Already a subscriber? Log in
On the Himalayan Trail by Romy Gill (Hardie Grant, £27) has the essential ‘by gosh!’ factor. We may think we know all there is to know about South Asian cuisine, yet here we discover the cooking of Kashmir and Ladakh in a proper food travelogue that describes the regional cooking of remote places and tells a story passionately and visually. The meat recipes are perfect for now: fried spiced lamb ribs, lamb cooked in milk, meatballs stuffed with apricots, chicken cooked in yoghurt – all comforts for an austere autumn.
As is butter, which is feted by The Spectator’s food writer Olivia Potts in Butter: A Celebration (Headline, £26). This year the price of butter has risen alarmingly, prompting a slew of articles suggesting it is cheaper to make your own. I wrote one such, and it is – although only if you make it with the cheapest cream. In fact it’s a lovely process, easy to do, and Potts gives various homemade butter recipes, including one made with a combination of cream and crème fraîche, which is the best for baking, I find. Her hollandaise recipe is a triumph, as close to fail-safe as is possible for this tricky sauce; and there are other revelries, such as dal makhani and gorgeous monte cristos – fried sandwiches that combine French toast with croque monsieur.
In a year when families are reportedly becoming afraid to use their ovens owing to high energy costs, Catherine Phipps’s Modern Pressure Cooking (Hardie Grant, £26) could not be better timed. My stepmother had a pressure cooker, and we were terrified of its noisy jiggering, and equally horrified by the grey cabbage lingering inside it. But when you realise you can shave three-fifths off the cooking time of a beef ragu, for example, the pressure cooker is once again relevant. Phipps’s advice on how to use an electric one properly is gratifyingly authoritative – the skill is in cooking fast without burning. And pressure cooking is not all about oxtail stew. Recipes here include pasta and rice dishes, black bean tacos, stuffed peppers and roast aubergines with miso and honey. This is new generation cooking, truly worthwhile.
‘Nistisima’ means ‘lenten’, referring to fasting food in the Greek Orthodox Church. But in Georgina Hayden’s Nistisima: The Secret to Delicious Vegan Cooking from the Mediterranean and Beyond (Bloomsbury, £26) it turns out to be ‘accidental’ vegan cuisine, ideal for plant-only eaters and a rescue remedy for those who would like to feed vegan friends meals they’d be happy to eat themselves. That is, no meat mimickry; just nice food that happens to be made from plants. Hayden – who has Greek heritage, claims to adhere to fast days and recalls her family using almond milk before it was trendy – has dug up a wealth of delicious sounding Mediterranean plant-based recipes.
Dishes we’ve long taken for granted are explored in A Brief History of Pasta: Italian Food that Shaped the World by the food historian Luca Cesari (Profile Books, £16.99). The journey towards our concept of spaghetti Bolognese or lasagna, for instance, is told as a slowly evolving chronicle, backed up by documents and great research. Many pasta recipes which have become legendary are not actually eaten widely in Italy, but are the constructs of nostalgic migrants – particularly American classics such as fettuccine Alfredo, with its creamy, cheesy sauce, originally invented in a Roman restaurant populated by celebrities. And of course the pre-modern British thought spaghetti Bolognese an authentic Italian dish. It isn’t: spaghetti is a southern-made pasta, while meat sauces tend to come from the north. But we are now so knowledgeable about food culture that to see the words ‘Spaghetti Bolognese’ on a menu today has become almost offensive.
Also in Book Reviews
Also by Rose Prince
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in