Cook The Books

Cooking For Real Life by Joanna Weinberg: The Review

Joanna Weinberg. The woman whose recipes work.

“He’s going to come a bit later, he didn’t want to be the first one to get there,” my friend explained of her husband on a recent night out. “I suppose I can understand, he doesn’t want to hang out with my friends all night. If it was with his friends, I’d probably show up at last orders.”

“And I’d probably have a massive strop and not show up at all,” I replied.

 “They’re so lucky to have us, aren’t they?”

 Much as I genuinely love my boyfriend’s friends, many of whom have become friends of my own (hi guyzzzzzz!), it’s always a little bit more effort to drag myself off the sofa, away from Take Me Out, to see his chums rather than my own. (It’s an effort to see my friends, too. I really do love Take Me Out.)

 I’ll try everything. “Do you reeeeeeally want to go?” I’ll ask, stretching languidly. “Yes,” he’ll reply. I won’t say anything for a bit.

 “I’m not sure that I reeeeeeeally want to,” I’ll eventually say, as if he hasn’t guessed. He’ll look at me sternly. “Philip! We’re going.” I’ll pout. Maybe harrumph a couple of times. But it never works.

And so I go and stand in the corner and feel miserable and drink slowly and check my watch not very surreptitiously and eventually Will will let me go home and he’ll stay out and go to Heaven and roll home at 6 in the morning and I’ll feel smug that I had a good night’s sleep and bang around the kitchen really loudly with no sympathy for his hangover. Again, he really is lucky to have me.

But to try and trick him into thinking that I’m not actually all bad, sometimes I’ll do something so selfless, with so little griping, that it hopefully tips the scales back into my favour. Like cooking a three course meal for six on the Friday night of the first full week back at work after Christmas.

“You really fucking owe me for this,” I hissed, hunched over Tesco Online, nursing the last of the festive port, and none of the leftover Christmas spirit. “All I want to do is crawl into a ball and die and you’re making me cook a whole dinner?”

“Pip, I’m not making you do anything. We can go to the pub if you like.”

“Humph,” I harrumphed. There was no chance of that. One of the guests was Will’s ex girlfriend and her husband (so modern) and the last time we’d been to their house they’d done something amazing with steak and scallops, so I had our honour to protect. Plus I literally love playing the martyr.

But seeing as it was the first week back and I was battling with a crushing depression bigger than the hole left behind by the Christmas tree, I went for a book I kind of knew would work. “Where’s the fun in that?” I hear you cry. “We love it most when you serve up raw potato!” But January is not a time for uncooked tubers, and boyfriend’s ex-girlfriends are not the sort to whom you should be serving them.

And so I chose Cooking For Real Life by Joanna Weinberg. Disclaimer – I know Joanna. She is lovely, and has written recipes for me at both Sunday Times Style and Red, and they have always been easy, delicious and included unexpected twists of flavour. And she’s polite, oh how polite! One August I descended on her home and dressed it for Christmas and made her light a Christmas pudding constantly for two days and she never complained once. I kind of love her a bit. (That was for a shoot, by the way. Not some weird hostage situation.)

The only problem with her recipes? So simple were they that I barely got a chance to have a stress at Will whilst cooking them.

 

Joanna’s Parma ham with elderflower poached rhubarb and burrata

Take the starter – Parma ham with elderflower poached rhubarb and burrata. I poached the rhubarb the night before with some elderflower cordial, and as the guests were arriving I simply drizzled it over the ham and cheese. If it hadn’t been so delicious I’d have almost felt cheated.

And mine. Weird yellowy-ness not present at time of photo. I blame January light

The Spiced butterflied leg of lamb with cucumber raita nearly denied me the chance to hiss too, but luckily I found the opportunity. “Do you want to check the meat?” Will asked as I was clearing the plates. “Sure,” I smiled sweetly, keen to make it clear to Will’s ex girlfriend that we had the perfect relationship.

Top: Joanna’s lamb, followed by her salad

(At this point, it might be wise to point out that they dated for about two months nearly a decade ago, and she’s been married for five or six years, and neither of them have ever given me any cause to think there is anything other then friendship between them. BUT STILL.)

My version. The pitta bits were Joanna’s idea. Guess what? They totally worked.

“I don’t know if it’s done, you check if it’s done, meat is your job,” I snarled into his ear by the oven. “Well, has it been in as long as the recipe said?” he asked “Isn’t that the rule?” It had been, and it was, to perfection; Joanna’s Courgette, fresh pea and ricotta salad making a light, zingy, welcomingly Spring-like accompaniment to the spices of the meat.

 

J-Wein’s trifle

Then finally came the Eastern Trifle, which again I’d made quietly and unfussily the day before. “You seem very calm, and everything tastes wonderful,” Will’s ex girlfriend said as I spooned dessert out unceremoniously into the bowls. “Oh, well, the recipes were really good, which helps,” I smiled. She’s so sweet. – he really does have good taste in partners.

 

And mine

And the trifle didn’t disappoint. It was like a regular one, only with the base soaked in Earl Grey and some orange blossom water adding a touch of exoticism. Everyone liked it, even if it did look like a grey mess by the time it made it to table.

The guests left early – it is January, after all, and whilst no one was on a detox, people still had vague resolutions to somehow be better about their drinking. “Thanks so much for cooking for my friends,” Will said, loading the dishwasher.

“They’re my friends too,” I replied, full of goodwill to all men. “And it totally wasn’t a bother.” See? He really is lucky to have me.

Cost of ingredients: £42.68 (not including items already in store cupboard)

Starter * * * * *

Main course * * * * *

Dessert * * * *

Overall 10/10 and not just because I know the author. It is sublime.

Cooking for Real Life by Joanna Weinberg (Bloomsbury, £25) Original photography by Jill Mead.

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

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

Notes From My Kitchen Table by Gwyneth Paltrow: The Review

I’m not sure if it’s the resemblance that is frightening about this pic, or something else I can’t put my finger on

There’s a story doing the rounds of the London media about how, at Philip Green’s party on some exotic island recently, Gwyneth Paltrow was quietly jogging down the beach when she happened to run past Kate Moss, eating crisps and smoking fags on a sun lounger. “God, why are you running?” Kate is supposed to have asked sneerily, laughing with her Mean Girls gang of friends. “Because I don’t want to look like you,” Gwynnie allegedly replied. One version of the tale claims Kate then threw her crisps at her, another that they had to be kept separate for the rest of the party, but one fact is clear. Despite what you may imagine, our Gwyn has sass.

And for that reason, I love Gwyneth Paltrow. But it’s not an easy thing to do. For every time she’s seen jiggling her non-existent jelly with Jay-Z there’s a moment where she says “I first had a version of this [recipe] at a Japanese monastery during a silent retreat—don’t ask, it’s a long story.” For every far-better-than-the-show-itself cameo on Glee she’ll counter it by saying “One cold wintry day in London, I was dreaming about salad nicoise—one of my favourites.” And it’s hard to recall just how fun and bubbly she was on Graham Norton when, on another occasion she drones on about how, “during the strict macrobiotic chapter of my life, I ate miso soup every day for breakfast and sometimes with dinner as well.”

All three of the above examples are taken from her cookbook, Notes From My Kitchen Table, in which she opens her perfect life unselfconsciously for all of us to stare at. And stare we did – having gawped at Goop, her so-bad-it’s-incredible website, every newspaper rushed to serialise it, every fashion hound was suddenly spotted toting a bottle of agave syrup around town. No one cared whether the recipes were any good – they were written by a film star, and nothing else really mattered, right? With ingredients such as sautéed dandelions, and an entire section devoted to what to do with the wood burning pizza oven in your garden, this book was not for actually cooking from, but for gaining a greater insight into everyone’s favourite caped crusader.

Captain Gwynnie to the rescue - no more unhealthy suppers for us!

Until I decided to put her to the test, and serve up a Gwynnie Special for six last Friday night. Astonishingly, I managed to buy all the ingredients in Tesco – I avoided any recipes which sounded too outlandish – and could cook them all in my boyfriend’s kitchen – even though it doesn’t have its own pasta maker, or Oscar sitting above a sous vide machine.

Gwyn’s Ivy Chop Salad

And actually, everything was pretty straightforward. Because my boyfriend was still at work when I started the prep there was no one around to shout at, so instead I just calmly got on with it all. The Ivy Chopped Salad, which The Goopster name droppily says is “inspired by the famous vegetable grilled salad at the Ivy restaurant in Los Angeles,” was a summery mix of lime juice, lettuce, grilled courgettes, salmon and beetroot. “You can’t beat the beets,” one guest claimed, which was when I noticed the empty bottle of vodka which had been full when people had arrived just an hour before.

My version. I don’t know why the salmon looks like chicken, but it tasted ok

You see, my boyfriend loves to play host. He’s happiest when mixing up extra-strength martinis, or Cosmopolitans with double shots in them. As people got stuck into Will’s fourth, fifth, maybe even sixth round of drinks, we started to have the sort of fun that probably never happens in the Paltrow household, the sort which only follows twelvety glasses of my boyfriend’s special shock-tail. We began a photo shoot, copying the earnest shots of Gwyneth in the book as an homage to the great actress.

Note that her and I have the same olive oil. We’re Oily BFFs!

Yes, that’s little girl Gwyn second in from the left

Yes, that’s Elle Decoration’s Designer of the Year Lee Broom second in from the left

“Gwyneth is out of control,” claimed one guest, quite rightly, when we came across the shot of her throwing all her actress-y pretentions out the window and thoughtfully smelling some cherry tomatoes.

Unlike Gwynnie, I don’t grow my own basil

But back to the food, which in Gwynnie’s case no one ever really cares about – what we all want to know is why she fell out with Madonna, and what her and Beyonce actually talk about.

GP’s Duck ‘Cassoulet’

Her Duck ‘Cassoulet’ (inverted commas are all hers) was fine – the bean mixture was quite tasty but the duck could probably have been cooked a little longer, and the caramelised Brussel Sprouts, which she claims have converted many a “sprout cynic” were simple and surprisingly tasty.

My version. Slightly raw duck never hurt anyone, right?

Her Blueberry Pavlova, however, was superb. I’ve never made meringues before – my mother makes such a big deal about how much of a fiddle it is every year when she’s wheels out her Raspberry Pavolva at Christmas that’s I’ve always assumed it was impossible.

Her Blueberry Pavolva

Maybe my mum’s doing it wrong – or I’ve just proved where I get my skills at playing the martyr in the kitchen – but this recipe was such a doddle, and produced the lightest, fluffiest, most perfect meringues ever.

And mine. Despite drunken photography, deffo worthy of a Foodie Oscar

The next day, I woke up, still feeling drunk. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so mocking of Gwyn’s lifestyle diet after all.

Cost of ingredients (not including items already in store cupboard) £48.44

First course * * *

Main course * * *

Dessert * * * * *

Overall: 6/10 – minus a point for  “A lecture from Leonardo DiCaprio (when he was nineteen and I was twenty-one) about how such animals are kept and processed, made me lose my desire for factory farm pork and beef right there.”

Notes From My Kitchen Table by Gwyneth Paltrow (Boxtree, £20) Original photography by Ellen Silverman, homage shots by Charles Rudgard and Polly Broderick