Cook The Books

Kitchen and Co by French and Grace: The Review

The eponymous French and Grace, just casually mixing up some flavours in some cute garden somewhere.You literally couldn’t get more current.

There has never been a better time to be a binge eater in Britain. On practically every street corner is a boutique baker selling designer doughnuts, or organic artisan hawking their high class hamburgers. “I’m just queuing for the latest must-have marshmallow,” people merrily tweet, congratulating themselves on snaffling out the latest fashionable foodie secret, the post-recessionary equivalent of a Mulberry bag.

As a result of our newfound culinary obsession, overeating has become a national sport. It’s ok to indulge in 133% of your recommended daily allowance of calories if it comes in the form of the Mac and Cheese from Spuntino (yes, it really is that bad for you). It’s fine to eat an entire loaf in one sitting if you bought it from St John and Instagrammed the process at least seven times, including a graphic aerial shot of the butter and jam you got to go with it from Melrose and Morgan.

There’s definitely a new air of snobbery and one-upmanship. “Oh, you mean you’ve not tried Heston’s meat fruit/Bea of Bloomsbury’s Eggs Benedict/that random thing I saw in ES magazine and haven’t tried myself but read enough about to try and blag my way through?” is usually accompanied with a stare as withering as a week old vine tomato from Whole Foods. Extra points are awarded for the effort it takes to track something down - tiny companies selling small amounts of produce in undesirable parts of the country are particularly well-respected.

French and Grace are profiteers of this new dawn of discovery, when foraging means a trek to Brixton Village to feast on their wares. The pair are getting write ups everywhere from ES (of course) to Saturday Times Mag, who are all lauding them for their skills at combining flavours to create something truly amazing, and for turning their tiny supper club (so now!) into a tiny cafe in South London (even more now!). I’m trying to get them do an exclusive feature for a publication I work for, but they’re loathe to tie themselves down for, as they told me when I popped into their gaff for dinner and the chance to try and persuade them into it, “there’s a lot of buzz about us at the moment.” It’s true, there is.

And quite simply it’s because their recipes work. “You don’t look very stressed,” my friend Rachel said when she arrived, clutching an aging sausage dog called Nellie who looked at me with disdain. And unusually for me, I wasn’t – the dessert had taken seconds to make that afternoon, the main not much longer, and the starter could be whipped up in moments once everyone had turned up and been given some booze.

Their version of Cucumber and Carrot Salad with Sesame and Chilli

Of course, that doesn’t mean my boyfriend got off totally without being hissed at. “Peeling these carrots is making me want to die,” I whispered violently at him whilst making the starter. The guests were drinking Sipsmith’s Summer Cups (ten foodie points to me for that one) and talking about how strangers in the street will try and pet the sausage dog but Nellie will just bite their hands, and I had just peeled four carrots to ribbons, with two more to go, as well as two cucumbers. “What are we having?” asked Kat, another guest, stepping into the kitchen. I just about managed to stop myself from replying: “A meltdown.”

And mine. If I had a Magimix peeler I would deffo make it again

But it tasted incredible. “Delicately balanced,” said Rachel’s boyfriend Jim thoughtfully, helping himself to a bit more of the dressing. The mint and coriander, mixed with the sesame oil and soy sauce, gave the vegetables a bit of bite, a slightly acidic edge. It was divine.

Their Creamy Chicken, Leeks and Tarragon with Crunchy New Potatoes

The Creamy Chicken, Leeks and Tarragon with Crunchy New Potatoes was less successful – but only structurally. “The potatoes are nice, but not very crunchy,” commented Kat’s boyfriend James. “And the casserole’s liquid is very thin,” said Rachel.

And mine. Halve the liquid amounts, or serve with a straw

“You should have just fricasseed that shit right up,” added Jim as we licked our plates clean – depressingly literally in the case of my boyfriend.  With a litre of chicken stock, large glass of wine and 150ml of double cream there was enough left in the pot to make a pleasingly hearty soup the next day – but not the thick bubbly gloop depicted in the book.

Their Mascarpone Cheesecake with Nutmeg and Maple Syrup Caramel. Doesn’t the thought of those flavours make your mouth water?

Dessert was equally structurally unsound – there was no way the specified 75g of butter could have held that much biscuit base together – but again the flavours were bang on. Maple syrup sauce over a vaguely tangy filling? The precursor to double strength vodka lemonades (made with Truffle Vodka, obvy) doesn’t get much better than this.

Yeah, well, it all goes down the same way

As the conversation turned to skullfucking (don’t ask) and the nude pics of Lorraine Kelly that litter the internet (don’t Google them, I beg you) the sheen of rustic sophistication lent by the recipes crumbled faster than the cheesecake’s base, but we finished the evening feeling smug that we’d eaten the creations of two of the new stars of the foodie world. And let’s face it, other than the enchanting sensation of devouring delicious dinners, that smugness is what the new foodie obsession is really all about.

Cost of ingredients: £27.63 (not including items already in store cupboard)

Starter * * * * *

Main * * * * A bit of flour would have thickened it up a treat

Dessert * * * * Just a touch more butter and the base would have been perfect

Overall 9/10

Kitchen and Co by French and Grace (£16.99, Kyle Books). Original photography by Laura Edwards

Mr Wilkinson’s Favourite Vegetables by Matt Wilkinson: The Review (Kinda)

Actual Awwwwww

“I’m never fucking doing Cook the Books again,” I shouted at my boyfriend, before storming into the bedroom. “I’ve had e-fucking-nough,” I added, yanking off my tie and throwing it on the floor for effect. It was the night before I was due to be cooking from Mr Wilkinson’s Favourite Vegetables, a paean to plants and produce from asparagus to zucchini. I’d chosen the book because it seemed gentle, calming, easy, and began with the following inscription:

Thank you so much for picking up this book and reading it. I have many cookbooks and not one person has thanked me for buying, reading or using them – so thank you. I hope that as you read it, you will be inspired by the same love of good food that inspires my every day.

As sweet as puppies, lambs, and that moment in Top Model when Tyra tells the contestant she’s just booted off that they just have to believe in themselves and they’ll be able to smize their way to the top or whatever, how could anyone’s heart not be melted by that? It’s printed on gorgeous paper stock, full of sun-drenched photographs, and has a dedication which includes the author’s dog. This was meant to be a sure fire success.

It had started easily enough. I’d ordered the ingredients off Tesco.com and was at my Book Group the night before delivery and eventual cooking. We had all been tasked with reading Fifty Shades of Grey, so obviously had to get wasted to get past the horror of 500 pages of Anastasia Steele and her incapacity to do anything without biting her lip. “Can I borrow your computer to change something on my Tesco order? I’ve just remembered I need to add washing powder and it’ll be too close to the delivery time to add it when I get home,” I asked the host, flipping between the sordidness of Christian’s Red Room of Pain and the banality of domestic life as casually and unskillfully as EL James does all the way through the novel. “No,” everyone cried, as dominating as our fictional hero. “You can’t do something so dull in the middle of Book Group – Book Group is for talking about boys and booze and, in this case, sado masochism.”

By the time I got home, it was too late to amend the order, but I logged on blearily, just in case. “Fucking hell,” I hissed at my poor boyfriend, who was quietly watching television. “I’ve only gone and set it to the wrong address, to be delivered to that place I organised the hen party at two years ago. Fuck! And now I’m going to have to actually go to the shops myself tomorrow, and traipse all the way up the aisles, and carry all these shitty vegetables home, and then cook them, and fucking entertain people, whilst you do nothing to help.” And then for emphasis, the line so angstily dramatic, so over the top, so pointless, that it had Fifty Shades written all over it: “I’m never fucking doing Cook the Books again.”

I’d calmed down once my hangover had cleared and the guests arrived the next night. I’d forgone trekking to the big supermarket and bought everything from the Tesco Metro on the corner. I’d had to compromise a couple of times, which was technically against the rules, but it’s not like I’d signed a contract with Christian Grey and anyone was going to insert beads in me for going against my own dogma.

Our guests seemed disappointed. “Have you had your drunken meltdown yet?” Camilla asked, almost the second she was through the door. “I’ve read the blog, I know there’s always at least one.” “Well, Will’s still at work, and I’ve been by myself all afternoon, so there’s been no one to shout at,” I admitted. “Strops are no fun if there’s no one there to indulge them.”

Mr Wilkinson’s Salad of Cauliflower, Smoked Salmon and Strawberry

Three drinks down and the Salad of Cauliflower, Smoked Salmon and Strawberry was a hit. It had literally involved nothing more than chopping a couple of vegetables, sticking them in a big bowl, and letting a slosh of lemon juice do the talking.

My version. Tesco Metro didn’t have pea shoots either

“The only thing I would say,” said Andy thoughtfully, “is that perhaps the recipe should have included shallots instead of onions. It would have been sweeter, less overpowering.” Seeing as each dish is technically an experiment for a blog I’ve got used to swallowing as much carefully judged criticism as I do Riesling, but this one particularly stung. I didn’t have the guts to admit that the recipe had actually called for shallots, and my local Tesco had been out of them. “Yeah, I’ll bear that in mind,” I mumbled, topping up my glass.

Mr Wilkinson’s Smoked Baked Garlic With A Simple Good Old Roast Chook 

The local shop had let me down on the main course, too. Smoked Baked Garlic With A Simple Good Old Roast Chook had seemed easy enough, and when I couldn’t find Smoking Chips in my “convenience” outlet I thought I could fudge it somehow and that you, the reader, would never find out. (Soz and all, but I tried two places and could still taste last night’s Prosecco on the back of my furry tongue, there was no way I was hiking into town.) Back at home I realised the smoking chips were the main ingredient – used to give the garlic a delicious, well, smokiness, and make it the star turn of the dish. Unsurprisingly, in a book about veg, the chicken was just dressing, cooked as simply as banging it in the oven with a little oil. “Fuck,” I didn’t bother screaming allowed, as there was no one around to hear it, and just reached for Maria Elia’s Full of Flavour off the shelf. Her Slow Roast Paprika chicken, which had been so ace in my first ever Cook the Books, would come to the rescue once again.

My bastardised version of Maria Elia’s Slow Roast Paprika Chicken. Bloody hell, it’s a good recipe

Much as Mr Wilkinson’s book is a lovely feast for the eyes and soul, the very essence of its being means that it doesn’t do desserts. I still had some rhubarb in the freezer so I made that into a fool, thinking that at least I’d have reviewed two of Wilkinson’s recipes and been able to pass judgement.

My made-up rhubarb fool - the weird brown bits on the top are crystallised ginger. They were good.

We drank through the disappointment of not having done a proper three course Cook the Books. At one point the Port came out, and I declared the book a success anyway. “We’ve had a lovely evening, and it contains lots of lovely pictures – what more does any book need?” I cried. Had Anastacia Steele been at the table, she’d have definitely rolled her eyes.

Cost of ingredients: £28.76 (not including items already in store cupboard, or not bought because Tesco Metro didn’t stock them)

First course: * * * * * I have to give it the benefit of the doubt, seeing as I didn’t use shallots and it still tasted all fresh and summery

Main course: * * * * * Maria’s chicken came through for me once again. I’m sure Matt Wilkinson’s would have done the same. He thanks the reader for buying the book. Who cares if the recipes actually work?

Pudding: * * * * * My own-recipe rhubarb fool was a triumph, thanks for asking. I can just about remember it through the Port…

Overall: 8/10 The paper feels divine Mr Wilkinson’s Favourite Vegetables by Matt Wilkinson (£20, Murdoch). Original photography by Jacqui Melville

Martha Stewart’s Pies and Tarts: The Review

I spent longer making the bloody pudding than either of these two spent in jail

I know a lot about life in prison. Not only have I had a cocktail in the Courthouse Kempinski Hotel  – which used to actually be a jail, folks, so how’s that for journalistic research? – but I also watched all eight series of the surely-almost-wholly-factual prison-set drama Bad Girls. I know that prison guards are called screws and – according to Bad Girls lore – will fake their own pregnancies and miscarriages if it means keeping their job as chief of staff. From the same source I know that murderous bisexual prostitutes are just misunderstood sweethearts who had a tough childhood, and that you can have a same-sex affair with the Wing Governor in the library if you take an adult literacy course as a façade.

I also know that, apart from anything you’ve managed to smuggle in via your lady parts, all you really have in prison is time. Buckets of it. Gallons. Entire oceans stretching forward for as long as your character keeps getting re-commissioned by the series editors. Which can be the only excuse Martha Stewart has for coming up with the excruciatingly time-consuming recipes in her latest opus Martha Stewart’s Pies and Tarts.

Her time in the slammer is well documented – in fact it’s all she’s really known for in the UK; famous for being the Queen of Daytime TV who painted herself as the original Bree Van Der Kamp and then got put away for fraud. Presumably anyone who can outdo Ricki Lake in the ratings can also rise up the ranks to being Top Dog of their wing pretty quickly, so once she’d done that she must have used her endless days to devise these endless recipes.

I started out cheerily enough. “It’ll all be nice and carby,” I thought, flicking through the entirely pastry-based book. I’d invited two colleagues over – both beauty editors, both of whom seem to be able to deal with the mountain of cupcakes they get sent daily by PRs without gaining an ounce. If anyone could cope with Stewart’s stodge it would be them.  Starting at 2pm I thought I’d be finished by 4 and have enough time to use some of the products my guests had given me over the years to make myself look fresh for their arrival.

Dead on the dot of 7pm, my first guest showed up, whilst I was still in a pastry-based panic, a flurry of flour, a full on Martha Meltdown. I’d stopped at 6pm for two minutes to pour myself a large glass of white port, desperately needing a break from all the kneading, but other than that I’d been working solidly for five long, painful hours.

The other guests arrived, and I got my boyfriend to make us all cocktails whilst I carried on with the starter. I necked my Cosmompolitans gratefully and with speed – I could see why housewives turned to the bottle as my day had been harder than any I’ve ever spent in the office.

It wasn’t that the recipes were difficult, exactly – nothing I had to do was out of the realms of possibility. It’s just that every stage had a gazillion steps, and every step involved some kind of slow drawn out process. Each dish became like a torture, a punishment that presumably Martha inflicted on her cellmates if they dared to question her authority.

And to add insult to injury, by the time it came to the eating I’d had so much medicinal booze I can barely remember how the meal turned out. I do recall thinking it was all fine, but probably wasn’t worth even half the amount of time spent on them. I also remember someone hooking the TV up to Youtube and us all screaming drunkenly for video requests, the five of us singing along happily – or more appropriately merrily – to this. I vaguely remember having a massive strop at my boyfriend when the guests had gone home and I was doing yet more washing up, about how I felt like nothing more than a scullery maid, and you know what, I just couldn’t wash another fucking thing, before slamming the bedroom door. And I have very strong recollections of being sick the next morning, my body fighting to deal as much with Martha’s carbs as with the amount of vodka I’d poured into it.

Martha’s Leek and Olive Tart

But the food? Here’s what I can recall.

The Leek and Olive tart was, erm, nice? It was the only recipe which didn’t call for me to make the pastry from scratch, which means it was my favourite by far, but I think the flavours lacked a little punch.

My version. Looks a lot more exciting than it tasted

The parmesan crisp around the side was a good touch, but I had to drizzle it in balsamic glaze before my champagne-soaked tongue even recognised there was any food in my mouth.

Her Mini Chicken Potpies with Herb Dough

By the time I’d got to the end of the zillion-stepped recipe for the Mini Chicken Potpies with Herb Dough I was also at the end of my tether – and didn’t bother with the herb garnish that you can see in the official picture. I think the result was….nice? 

And mine. Roasted vegetables: Stylist’s own

The filling was really good as heated up leftovers the next day when I could finally manage food – a buttery mix of leek and chicken and mushroom and thyme and all my favourite things – but the recipe had required that I boiled the chicken for an hour, left it to cool, stripped the meat from the bones, sweated the vegetables, made the pastry, left the pastry to sit for an hour, and so on and so on until the only solution was another glass of white port. And I think shop bought pastry would have tasted better.

The life sentence that is Martha’s Butterscotch Praline Cream Pie

As for the Butterscotch Praline Cream Pie, I just checked with my boyfriend and he said “I seem to remember it was alright, but a bit too nutty, and a bit too creamy.” For a dessert that took longer than I’d have got for manslaughter, I’d hope for a little more. I have a vague memory of being disappointed that the butterscotch tasted a bit too authentic, and not enough like Butterscotch Angel Delight – now that would have been a speedier and more satisfying dessert – and also of throwing the unserved half down the waste disposal in a pique of rage once the guests had gone home, but those are all the details I can give you.

I’m amazed I could still take a photo at this point

The short end of this long tale is that Martha’s recipes are her way of inflicting imprisonment on all of us – enslaving us in the kitchen for hours at a time. I’d rather have done Community Service.

Cost of ingredients £29.02 (not including items already in store cupboard)

Starter * *  Nice but dull

Main * * * It just took sooooo long to make

Dessert * Am now craving Angel Delight

Overall 3/10 Life’s too short to make your own pastry, as Delia might have said.

Martha Stewart’s Pies and Tarts £16.99, Clarkson Potter. Original photos by Johnny Miller

Livwise by Olivia Newton-John: The Review

Disclaimer: After writing this up I suddenly spotted the bit about how all the proceeds from this book go to the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre in Melbourne, so you should probably ignore any mean things I say and buy it anyway. The curry recipe alone will more than make your charitable good deed worthwhile. 

Look at me, I’m Gwynnie P…

Every Sunday afternoon, from the age of about nine until 12, I watched Grease. I loved it. Adored it. Even invited my Year Six girlfriend over once to watch it too. I wonder if, as I sang all the words to Summer Loving, she guessed we wouldn’t stay together forever? Of course, I didn’t understand most of the film – that Rizzo got preggo went over my head, that Kenickie’s broken insurance policy was actually a worn-out condom, not an expired certificate from the RAC, was a subtlety I missed.

But one thing I caught was Sandy’s amazing transformation. She taught me there was hope for us all. Like her I was a suburban goodie two shoes, desperate to break out, rebel, act like all the cooler kids. If someone who was mocked so badly by Rizzo, the most laughable “teen” to ever enrol in high school, could become cool, perhaps I could, too. (I eventually bought a leather jacket in Brighton, aged 16. That afternoon I got my friend Gemma to push a blunt silver stud through my left ear, and wore both along the sea front. The strut was pure post-makeover Sandy.)

But Olivia Newton John’s latest metamorphosis is one I’m less thrilled about.  Yes, she’s doing a Gwynnie. “People often ask me what my secret is and want to know how I manage to stay slim, active and healthy at my age,” she trills, as if anyone ever asks her anything other than whether she still has those leather trousers, or if Stockard Channing was a bitch. “Even though my passport says so, it is hard for me to comprehend that I am 62 years young!” Sigh.

The secret, of course, is not eating anything very delicious. Like Gwyneth, she swears by agave syrup, wholegrains, raw food. So far, so celebrity cookbook – and this one comes with the scrotum-clenchingly bad name of Livwise. Still, one of the sub-headings is, naturally, “Let’s Get Physical,” so perhaps it wouldn’t be all bad.

With my boyfriend out of town on a rainy Easter Monday I invited my ex boyfriend (no judgement, babez) and two of my best friends over for lunch. “We’re doing Olivia,” I inform them as they arrive, one by one. “I love Grease!” they each say in reply, as if the poor woman doesn’t have an entire back catalogue of other work to go alongside it. Like, um, that one about that thing… *imdbs furiously*… Xanadu!

Olivia’s Pumpkin and Beetroot Salad with Mustard Dressing (pumpkin = butternut squash, apparently. They’re cray cray Down Under) 

Like Gwyneth, Livvy’s starters are mainly salads, and mainly involve beetroot. The hardest part of her Pumpkin and Beetroot Salad with Mustard Dressing was peeling the butternut squash. “There is something very homey and earthy about root vegetables,” claims the ghost writer pretending to be ONJ at this point (later revealed to actually be two women, both with scarier coifs than when Frenchie’s goes pink).  “This recipe is easy and brings out the best of these vegetable flavours – scrumptious!” And actually, attributed authors Kristine Matheson and Karen Inge APD FSMA FSDA (to give her her full title) are not wrong.

My version. I was lucky enough to get two halves of one of the curiously specific eight cherry tomatoes

I thought the amount of oil used to roast the squash - half a tablespoon - wouldn’t be enough, but it was. I thought that wrapping the beetroots individually in foil would be a faff, but it wasn’t, and they roasted perfectly. The honey and mustard dressing worked perfectly with the toasted walnuts to help everything feel fresh and tangy. “I don’t even like lettuce, but I love the dressing,” claimed one guest, going in for seconds. Conversely, the ex boyfriend left most of his. “I don’t like the dressing,” he admitted, eventually. Considering that, when we went out, the only vegetable he liked was broccoli, this actually shows personal growth.

Liv’s Balinese Chicken Curry

“Collaborators” Kristine and Karen didn’t bother with a pithy summation of the Balinese Chicken Curry, but that was probably because they were too busy licking the saucepan. It was incredible. All it took was to whizz up the curry paste ingredients in the blender, then add them to the pan of coconut milk and chicken. Coconutty, zesty, creamy, all the things a good curry should be. “And it must be healthy, or it wouldn’t be in the book,” claimed one guest, and you can’t fault that logic. Liv might admit at the beginning that she’s not a cordon bleu chef or nutritionist, but all the initials after Kaz Inge’s name must mean something.

Lots of sauce, but no complaints. I would drink the stuff, and gladly.

So far, so good. Perhaps I was too quick to judge, I thought, smugly clearing away four empty plates.

Her Cashew, Macademia and Raspberry Tart

And then I got the Cashew, Macademia and Raspberry Tart out the freezer, where it had sat for two hours.

My version. Beware, the impostor cheesecake. Also, v expensive.

It had been a fiddle to make. Nuts don’t like to be blended, I learnt. Blenders are annoying to wash, which I had to do between blitzing each layer. On the way from worktop to freezer I’d dropped it, spilling almost half the middle bit on the floor. “Will!” I’d almost screamed before remembering he was away, blaming my boyfriend being my default setting. I sighed instead, cleaned it up quietly, cursed the Beauty School Dropout in the Sky.

And then here it was, looking like a cheesecake, smelling like a cheesecake, almost with the consistency of a cheesecake. But it tasted like a Jetson’s version of a cheesecake – something that was there to simulate cheesecake but without actually being it. The biscuit base was made with blitzed macademia nuts and dates, the cheesy bit was actually blended cashews, lemon juice, coconut oil and agave syrup (obvs). The raspberry topping was sweetened by dates. It wasn’t bad, as such, it just wasn’t cheesecake. It felt like a con – the nutty flavour unexpectedly where a sweet lightness ought to be. “This is not the one that I want,” I said, at last putting to good use what I’d been hoping to drop in all lunch time. “I’d rather have the real thing. That nobody asked for seconds was telling.

I guess in Ms Newton John’s life, however, there is never any left, for she doesn’t say to store in the freezer. I placed the remains in a pot in the fridge, and left it there for later. With no setting agent, it wasn’t long before it looked like this:

Oh Olivia. Perhaps I won’t be Hopelessly Devoted to you after all.   

Cost of ingredients: £42.37 (not including items already in store cupboard) The million bags of nuts for that wretched pudding were bank.

Starter: * * *

Main * * * * * ( I would happily eat it every day for ever, and ever, esp if I still got to look as good as Livia tells the world she does at 62)

Pudding * * (Well, it wasn’t technically dreadful)

Overall 6.5/10 A lot of the ingredients are too pricey to eat every day, a lot of the notes too preachy

Livwise by Olivia Newton John and some other people was out last week, Murdoch Books, £16.99. Original photography by Michele Aboud/Natasha Milne

Seasonal Spanish Food by Jose Pizarro: The Review

Artful artichokes resting on some tiles. Who cares why?

Sarah Beeny may be wrong about a lot of things – you don’t always need to be preggo on TV, you don’t always need to offer the death stare whenever anyone disagrees with you and you don’t always have to back people into submission (something she once did to me terrifyingly down the phone. She tried to convince me it was ok for her house to appear in Style after it had been in Hello, and I agreed with her gravelly voice of authority even though I knew my editor demands exclusivity. I then cowardly emailed her PR afterwards to say it was a no goer, feeling like that family on Property Ladder who put cladding on the house when they promised Sazzer B they wouldn’t). However, she’s right about one thing – you really do need to knock down all your walls and build a kitchen/diner/whatever, especially if you’re going to cook from Seasonal Spanish Food by Jose Pizarro.

After all, if there’s one sure fire way to lose points at Come Dine With Me – apart from falling asleep and dripping your hair in your avocado like Dawn from Preston – it’s when the host is constantly in the kitchen. “As the host was always in the kitchen, I’m giving him a……4” some drunk will slur in the back of the cab, holding the number card the wrong way up. Also, finishing off the dinner means that you miss out on all the action.

Some of the snippets I just about overheard going on at the dining table were:

“Was it worse than the time you accidentally shagged a junkie in his crack den?”

“Happiness is not meant to feel this way.”

“His penis is too big for that position.”

And by the time I was back in the room, serving up one of the many tapas courses (of which there were five) the conversation had moved on. So thanks, Jose. Because of your recipes I’ll never know when large becomes simply too much.

Let me explain. I’m in a book group – three girls, two gays, one book every six weeks or so. We probably spend about five to ten minutes each time on the book which only most of us have usually read, the rest of the evening is for drinking fizz, discussing boys, and eating food. But oh, the food! Since we’ve started we’ve had summer roasts, homemade pavlovas, even quails – it’s almost got competitive. With Jose’s two restaurants on Bermondsey Street being my favourite places at the moment I thought his new book would be ideal to uphold the standard.

But of course, I didn’t get home until 6.30pm and with guests arriving at half seven it didn’t give me much time to set the table, fluff the cushions and pick the perfect playlist – and pull together five courses.

I’d started the pudding the night before (it required part of it to rest 12 hours in the fridge) but everything else had to begin from scratch. Calmly rolling up my sleeves (there’s no point having a meltdown if my boyfriend’s not around to be at the receiving end, and the third rule of Book Club is that boyfriends are deffo not invited. The first is that you do not talk about the book at Book Club, and the second…well, you guessed it).

Jose’s Courgette Soup with Cheese

The soup was incredibly easy. Boiling some courgettes with chicken stock and then blending it with cream cheese, I began to think the evening was going to be ok. “This is delicious,” everyone cried, slurping it up in seconds. But then it was 8.50pm, and there were already three empty Proseccos nestling in my Recycling.

My still relatively-sober version

“Excuse me,” I cried, jumping up to head back to the kitchen. “Don’t talk about anything interesting!” The croquetas are practically Jose’s signature dish at the restaurants, so I was worried mine wouldn’t live up to his. I needn’t have – the recipe was straightforward, if time consuming.

Jose’s Ham Croquetas

The leek and ham innards had to rest in the fridge for an hour (they were the first thing I made after the playlist) but the dip n dunk approach to rolling them in breadcrumbs was fun – or about as much fun as being stuck in the kitchen can be when everyone else is swapping stories about dating Brazilian doctors (that was the most detail I ever really gleaned on that).

My version. Just pictured: The Book: Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher, in makes-a-surprise-appearance-at-Book-Group shocker

“Don’t take this the wrong way, because I really like them, but they taste like an upmarket Findus Crispy Pancake,” said one guest. “Can I be really uncouth and ask for ketchup?” said another. It was 9.30, we were all pissed, of course she wanted ketchup.

Jose’s Deep Fried Goat’s Cheese With Orange Blossom Honey. If only mine had turned out like this

I blame the alcohol for ruining the next course. It was all going a bit too well  - the recipes working just that bit too perfectly. I’d fried my beetroot crisps like I was meant to and then chucked the goats cheese into the pan. It turned into a white, sloppy mess. “Oh, shit!” I shouted, re-reading the recipe. “I was meant to cover them in breadcrumbs.”

What necking two bottles of bubbles turns it into

Still, deep fried cheese goo with beetroot actually tastes pretty good, especially if it’s 9.55pm and your insides are sloshing with Champagne (we’d moved on to the good stuff by now).

Jose’s Pan Fried Pimenton Chicken with Mashed Potato.You want to dive in, right?

The chicken was easy, too. The only bit that took any time was peeling the potatoes (“He left me to go and be sick and then came back and carried on with the date” I heard at this point, as I snarled to myself, feeling left out). Doused in paprika and sherry they had a syrupy glaze which meant we ate them even though we were drunk-full, because they simply were that good.

Ah, the main reason for the book - as a placemat

“When are we going to get something green?” one of my guests asked, not outside of her rights of expectation. Fortunately the spinach, which I’d stirfried so sloppily that most of it littered my hob, was light and delicious.

Jose’s Apple Pie

I don’t remember much about pudding, other than it had to be prepared in three stages, and then took half an hour in the oven. Forcing it down at 11.30pm, I only remember that it tasted incredible, really vanilla-y, and that the pastry had kind of broken up as I’d heavy handedly rolled it on the only bit of my worktop not covered with dirty bowls.

And my version. See also: empty wine glasses

Eventually, at midnight, the guests left – drunk, full, and far more aware of each other’s gossip than I was. All the recipes were straightforward, successful (except when mixed with booze brain) and relatively easy. The only problem is that they all required immediate serving, so unless you have staff to cook them for you don’t really make good dinner party fare. Or simply get an open plan kitchen – something my boyfriend has, and I’m moving into his in two weeks! Did I mention that? Sorry, but I feel like I have to talk about my news now, seeing as I barely got to last night. So there you have it, Jose’s recipes. Perfect for people who actually have nothing to say to their guests.

Cost: £34.02 (not including items already in store cupboard

Soup * * * *

Croquetas * * * * *

Cheese * * (admittedly, not Jose’s fault)

Chicken * * * *

Apple pie * * * * * (probably - who can remember?)

Overall: 9/10 for delicious recipes, 4/10 for suitability for dinner parties. Maybe just go to his restaurants?

Published by Kyle Cathie. Original Photography by Emma Lee

Gordon Ramsay’s Great Escape: The Review

Oh, Gordon. I wish you’d bat for my team

Oh Gordon, you big, sexy, sweaty hunk, you. You hulking Easter Island rockface, you domineering, sweaty man-beast, with legs as thick as a walnut tree, face as grooved as a walnut itself. You’re everything I could possibly want in my fantasy figure – you’d shout me into submission, call me a snivelling twat, throw a lumpy white roux all over me and storm out swearing at the cameras.

But you don’t make it easy for me to love you.

There’s that open letter you wrote to your mother in law. The constant gurning after the Beckhams. The dreadful Ramsay’s F word. And now…your book, Gordon Ramsay’s Great Escape. The cast list – including Mark Sargeant who wrote the recipes and Emily Quah the text – is longer than one of your Marathon training sessions. What did you actually do here, Gordo, (can I call you that?) other than hop around the Far East, playing cricket with the locals, posing for dreadful portraits like this one, above?

But then, what does it actually matter? You’ve long been merely a figurehead, off eating undressed spinach leaves with Eva Longoria, letting Stuart Gillies and the team at Gordon Ramsay Holdings quietly go about creating brilliant new restaurants like the awesome Bread Street Kitchen. Why should you, a cook, be expected to actually cook? You’re the heavily-lined face of this brand, not the workhorse who has to carry the load. Have another game of cricket, eh Gordy? Who needs to sweat above a stove?

And actually, the recipes were delicious in spite of your non-involvement – no wonder you were happy to take an expensable jolly around Mumbai in their honour. I don’t even like Indian food that much Mr Ramsay, sir, as I always find the smell of the spice comes out my hair follicles the next day. You probably know that feeling too, what with your lovely luscious locks. What shampoo do you use, by the way? Tell me you’re the secret softie we both know you are deep down. Tell me it’s Johnson’s No More Tears.

But I’m getting off the track, something your crashingly unsubtle charisma often causes me to do. Not only were your team’s recipes tasty, they were easy too. Not once did I have a meltdown at my boyfriend, which is customary in these proceedings, not once did I have to tell the guests to eat another cheese dorito as dinner wouldn’t be for another three hours. Not once did I have to curse your name, and everything you’ve ever put it to (even those awful pasta sauces) – this was  simple Sunday cooking at its best.

Gordon’s (team’s) Spiced Tomato and Coconut soup

Yes, the soup was a little on the thin side, but the creaminess of the coconut milk cut through the chilli to perfection.

And my version. Not quite so inspiring without the styling, is it?

As for the butter chicken, I’ve never eaten such a delicate dish.

The Ramsay Holdings ideal of Butter Chicken

So perfectly smooth and subtle and mild, like your pillow talk probably is, when it’s just the two of us and you can drop your hard-man image.

You like my courgette, Gordie?

And you should remember to congratulate your team on this fruit salad, too – it was as easy to prepare as it looks:

Team Ramsay’s Fruit Salad with Spiced Syrup

One guest even favourably compared the spiced syrup to Red AfterShock – “in a good way” – which I could only take as a compliment.

Healthy AND delicious. A winning combo. Just like you and me, bbs.

Thanks Gordon my old friend, your team really turned out another blinder. Look me up next time you’re in town, you can swear at me any day. And give my love to Posh!xx

Cost of ingredients: £22.73 (not including those already in store cupboard)

First course: * * *

Main Course: * * * * *

Dessert: * * * *

Overall: 8/10 – gains points for easy recipes and raw animal sex appeal, loses them for cheesy portraits

Gordon Ramsay’s Great Escape (Harper Collins) Original Food Photography by Emma Lee, Reportage Photography by Jonathan Gregson.

carved from a walnut stone, hair fashioned from 

The Intolerant Gourmet by Pippa Kendrick: The Review

Regina George: 120 calories and 48 calories from fat. What percent is that?
Gretchen: Uh, 48 into 120?
Regina: I’m only eating foods with less than 30 percent calories from fat.
Cady: It’s 40 percent. Well 48 over 120 equals X over 100 and then you cross multiply and get the value of X.
Regina: Whatever, I’m getting cheese fries.

Regina’s attitude to food could, quite neatly, be used to sum up what happens in the Sunday Times Style office. We’re as faddy as Gwyneth Paltrow, one day swapping all sugar for agave syrup, another eating nothing but beef and milk (yes, really), but then a caseload of Hummingbird Bakery cupcakes will be delivered and we’ll all fall face first into the frosting. Self-denial is just too hard. We’re competitive, egging each other on (with albumen substitute, obvs) to avoid even more supposedly unhealthy ingredients, or try some new natural diet aid just in from the States. We have good intentions – wanting a healthier body, mind and spirit - but the problem is that we simply love food too much, and our schemes rarely last past the 4pm tea run.

So when The Intolerant Gourmet by Pippa Kendrick - out this coming Thursday -  landed on my desk it appealed to the desperate dieter in me. Geared towards people who can’t handle dairy, or gluten, or – in my case - the temptation of a box of Krispy Kremes, the pictures with every recipe looked salivatingly seductive. I don’t know whether gluten or dairy is actually bad for me, but if someone is going to be cutting it out of their diet then I want in on that action, too.

The problem is that, traipsing around my local Tesco on a snowy Sunday morning, I couldn’t find such delights as oat cream, gluten free flour, or xantham gum. “Whatever, I’m getting the regular sort,” I said with my best Regina George hair toss, loading up my basket with as much dairy and gluten as I could find. Yes, fine, I know this breaks my own rules about cooking exactly as the book suggests, but having stayed over at my boyfriend’s the night before and not brought sensible snowy footwear, I was wearing his hiking boots that were two sizes too small, and mildly crippling my feet. So that makes it ok, right?

The official Butternut Squash, Coconut and Chilli Soup

Anyway, the Butternut Squash, Coconut and Chilli Soup couldn’t have been easier. Roasting the squash with some spices, and then blending it up with the coconut milk and some stock I didn’t have to deviate from the recipe at all. “I can totally do the Intolerant thing” I said, scoffing the Sweet Chilli Kettle Chips my boyfriend’s sister and her boyfriend had brought over. And it tasted divine. The squash had become all caramelised, the coconut milk added a creamy nuttiness. “I don’t know what those lactose-avoiders complain about,” I thought, stacking up the bowls, which had all be drained of their last drop. “This is easy.”

And my version. Tolerably Intolerant

The main course was similarly simple. A chicken and mushroom base with a potato topping – like a poultryfied Shepherd’s pie, and therefore the best thing in the world ever. Sure, I used real butter in the potato instead of Pure Sunflower Spread, and regular flour in the roux instead of gluten free, but what are you gonna do? Even Intolerants have to slip up sometimes, amiright? What’s crippling stomach pain compared to the joy of perfectly creamy mash?

The book’s Chicken Pie. You just want to take that spoon and dive in. And who’d blame you?

In fact, the incredibleness of the pie was so great that you wondered why no one had ever thought to do it before. Next time I’d add tarragon instead of thyme, use white wine and milk to make the sauce, but it was undeniably ace.

My pie. Phwoar, etc

After all, it was chicken, mushroom and potato. That’s the holy trinity, the ultimate Sunday lunch, the meal which actually prompted my sort-of sister-in-law to ask when I was moving in with her brother. “Um, anyone for a top up?” I asked, grabbing the wine, before suddenly becoming very busy with the sauce for the pudding.

Their Sticky Toffee Puddings

Of course, my Intolerant Sticky Toffee Pudding was made intolerable for Intolerants by the addition of normal flour, regular cream, and actual eggs. But it tasted awesome – the dates working as the substitute to actual toffee, the high level of sugar enough to send the Style office into a frenzy (but it was sanctioned by the book, so presumably not unhealthy. That’s how it works, yeah?). The individual desserts didn’t quite come out of their pots in one piece as the book implied, but with a dousing of sauce you could barely tell.

And mine. Not suitable for Intolerants, or anyone on a diet

“So, how are you finding this whole Cook the Books thing?” my sort-of sister-in-law asked, as she got the last scraping of sauce off her plate.

“Well, there is a moment shortly before the dishing up of the first course where Pip has a meltdown and shouts at me,” my poor boyfriend said sadly, harking back to the time earlier in the day when I’d asked him to mash the potatoes and he’d suggested doing it in the dirty roasting tin, of all places “but that’s ok because it means it’s nearly time to eat.”

I’m so lucky he’s more tolerant than those the recipes were intended for.

Cost of ingredients: £19.71 (not including ingredients already in store cupboard)

Starter * * * * *

Main * * * *

Pudding * * * *

Easiness * * * * *

Overall: 9/10 (as long as you substitute the suggested ingredients for the real thing, and aren’t actually intolerant)

The Intolerant Gourmet by Pippa Kendrick. Published by Collins. Official photographs by Jan Baldwin

Full of Flavour by Maria Elia – The Review

Maria’s chicken. How hard can a spatchcocking be?

“You need to spatchcock the chicken. Calm down, it’s not as scary as it sounds!” begins the recipe, complete with its own friendly exclamation mark, for Slow-Roasted Paprika Chicken with Butternut Squash, Smashed Butter Beans and Tomatoes. Obviously I panicked. The vague instructions spoke about cutting off the wing tips with scissors and then chopping out the backbone. Mid-meltdown, I made my boyfriend do it. “Shall we watch a video on youtube?” he asked. But that’s against the rules – the plan is to cook every recipe exactly as the book says, using only the book and no initiative, to judge how good it really is.

Fortunately my boyfriend is made of sterner stuff, and with the chicken now as spineless as me I was able to make the simple marinade and stick it in the fridge overnight.

The next morning, hungover, and with guests arriving in three hours for lunch, the act of cooking felt like too much. You know when you’ve drunk too much and everything is an effort, and why is there no Lucozade in the house and who are all these new characters in Hollyoaks? Yes, that.  Anyway, I took to my bed in a fit, bemoaning that preparing the parsnips three different ways for my Truffled Parsnip Salad starter was more than I could bear. In fact, two hours later, showered and almost without the sicky feeling the previous night’s wine had caused, it wasn’t. Cubing two and frying them in a lake of butter, roasting two more in the oven (the book said for ten minutes, or until golden brown – this actually took 30) and turning two more into a puree was as difficult as the whole meal got. Every stage was simple, the flavours in each – truffle oil with the cubes, sage with the roasts, milk in the puree – seeming like they could never be anything but delicious.

Maria’s Truffle Parsnip Salad. Everyone loves a good threeway

My replica. Liderally as amazing as it looked

And the chicken couldn’t have been easier too. Slowly roasting for two hours with the butternut squash, there was nothing to do but baste it every half hour, then add the beans at the very end. Obviously, post-strop, I was behind schedule, and our two guests arrived, on time, once it had been cooking for 30 mins. “Who turns up punctually to a Sunday lunch?” I bitched to my long-suffering boyfriend as Matt and Mark arrived with two bottles of prosecco and a bunch of lillies. “Lovely to see you,” I said cheerfully. “Hope you’re not hungry, dinner won’t be for aaaaaaages.” As the whole flat filled with the smell of paprika-y goodness we broke out the cheese Doritos. They’re practically a palette cleanser, right?  

My chicken. Almost the same, right? Note the lack of crushed beans. Bitch gotta work for them

The best thing about this dinner was that there was now nothing I needed to do, except wait. We drank the fizz, had a chat, and opened another bag of salt and vinegar Kettle chips – it was the most relaxed and non-stressful three course Sunday lunch ever. The meat was tender, juicy, full of flavour, the squash and beans the perfect accompaniment. It was a dish that looked impressive, smelt amazing, and yet you felt almost sheepish for how easy it was – spatchcocking notwithstanding. The only difficulty came when the book said to mash the butter beans in the roasting dish – but they were all mixed up with the tomatoes and butternut squash, and a pool of incredible juice.  I half heartedly managed to crush a few but as they started to make a mush with the tomatoes I gave up and served them whole.

Maria’s trifles. Sweet. Yes, really.

My mother never swears, instead using “Rhubarb” as a cuss word. We don’t know why, we’ve stopped questioning it, just one of those things mums do like ironing old wrapping paper to be re-used after Christmas, or recording Songs of Praise. To me, though, rhubarb is the most perfect ingredient, so tasty and easy and versatile. The Rhubarb, Rosewater and Ginger Trifle didn’t let me down – the whole course took just a few minutes to make after I’d put the chicken in the oven and tasted as creamy and perfect as a pudding can be. Obviously, mine didn’t look as neat as the ones in the book’s picture, but then it still goes down the same way, amiright?

And the homemade version. Not *too* shabby

Every plate of every course was returned clean, and after my unnecessary strop, which I’m blaming on the hangover rather than the recipes,  it was easier than pouring another glass of wine. “I’m going to buy this book,” said Mark, leafing through it over coffee after lunch, stopping at a Middle Eastern Inspired Eton Mess which mixes Turkish Delight into the meringue. And I would recommend you do the same.

Cost of ingredients, to serve 4: £28.73 (not including items already in store cupboard)

Starter: * * * * *

Main * * * * *

Dessert * * * * *

Easiness * * * * (Spatchcocking? Really?)

Overall marks: 9.5/10

Maria Elia: Full of Flavour

Published by Kyle Cathie. Official pictures by Jonathan Gregson.