Savour some superb cookbooks from a few of our leading chefs
This week you can savour some superb cookbooks from a few of our leading chefs at home and abroad, along with a compelling history of Irish food. These books would make fantastic gifts. Just sayin’…
Comfort, Ottolenghi, Penguin, €30
The Ottolenghi chain of restaurants, with their Middle Eastern flavours, are a big hit in London. There’s an additional branch now in Oxfordshire and there’s even one in Geneva. Yotam Ottolenghi’s a busy man and when he’s not taking care of business, he’s writing food columns for The Guardian and The New York Times. In this book he’s focusing on foods from all over the world, with an emphasis on comfort food, and isn’t this just the season for it.
The book is co-authored by the great chef himself and three of his senior chefs, Helen Goh, Vera Lochmuller and Tara Wigley, the latter who trained in Ballymaloe. This is a colourful, vibrant book with a well-considered introduction, musing on what exactly comfort food is, one man’s meat being another man’s poison and all that. But there are great twists to traditional recipes. For instance, when did you last roast a chicken using coconut milk and fish sauce? Hmmm?
Dad Food, Dylan McGrath, Gill, €24.99
This is not a recipe book of ideas on what to cook for your father. Oh, no, the tables have been turned here! This book is primarily aimed at getting dads into the kitchen, preferably with their offspring, and making something for the entire family. And it’s a gorgeous book. Before one even starts, McGrath itemises every piece of kit a budding dad chef will need. Most of them are standard kitchen items, but if dad’s been reluctant to step into the arena prior to this, at least now he can learn the names of the fish slice and the hand blender!
Meals are bundled into groups, like breakfast, simple suppers, snacks, and there are lots of big recipes for big dinners, divided into sections like Braising and Stews, The Big Roast and, of course, the Barbecue. It’s full of superb illustrations and his explanations and instructions, probably from his experience of teaching culinary skills to kids from marginalised backgrounds, are crystal clear. Definitely a gift for every dad!
Irish Food History: A Companion, edited by Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Dorothy Cashman, Royal Irish Academy, €45
Don’t let the price tag put you off. At more than 800 pages, this is one for the social historians, food enthusiasts and anybody who erroneously believes that Irish food is boring. This collection of 28 essays, mostly by scholars, is a comprehensive, extensive and compelling history of how food has shaped us in Ireland, from ancient times up to now.
It has even shaped our literature and there are many examples that arise within the text.
The vast timeframe is from when reindeer, bears and elk roamed the countryside, right up to Myrtle Allen and Ballymaloe in the 21st century. An essay titled The Matriarch of Modern Cooking is one to watch for.
The book is a triumph of research and of design, generously illustrated, and while it will take up a sizeable slice of your bookshelf, it’s a superb ‘dipper’ (if you’ll excuse the terrible pun) on our culinary history. The great Famine is covered, of course, and there are poems here from Paula Meehan, Seamus Heeney and Raifteirí. We haven’t seen a book like this before and I’m guessing it will be a long time before we do again.
Season, Mark Moriarty, Gill, €24.99
Michelin-starred Mark Moriarty is now a familiar on-screen presence with the TV shows where he makes it all look so easy. But, he argues, it really is easy. In his introduction, he says: ‘The true skill of a chef in a professional kitchen is the ability to identify the best-quality ingredients at different times of the year. Once you can do that, the cooking part is easy!’
And so, with a clever title that has two meanings, he has produced a book about seasonal food, dividing it into Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter and a hundred new (well-seasoned) recipes to keep you busy year-round, the emphasis always being placed on ingredients readily and freshly available.
His first book, Flavour, was a hit and I have no doubt that this new one will be gift-wrapped for many a foodie over Christmas.
Eat Out at Home, Neven Maguire, Gill, €24.95
This is a classy production, and it has the ingenious idea of matching its colour scheme, with its muted greens, greys and creams, to the colour scheme of Maguire’s award-winning restaurant, MacNean House. Here he offers stylish but straightforward recipes, beautifully presented and illustrated, to give any meal, whether for two or 22, some restaurant panache.
Like Moriarty, Maguire has a keen eye on the seasons and in the back of the book you’ll find all the listed recipes sectioned off into seasonal availability. He has other categories too, like ‘Can be prepared a few hours before’, which is always a lifesaver, and ‘Can be thrown together in a hurry’.
And when you think of big family occasions where you might have hired a caterer and the food was all a bit meh, it’s worth investigating how you could do a much better job yourself, with some advance preparation and a bit of Neven’s help.
This book takes the mystery out of restaurant-style, ‘cheffy’ dishes with a minimum of fuss. Another must for the foodies and an elegant gift.
Footnotes
Meath’s annual Púca Festival in Trim and Athboy is kicking off this year on Halloween and runs until November 3. See pucafestival.com for details.
Cavan’s Drumlinia Festival has already started but it runs until Sunday 27th. See cavanarts.ie for programme and tickets.
Offaly’s Hullabaloo Festival takes place in Birr, Clara, Tullamore and Edenderry, with family entertainment for everyone, from Oct 30 to Saturday November 2. See hullabaloofestival.ie for details.
In Westmeath there are spooky goings-on round Mullingar on the Pumpkin Patch in the Murtagh Farm. See murtaghsorganicfarm.com for details.
Athlone Castle is hosting a Spooky Halloween Trail on Halloween, see athlonecastle.ie for details.