A dear friend of mine bought me a blank recipe book for my birthday 4 years ago. She must have had foreknowledge of what was to come! It is a place for favourite recipes, creating new combinations and exploring ideas. Now, I have probably 4 pages that have not been written on but I’ll never buy a new one, I’ll just keep adding pages to this one. The book is severely thumbed but I think this makes it look well loved.
So where do we all keep our recipes? My recipe book has been written in by me, my Granny has filled in her favourite baking recipes and I have leaflets and clippings from so many places. Because of the various additions over the years and the different people who have contributed to it, this recipe book is inexplicably treasured. I also have many old cookery books, late 1890’s and onwards and things have not changed much. These old recipe books are full of newspaper cut outs and notes from the previous owner. I have one book from 1936 which belonged to a lady called Eileen. She has written in many recipes including lemon pie and ham soup. Some of the recipes have notes on top of the originals where amounts or methods have been changed.
Nigel Slater – Tender Volume 1
I bought Tender volume 1 a few weeks ago thinking it looks like a nice big fat book full of interesting recipes. I was so wrong, it is so much more than that. It’s one of the best cookery books I own.
If there is a vegetable he has not included in some form or other, I can’t spot it. I have always thought I don’t like certain vegetables, I was so wrong about this too. I now have a new love affair with vegetables and there isn’t a single one I would overlook. Everything is made to seem so easy – it turns out it is.
Levi Roots Jamaican Pot Roast
I certainly saw Levi Roots putting music into his food! At the recent show, we were treated to several performances including the Reggae Reggae song!
He cooked mackeral with green bananas and ended up putting three scotch bonnet peppers in – at least 100,000 on the Scoville Heat Scale each. I don’t think I’ll be putting that many in. It filled the room with the smell of the Caribbean – allspice, peppers, garlic.