A new cookbook and a first recipe

"A brilliant way to show someone you love what a clever little cook you are."

Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall

As you have probably realised by now I am a sucker for buying cookbooks. Particularly on Readings Bargain Table. They always have something worth at least glancing at, and sometimes even something you want to buy. This was one of those buys.

I have come to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall rather late in my cooking life. I had heard of him of course, but only in the context of foraging, being organic and living off the land, which to my mind is admirable but a bit extreme and impractical in my case because I'm such a lousy gardener. I also though I knew him for cooking weird things. But I think I got the weird bit because he became confused in my mind with Heston Blumenthal - they even look a bit alike I think. And Heston is mildly mad if totally innovative. Anyway I was rather put off until I bought - from Readings Bargain Table again, his River Cottage Leftovers book, which is rather brilliant and very pleasingly designed. It's not so much the actual recipes in the book that are so good but the general ideas and attitudes. That is what sucked me in. Since then I have bought the massive River Cottage A-Z which is a sort of encyclopaedia of ingredients from all the River Cottage team, and also his River Cottage Everyday book - which is a rather more 'normal' cookbook, and perhaps for that reason not one that I have used as much. So when I saw one called Easy. I just couldn't resist.

The book begins with these words and this picture.

"If you love cooking, but sometimes struggle to carve out the time or summon the energy to do it, then this ridiculously simple cookbook is aimed at you. And if you feel your food is stuck in a rut, or your repertoire of recipes is a little tired, I think I can help with that too."

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

And these words are almost the reason why I chose this topic to write about today. For they could equally apply to writing this blog. Just substitute the appropriate writing kind of words for the cooking ones and you have how I feel today. It's sometimes difficult to think of something to write, so I just thought I would 'do' my latest purchase. The words just reinforced the aptness of my choice.

Apparently this book was originally published in conjunction with a television series and was called Hugh's Three Good Things, for the concept of the book is to take three ingredients - like the ones in the picture above and make something of them. Of course he sort of cheats - like Yotam Ottolenghi and his Simple book. Fearnley-Whittingstall cheats by sometimes using lots of ancillary items as well - spices, herbs, flavourings of other kinds, and sometimes by giving suggestions of extras you could add to make it even better.

But I have to say that basically all the recipes are pretty easy. The dishes don't have recipe like names either - just the three names - the above would be bacon, beans, tomatoes for example - and what you end up with in that case is basically home-made baked beans. It would make a good soup too. Sometimes indeed you get the same three ingredients and two different recipes. He explains the concept thus:

"They are little more than three good things on a plate. It's a simple pattern that underpins many well-loved dishes. At the most unreconstructed level, there's good old 'meat and two veg'! But consider also tomato, avocado and mozzarella; pasta, cream and bacon; ham, egg and chips; rhubarb, crumble and custard; a humble jacket potato, baked beans and grated Cheddar ... They all work, don't they? Even with more elaborate dishes, there are so often three primary ingredients holding the fort."

But as with his Leftovers book it's really not a cookbook in the normal sense, because it really is a way of inspiring you to think first of doing something different with his three ingredients, and then of thinking of your own three ingredients and going from there. It's an ideas book. Yes there are recipes but the real intent is to make you think for yourself.

"The recipes here are, I hope, just a beginning: a jumping-off point for any time-poor, hard-pressed home cook. I want you to use them as springboards for your own freewheeling fusions and lovely combinations, with the idea of three core elements as a guideline that is not restrictive, but deliciously liberating, After all, most of the best meals have some personal touch, some element of improvisation, from the cook preparing them."

And he gives you some guidelines too about which ingredients to combine and which not, depending on taste and texture - not cheese, chocolate and curry powder for example. Probably a step too far, though maybe someone has tried it. Heston perhaps.

"More crucial than the number of ingredients is the contrast between them. ... You can usually deconstruct successful dishes into a handful of adjectives that reveal how each ingredient differs deliciously from the others. That might be sweet, sour, spicy; or salty, crunchy, bland. It could be creamy, sweet, crisp or sharp, rich, crumbly. It's not necessary to be a culinary wizard to understand this alchemy. Combining flavours and textures so that each ingredient shines and somehow tastes ore 'of itself' is something most of us do instinctively. ... Listen to what your tastebuds are telling you, and you'll be on the right track."

" When you find a combination that works, play with it. One of the lovely things about keeping your food combos very simple is that they are then also very flexible. With most of the recipes here, just taking the main players and preparing them in a different way - raw instead of cooked, for instance - will give you a whole new dish. If you go a bit further and start swapping new ingredients in, then the sky's the limit."

All inspiring and reassuring stuff. So head for Readings if you live in Melbourne and get a copy - it was a mere $15.00.

Because I was going to be talking about an actual book I thought I would combine it with my new 'first recipe' idea. Well in this instance the first section is salads. My heart sank. I'm not a huge salad fan, although I'm not sure why that is. And the first recipe is called Courgettes, Mangetout, Lemon. It is indeed really simple - just sliced zucchini with mangetout peas and lemon slices with a dressing that includes olive oil and dill. Done in five minutes I imagine and a good side dish. His suggestions for variations are just to add some pea shoots and borage flowers, or to swap the mangetout for sugar snap peas. But I'm sure you could think of other things - like turning it into a stir fry or a sauce for pasta or a more substantial salad with some kind of fish, or bacon. And it is that that makes this book so interesting. Not the recipes themselves. For me this one is nice but not that tempting, but I could be tempted into trying some of those other things I just mentioned. If pushed I could probably think of more. Soup?

And here are a couple of other suggestions, picked at random from the book.

Lamb, tomatoes, feta is ridiculously simple. Just check out the video by clicking on the name and you will see. Ten minutes tops, (the video is just over a minute) and to be quite honest I'm not sure that one would meddle much with it. He suggests swapping the lamb chops for pork and the feta for a blue cheese.

But what else could you do? Well maybe not chops but some kind of stewing lamb, braised with tomatoes and sprinkled with feta at the end. Or, as in the picture at left, a roast lamb rump with a tomato and feta salad. If you feed the ingredients into Google you will get lots and lots of suggestions from salads to barbecues, to roasts and braises, not to mention meatballs and pasta sauces.

OK - just one more. This book is a bit like that. Take three ingredients and then see how many ways you can put them together (not necessarily cook) to make a meal or a side dish or a snack.

Last one: Pasta, asparagus chorizo. He's a big fan of chorizo, as am I, except the hot ones are a no-no in our house. And he does suggest you can swap the chorizo for bacon or pancetta or another kind of sausage. I suspect that this one is best kept relatively simple, though you could swap the asparagus for something else green. In some ways this recipe is less flexible than many others, which does not, however, make it any less tempting. Would it work with fish instead of the chorizo I wonder - with some chilli and lots of parsley?

I could go on picking out recipes at random. Maybe that's a new approach to cooking. Pick a book and cook every day from it - at random - changing things if you don't like it that much. I wonder if every cookbook would be as flexible. I suspect not.

Looking forward to using it. I've already bought a copy for my daughter-in-law. She likes this sort of thing.