Med: A Cookbook
Claudia Roden
Claudia Roden is credited with revolutionising Western attitudes to Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food. Over thirty years on from her first Mediterranean cookbook, Claudia shares the sun-soaked simplicity of the Mediterranean with new recipes for effortless everyday cooking. This is how Claudia cooks for friends and family – always putting flavour first, beautiful ingredients, fuss-free cooking, relaxed eating. From Provence to the Levant, Andalusia to Morocco, explore the many and varied flavours of the Mediterranean as Claudia shares a life’s worth of travelling and stories along with the food she cooks now. ‘It’s a book for cooks’ – Dan Saladino, BBC Radio 4, The Food Programme.
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Patrick Leigh Fermor: Noble Encounters between Budapest and Transylvania
Michael O’Sullivan
This book revisits the trajectory of one section of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s famous pedestrian excursion from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. This S O E officer walked into Hungary as a youth of 19 on Easter of 1934 and left Transylvania in August. ‘A cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene’ as ‘The New York Times’ obituary put it in 2011, this intrepid traveller published his experiences half a century later. ‘Between the Woods and the Water’ covers the part of the epic journey on foot from the middle Danube to the Iron Gates. It has been a bestseller since it was first published in 1986. O’Sullivan reveals the identity of the interesting characters in the travelogue, interviewing several of their descendants and meticulously recreating Leigh Fermor’s time spent among the Hungarian nobility. Leigh Fermor’s recollections of his 1934 contacts are at once a proof of a lifelong attraction for the aristocracy, and a confirmation of his passionate love of history and understanding of the region. Rich with photos and other rare documents on places and persons both from the 1930s and today, the book offers a compelling social and political history of the period and the area. Described by Professor Norman Stone as ‘a major work of Hungarian social archaeology,’ this book provides a portrait of Hungary and Transylvania on the brink of momentous change.
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Dashing for the Post: The Letters of Patrick Leigh Fermor
Patrick Leigh Fermor, Adam Sisman
A revelatory collection of letters written by the author of ‘The Broken Road’. Handsome, spirited and erudite, Patrick Leigh Fermor was a war hero and one of the greatest travel writers of his generation. He was also a spectacularly gifted friend. The letters in this collection span almost seventy years, the first written ten days before Paddy’s 25th birthday, the last when he was 94. His correspondents include Deborah Devonshire, Ann Fleming, Nancy Mitford, Lawrence Durrell, Diana Cooper and his lifelong companion, Joan Rayner: he wrote his first letter to her in his cell at the monastery Saint Wandrille, the setting for his reflections on monastic life in ‘A Time to Keep Silence’. His letters exhibit many of his most engaging characteristics: his zest for life, his unending curiosity, his lyrical descriptive powers, his love of language, his exuberance and his tendency to get into scrapes – particularly when drinking and, quite separately, driving. Here are plenty of extraordinary stories: the hunt for Byron’s slippers in one of the remotest regions of Greece; an ignominious dismissal from Somerset Maugham’s Villa Mauresque; hiding behind a bush to dub Dirk Bogarde into Greek during the shooting of ‘Ill Met by Moonlight’, the film based on the story of General Kreipe’s abduction; his extensive travels. Some letters contain glimpses of the great and the good, while others are included purely for the joy of the jokes.
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Drink Time! In the Company of Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Memoire
Delores Payás, Amanda Hopkinson (translator)
In 2009, Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Spanish-language translator, Dolores Payás, visited the writer in his Greek home for the first time. By this time he was well advanced in years. Even so he received her with open arms and made her feel at home. A friendship sprung, other visits followed. The legendary adventurer and man of letters sat his translator at his table, stuffing her with food, drink and words (particularly drink and words). In short, he granted her access into his universe. It was a huge and generous gesture, one of those which cannot be forgotten. Gratitude is an active feeling, something had to be done. Out of this emerged ‘Drink Time!’, a homage, a token of thanks and a love letter at the same time. This little book is a charming, personal and moving portrait of Patrick Leigh Fermor during his final years. It depicts the author, but also a man full of humanity and charm, of tolerance and affection.
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The Oxford Handbook of Food History
Jeffrey M. Pilcher
Food matters, not only as a subject of study in its own right, but also as a medium for conveying critical messages about capitalism, the environment and social inequality to diverse audiences. Recent scholarship on the subject draws from both a path-breaking body of secondary literature and an inexhaustible wealth of primary sources – from ancient Chinese philosophical tracts to McDonald’s menus – contributing new perspectives to the historical study of food, culture and society, and challenging the limits of history itself. ‘The Oxford Handbook of Food History’ places existing works in historiographical context, crossing disciplinary, chronological and geographic boundaries while also suggesting new routes for future research. The twenty-seven essays in this book are organised into five sections: historiography, disciplinary approaches, production, circulation and consumption of food. In its vast, interdisciplinary scope, this handbook brings students and scholars an authoritative guide to a field with fresh insights into one of the most fundamental human concerns.
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Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure
Artemis Cooper
Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) was a war hero whose exploits in Crete are legendary, and above all he is widely acclaimed as the greatest travel writer of our times, notably for his books about his walk across pre-war Europe, ‘A Time of Gifts’, and ‘Between the Woods and the Water’. He was a self-educated polymath, a lover of Greece and the best company in the world. Artemis Cooper has drawn on years of interviews and conversations with Paddy and his closest friends as well as having complete access to his archives. Her beautifully crafted biography portrays a man of extraordinary gifts – no one wore their learning so playfully, nor inspired such passionate friendship.
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Olivia Manning: A Woman at War
Deirdre David
‘Olivia Manning: A Woman at War’ is the first literary biography of the twentieth-century novelist Olivia Manning. It tells the story of a writer whose life and work were shaped by her own fierce ambition, and, like many of her generation, the events and aftermath of the Second World War. From the time she left Portsmouth for London in the mid-1930s determined to become a famous writer, through her wartime years in the Balkans and the Middle East, and until her death in London in 1980, Olivia Manning was a dedicated and hard-working author. Married to a British Council lecturer stationed in Bucharest, Olivia Manning arrived in Romania on 3rd September 1939, the fateful day when Allied forces declared war on Germany. For the duration of World War II, she kept one step ahead of invading German forces as she and her husband fled Romania for Greece, and then Greece for the Middle East, where they stayed until the end of the war. These tumultuous wartime years are the subject of her best-known and most transparently autobiographical novels, ‘The Balkan Trilogy’ and ‘The Levant Trilogy’.
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A History of English Food
Clarissa Dickson Wright
In this magnificent guide to England’s cuisine, the inimitable Clarissa Dickson Wright takes us from a medieval feast to a modern-day farmers’ market, visiting the Tudor working man’s table and a Georgian kitchen along the way. Peppered with surprises and seasoned with wit, ‘A History of English Food’ is a classic for any food lover.
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The Food of Spain
Claudia Roden
After spending five years researching and writing about the food of Spain, Claudia Roden has produced this definitive, passionate and evocative guide to the food of Spain. With fascinating insights into the different regions, histories and cultures at the heart of this country, ‘The Food of Spain’ is a loving testament to that which binds it all together – the delicious food and recipes passed down through generations. Alongside her guide to traditional Spanish cooking techniques and staple ingredients, you’ll find delicious recipes including… tapas: Catalan tomato bread, salt cod fritters and ham croquettes. Soups: cream of pumpkin soup, and potato, cabbage and bean soup. Savoury pastries: creamy leek tart, and tomato, pepper and tuna empanadas. Vegetable dishes and salads: orange salad and aubergine fritters with honey. Rice and pasta: seafood paella and pasta with peas. Meat and fish dishes: salmon in a brandy sauce, chicken and pork chops, and marinated leg of lamb. From simple, rustic tapas and delicately flavoured soups, to elaborate celebratory dishes served on silver platters and cakes and desserts, each with a story to tell, this is the book about Spain to learn from and to cook from.
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In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor
Patrick Leigh Fermor, Deborah Devonshire
In spring 1956, Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire – youngest of the six legendary Mitford sisters – invited the writer and war hero Patrick Leigh Fermor to visit Lismore Castle, the Devonshires’ house in Ireland. This halcyon visit sparked off a deep friendship and a lifelong exchange of sporadic but highly entertaining letters. There can rarely have been such contrasting styles: Debo, unashamed philistine and self-professed illiterate (though suspected by her friends of being a secret reader), darts from subject to subject while Paddy, polyglot, widely read prose virtuoso, replies in the fluent, polished manner that has earned him recognition as one of the finest writers in the English language. Prose notwithstanding, the two friends have much in common: a huge enjoyment of life, youthful high spirits, warmth, generosity and lack of malice. There are glimpses of President Kennedy’s inauguration, weekends at Sandringham, stag hunting in France, filming with Errol Flynn in French Equatorial Africa and, above all, of life at Chatsworth, the great house that Debo spent much of her life restoring, and of Paddy in the house that he and his wife Joan designed and built on the southernmost peninsula of Greece.
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Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon
Claudia Roden
‘Arabesque’ is a tribute to the culinary histories and contemporary food of these fascinating countries, from the mezze dishes of Turkey and the sweet pastries of Lebanon to the unmistakable flavours and spices of Morocco. Inside you will find carefully curated histories, anecdotes and – most importantly – delicious recipes: from Morocco. . . tomatoes stuffed with roast peppers, tuna, capers and olives, lamb tagine with potatoes, and peas and walnut pastries in honey syrup. From Turkey. . . creamy filo spinach pie, roast chicken with pine nuts and raisin pilaf, and pistachio cake. From Lebanon. . . traditional tabbouleh, pan-fried red mullet with tahini sauce, and almond puff pastry pies. In her inimitable style, in ‘Arabesque’ Claudia Roden has created a passionate, evocative book full of stories, memories and delicious food.
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The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand and Vilna to the Present Day – 25th Anniversary Edition
Claudia Roden
The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the classic Jewish cookbook with new recipes and material. In this internationally acclaimed book, Claudia Roden interweaves more than 800 recipes with the stories and histories that have shaped Jewish cooking over the centuries. The recipes are treasures garnered from almost sixteen years of Roden’s research around the world, enjoying the immense diversity of traditional Jewish food. Roden shares the most essential dishes from her native Egypt and beyond, taking us on a journey through the Jewish Diaspora: from the Ashkenazi world there is hallah bread, wine-poached salmon and luscious plum tarts, and the Sephardi chapter boasts an array of tabbouleh, falafel and the inimitable orange Passover cake. The result is a cookbook unlike any other: a learned, loving and delicious tribute to the variety and vitality of Jewish culture the world over. With new material for this special twenty-fifth anniversary edition, this is the definitive book of Jewish cuisine; a celebration of the food, and the people, that have shaped our culinary world as we know it.
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Enjoyment of Food: The Best of Jane Grigson
Jane Grigson
Published to coincide with the anniversary of twenty five years since her untimely death and having been out of print for more than a decade, Grub Street is republishing the ultimate compendium of Jane Grigson’s recipes. Following the success of her first book, ‘Charcuterie and French Pork Cooking’, Grigson’s research and flair for cooking speak for themselves within this tome. With a delightful introduction by her friend, and the equally remarkable Elizabeth David, this book is a staple for every cook. The book is organised into regional cuisines from across the globe including: the Americas, the Mediterranean, the Europeans, India and the Far East, and contains sections entitled ‘At Home in England’ and ‘At Home in France’; both places close to Jane’s heart. There is also, of course, a detailed chapter on charcuterie. The recipes are introduced in English, with brief descriptions by Grigson, but are also simultaneously designated in the native language of their origin. There are graphs and pictorials for the accurate cooking of meat joints by weight and detailed instructions for picking the best ingredients and making the most of them when they are in season.
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The Food of Italy
Claudia Roden
‘The Food of Italy’ was written after Claudia Roden spent a year in Italy researching the subject. Regional recipes, country cooking and the bravura of grand dishes, pasta, seafood, rice dishes and authentic Italian desserts, Claudia Roden’s encyclopaedic knowledge of her subject infuses a rich and stunning book.
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A History of Food
Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat
This classic work is an exploration and celebration of man’s relationship with food from earliest times to the present day. Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat tells the story of cuisine and the social history of food, taking in fascinating, little-known byways along the journey. For instance, we learn that Aztecs enjoyed chocolate as a drink with chilli and honey; we discover the Iroquois origins of popcorn; we hear about the potential culinary and farming uses of lupin seeds. Toussaint-Samat looks at the transition from a vegetable-based to an increasingly meat-based diet, as well as at the relationship between people and what they eat, between particular foods and social behaviour, and between dietary habits and methods of cooking.
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Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book
Jane Grigson
‘Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book’ includes a wealth of recipes, plain and fancy, ranging from apple strudel to watermelon sherbet. Jane Grigson is at her literate and entertaining best in this fascinating compendium of recipes for forty-six different fruits. Some, like pears, will probably seem homely and familiar until you’ve tried them á la chinoise. Others, such as the carambola, described by the author as looking ‘like a small banana gone mad’, will no doubt be happy discoveries. You will find new ways to use all manner of fruits, alone or in combination with other foods, including meats, fish, and fowl, in all phases of cooking from appetisers to desserts. And, as always, in her brief introductions Grigson will both educate and amuse you with her pithy comments on the histories and varieties of all the included fruits.
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Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book
Jane Grigson
In ‘Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book’, American readers, gardeners and food lovers will find everything they’ve always wanted to know about the history and romance of seventy-five different vegetables, from artichokes to yams, and will learn how to use them in hundreds of different recipes, from the exquisitely simple ‘broccoli salad’ to the engagingly esoteric ‘game with tomato and chocolate sauce’. Jane Grigson gives basic preparation and cooking instructions for all the vegetables discussed and recipes for eating them in every style from least adulterated to most adorned. This is by no means a book intended for vegetarians alone, however. There are recipes for ‘cassoulet’, ‘chicken gumbo’, and even Dr William Kitchiner’s 1817 version of ‘bubble and squeak’ (fried beef and cabbage). ‘Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book’ is a joy to read and a pleasure to use in the kitchen. It will introduce you to vegetables you’ve never met before, develop your friendship with those you know only in passing, and renew your romance with some you’ve come to take for granted.
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The Mushroom Feast
Jane Grigson
‘The Mushroom Feast’ is an indispensable classic for all those who love mushrooms. It is a fine, timeless, literary cookbook. Truffles, ceps, morels – they all conjure visions of one of the most intriguing and subtle of all gastronomic treats. Yet amateur cooks can be mystified by how best to prepare them, while epicures hunger for new ways to expand their repertoires. With more than 250 recipes, Jane Grigson describes the preparation of the best fresh and preserved mushrooms. Besides the traditional use of mushrooms to enhance meat and vegetable dishes, edible fungi are made into pâté, powdered, puréed into mushroom ketchup, baked into a flan (an Alice B. Toklas specialty), baked as a cake and used in many other dishes – from the simple to the highly sophisticated for soups, sauces, stuffings, main courses, too intriguing to resist. Included are helpful tips for selecting and preserving the best edible mushrooms (both wild and cultivated), the folklore behind the recipes, a brief history of mushroom cultivation, guides to distinguish edible from poisonous fungi for those who venture to pick their own, and charming line drawings of the twenty-one most common species.
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Jane Grigson’s English Food
Jane Grigson
‘English Food’ reveals the richness and surprising diversity of England’s culinary heritage. Fully updated and revised by Jane Grigson before her death in 1990, this joyful celebration of our national cuisine is a pleasure to cook from and a delight to read. ‘This is the perfect English companion’ – ‘The Guardian’. ‘English Food’ is an anthology all who follow her recipes will want to buy for themselves… enticing from page to page’ – ‘The Spectator’. ‘She restored pride to the subject of English food’ – ‘The Evening Standard’.
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Good Things
Jane Grigson
‘Cooking something delicious is really much more satisfactory than painting pictures or making pottery. At least for most of us. Food has the tact to disappear, leaving room and opportunity for masterpieces to come. The mistakes don’t hang on the walls or stand on the shelves to reproach you forever’ – from Jane Grigson’s introduction. Originally published in 1971, ‘Good Things’ is now available in a Bison Books edition for all those who appreciate good food and Jane Grigson’s witty and stylish way of writing about it. Including recipes for fish, meat, game, fresh fruits, vegetables, and a few splendid desserts, ‘Good Things’ is a celebration of delicious everyday fare and its loving preparation.
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A New Book of Middle Eastern Food
Claudia Roden
When it was first published, Claudia Roden’s bestselling classic ‘Book of Middle Eastern Food’ revolutionised Western attitudes to the cuisines of the Middle East. Containing over 500 modern and accessible recipes that are brought to life with enchanting stories, memories and culinary wisdom, this book takes readers on a cook’s tour of the Middle East, including Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey, Greece and Morocco. Inside there’s a delicious array of dishes to enjoy, including. . . hot stuffed vine leaves, sweet and sour aubergine salad, courgette meatballs, Persian lamb, Moroccan tagine with fruit and honey, hummus & tabbouleh, Turkish delight and coconut orange blossom and lemon cake. Now in this beautiful new edition, Roden’s timeless work continues to inform and inspire as the next generation of cooks discovers it’s riches.
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Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery
Jane Grigson
Here is a book which is guaranteed to fascinate both cook and traveller: it provides a wealth of information on the unique history and art of French charcuterie. Every town in France has at least one charcutier, whose windows are dressed with astonishing displays of good food; pâtés, terrines, galantines, jambon, saucissons sec and boudins. The charcutier will also sell olives, anchovies and condiments as well as various salads of his own creation, making a visit the perfect stop to assemble picnics and impromptu meals. But the real skill of the charcutier lies in his transformation of the pig into an array of delicacies; a trade which goes back at least as far as classical Rome, when Gaul was famed for its hams. First published in 1967 but unavailable for many years, ‘Jane Grigson’s Charcuterie’ and ‘French Pork Cookery’ is a guidebook and a recipe book. Written in her inimitable style, she describes every type of charcuterie available for purchase and how to make them yourself. She describes how to braise, roast, pot-roast and stew all the cuts of pork, how to make terrines, how to cure your own ham and make your own sausages.
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Escoffier
Auguste Escoffier
No cook should be without the original, unabridged translation of Auguste Escoffier’s masterpiece ‘Le Guide Culinaire’, a classic recipe reference resource which popularised haute cuisine as we know it when it was first published in 1903. This handsome new edition is a treasure-trove of over 5,000 recipes to guide chefs cooking along classic lines as well as inspire them with fresh ideas. These French dishes form the foundation of modern culinary art and with it the work of every trained chef, who rightly revere this fascinating historical document. Not only a reference for professionals, it’s also a fascinating read for any foodie, offering an insight into the history and development of modern cookery and the route of French culinary art from the Victorian age to our own kitchens. In his notes we can see Escoffier’s philosophy of cooking: modern, simple and clean.
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Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management
Isabella Beeton
Originally published as twenty four newspaper columns from 1859 to 1861, ‘Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management’ was at first a guide for managing a household. Today it is a fascinating look at the past and a guide to forgotten skills that can be used today. Beeton wrote, ‘As with the commander of an army, or the leader of any enterprise, so is it with the mistress of a house’. Running an extravagant household was a monumental task and a responsibility not to be taken lightly. It meant supervising every employee, from the butler to the laundry – maid to the footman and the wet nurse. It meant managing the safety, happiness, comfort, and well-being of the family. In addition to offering advice on a wide range of domestic topics, this abridged edition of ‘Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management’ contains hundreds of original recipes. A compendium of practical information about everything from animal husbandry to child-care, this Victorian classic is both fascinating and still useful.
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