latest in a long line of quirky titles from Prospect Books. There are some excellent bargains to be had from this publisher as well as the latest in their English Kitchen series, the marvellously detailed and eccentric Jellies and their Moulds. A traditional accompaniment to jelly is of course ice cream, and lovers of frozen desserts were in luck this year as Robin Weir and Caroline Liddell's seminal book reappeared as Icecreams, Sorbets and Gelati, bigger and better than ever. Everyone from bloggers to gardeners and established food writers have brought out books filled with homely, traditional recipes this year. My vote, however, goes to a restaurant – Canteen's Great British Food is full of hearty grub with enough twists and turns to make it a worthwhile buy. A quartet of our best female food writers are also championing home cooking and still manage to be endlessly inventive – the best was Diana Henry's Food From Plenty which intelligently married seasonal food with the exotic. Elisabeth Luard makes reference to cuisine grandmere in her lovely illustrated book Recipes and Ramblings, based on her columns for The Oldie. The theme of feeding the family with recipes passed down from mother and grandmother is central to Nigella Lawson and Rose Prince's books but with very different results. I can't watch her on TV, but I love Nigella's Kitchen for not making a virtue out of necessity and for showing a genuine love for cooking. I never get this feeling from Rose Prince's otherwise laudable Kitchenella which has a slightly waspish tone set off by the yellow and black cover and tries to instil in us what a serious business cooking is. She keeps us on the straight and narrow where Nigella will lead us astray. The most exciting book of the year for me is Momofuku. It's an intelligent middle ground between fusion food and localism. Building blocks of Korean cuisine are given twists, so you have bacon dashi (imagine the umami!) and brussels sprouts with kimchi purée. Reading about the thought processes and the way in which David Chang's cooking style evolved is fascinating, and all the more enjoyable because the recipes work. Which books have you found yourself returning to time and time again this year for inspiration and advice? Are there any other outstanding new titles you feel should have deserved a mention? In order to post a comment you need to be registered and signed in. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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