In early 2008 I had my second trip to Vietnam – I went to play music at a New Zealand Food and Wine Festival in Ho Chi Minh City. It meant a couple of weeks' holiday as the cherry on top of a couple of hours' work, and gave a great opportunity to eat all that terrific local food – rice pancakes, bun bo hue, rice paper spring rolls, and of course a power of pho. It also meant I could visit some great old friends of mine. While I was there, loafing by the pool, my gracious hosts suggested a few titles from their fairly spectacular library of cookbooks (maybe they were hinting?) and food memoirs.
Food memoirs?! Somehow, it had never occurred to me that there were books about food that were not necessarily cookbooks. Books, written by people who were excellent writers, about the food they loved to eat and their love of food. The two that really stood out were by people I had barely heard of at that point – the first was called The Man Who Ate Everything, by an American writer called Jeffrey Steingarten – he was vaguely familiar as a sometime judge on the ludicrous Food TV show Iron Chef America, and I learned he was the food editor for Vogue magazine. It was hilarious. Not only was he a terrific writer (funny, curmudgeonly and blessed with an almost Larry David-like ability to say/do the wrong thing), but he clearly loved food, in a way that was, um, actually a bit demented.
It described the lengths he was prepared to go to for the perfect potato chip, for the perfect pie crust, the perfect pork chop, and his attempts to overcome his food phobias – kimchi, dill, swordfish, anchovies, miso, falafel, clams, and all Greek food. It was hugely entertaining, and positively inspirational for someone who had only just figured out that its oeuvre existed – in fact, this blog owes its name to an article Steingarten wrote…
The second book I read while sunning myself poolside was called Heat, by a chap called Bill Buford (not to be confused with King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford). Buford is the fiction editor for The New Yorker magazine, who offered himself up as a kitchen "slave" to US celebrity chef and restaurateur Mario Batali. Starting out as a dishwasher, prep cook and general kitchen dogsbody, Buford swiftly accumulates cooking chops, and winds up taking a trip to the “old country” to train with the same people who taught Batali himself to bake bread, to make pasta, to prepare meat. The section with the butcher (aka The Maestro) in Tuscany is particularly entertaining.
What these two terrific books did was describe a genuine passion for their subject matter. In much the same way as the very best music books (say, Jimmy McDonagh’s Shakey, about Neil Young, or Bob Spitz’s The Beatles) make you want to listen to the music they describe, these two books made me want to cook. And, more important, they made me want to eat!
Since then, I have read a whole bunch of food writers – I love Nigel Slater and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and I have enjoyed books by Tom Parker-Bowles (The Year of Eating Dangerously) and Jay Rayner (The Man Who Ate the World). But I think those two I read first, in Vietnam, are still my favourites.
I also love cookbooks. In particular, I seem to love the sort of cookbooks whose recipes are so far beyond my modest kitchen skills that they really fall into the category most people would term “food porn”. I’m thinking, specifically, of Heston Blumenthal’s glorious The Fat Duck Cookbook. It is such beautiful-looking food that the practicality of trying to prepare food that uses liquid nitrogen, gelling agents, powders and potions is barely a consideration (“sorry dear, dinner’s going to be while – I have to cook the steak for another 24 hours"). I think of him as some sort of fearless culinary adventurer, going to the ends of the earth to investigate – and reporting back his findings. I mean, I'm sure his thrice-fried chips, parboiled in hay-infused water and injected with his mushroom ketchup taste amazing, but they're still basically just chips, right? Who could be bothered?!
For similar reasons, I love the Coco cookbook, wherein a bunch of truly top-drawer chefs (including Gordon Ramsey, Ferran Adria, Mario Batali, Fergus Henderson and more) each select their 10 favourite up-and-comers. Some truly magnificent-looking food, which, again, I am spectacularly unlikely to ever even attempt, but which may just spark an idea for an flavour combination or preparation.
On a completely different tip are the two books (Ottolenghi and Plenty) by high-flying Brit-Israeli chef Yotam Ottolenghi, who operates a bunch of café-restaurants bearing his name in London, as well as writing a vegetarian food column for The Guardian newspaper. These cookbooks were almost completely new ground for me – I have never been good at following recipes. I usually sort of get the idea and roll with it. But his combinations of flavours was so different from what I knew, that I had to at least try to stick to the recipe (a bit).
The thing I like best about his food, and in particular his vegetarian food, is that, seeing as he is not a specifically vegetarian chef, he makes meals without meat that meat eaters might not even notice don’t contain meat - lots of caramelised vegetables and rich, luxurious textures. And, most important, his food is packed full of flavour, is modern, and is, categorically, the sort of food you just really want to eat. His kosheri has become a bit of a staple dish for me. Both books come very highly recommended.
Best till last, though. If I were allowed to keep only one cookbook in my kitchen, I think it would have to be Australian cook, restaurateur and writer Stephanie Alexander’s magnificent Cook’s Companion. If I am confronted with something I don’t know how to prepare, it is the first book I reach for; likewise, basic staple recipes for sauces, cakes, dressings and so on. I also love the sections that suggest combinations for different foods – “pork goes with… apple, basil, coriander…” – perfect for the recipe-following-challenged, and thoroughly inspirational stuff.
What food books are your favourites? Which do you use more than any other? Is it wrong to collect cookbooks you never cook anything from? And which food writers have piqued your interest?