A word from Jane Grigson

An uninspired day, so 'A word from ...' entry.

Jane Grigson is the homely looking lady on the left. The other lady is her daughter Sophie - also a well-known cookery writer and like her mother, not a chef.

I read a couple of articles about Jane Grigson on the 25th anniversary of her death, and, interestingly, they both commented on the fact that although just as influential in her way she is no longer as well-known as Elizabeth David. And this is true - she is rather forgotten. Somebody needs to get out there and engineer a Jane Grigson revival for she is a really good writer of cookery books. But she led a 'normal life' and was very happily married - unlike the more charismatic Elizabeth David.

But she was big back in the 60s and 70s. I found this lovely photo of her with Robert Carrier - maybe in his restaurant? I don't know who the other lady is. At first I thought it might be Elizabeth David but it doesn't say so on the caption and I think that she and Robert Carrier did not get on. It's all very glam and unreal - a real whole salmon cooked in a fancy way but with tins of salmon in front. Maybe it was an advertising project.

Like Claudia Roden's, her books are quite scholarly - she has researched everything pretty much exhaustively - but she is not dull and boring and sometimes her writing is almost poetic. I have several of her books - my favourites being Good Things, The Vegetable Book and the Fruit Book, but I also have a book on French Pork Charcuterie, English Food and The Mushroom Feast. She has written others too and I do believe there is a 'Best of' book somewhere. Mine are just little paperbacks with no glossy photos, but some rather lovely line drawings.

English and French foods are her specialities. She is my 'go to' person when I have a vegetable or fruit I don't know what to do with and also I have to say that she is brilliant on tarts and pies. And her recipes always work - which is another recommendation.

So here are some of her words - this is supposed to be 'A word from ...' after all. These are all taken from her introduction to Good Food which was first published in 1971.

"Anyone who likes to eat, can soon learn to cook well. Such a range of cookery books can now be bought for a few shillings in paperback, ... that there's no reason for not eating deliciously - and simply - all the time."

"Intelligent housewives feel they've a duty to be bored by domesticity. A fair reaction to dusting and bed making perhaps, but not, I think, to cooking."

"I feel that delight lies in the seasons and what they bring us. One does not remember the grilled hamburgers and frozen peas, but the strawberries that come in May and June straight from the fields, the asparagus of a special occasion, kippers from Craster in July and August ... This is good food."

"When one thinks of the civilisation implied in the development of peaches from the wild fruit, or of apricots, grapes, pears, plums, when one thinks of those millions of gardeners from ancient China right across Asia and the Middle East to Rome, then across the Alps north to France, Holland and England of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, how can we so crassly, so brutishly, reduce the exquisite results of their labour into cans full of syrup and cardboard-wrapped blocks of ice?"

"Cooking something delicious is really much more satisfactory than painting pictures or throwing pots. 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 for ever."

Several of her recipes are standard fare for me now - I should organise a Jane Grigson dinner party some time. We went to a fancy Elizabeth David lunch once - a Jane Grigson one would be just as good, though maybe more homely. More real perhaps?