Shelf catering
By an ironic twist of fate, perhaps, the most informative, most thoroughly researched encyclopaedia on food to be published in the 20th century comes not from France but from Britain. Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion To Food (OUP £40) supersedes Larousse Gastronomique as the major reference work on the edible world.
Opening any page at random will disclose clear, factual accounts of the most common or obscure foodstuffs side by side: under M, for example, is all you will ever need to know about mangosteen, mangrove crab, manketti nut, manna, mantis shrimp, mantou, manus christi or maple syrup.
Thanks to the author's - and his contributors' - passion for scholarly detective work, we can learn that millefeuilles probably originated in the Hungarian town of Szeged; that a kind of gnocchi called strangulapreti ("priest chokers") are a speciality of Lucano, Italy; or that a gobstopper - "the vulgar British term for a huge, spherical hard-boiled sugar sweet" - is really a giant comfit or dragée.
Potted biographies, focusing more on Elizabeth David, say, than Auguste Escoffier, hint at an anglocentric bias, and living chefs don't get a look-in regardless of their contribution to the way we eat today. Nor are there recipes, however seminal a role they've played in the modern diet. On the plus side, however, an entry on noodles of Asia provides the kind of thorough, fascinating compilation of facts that will send chefs hurrying to the nearest Chinese superstore.
On the science and nutrition side, information is strong and relevant. Describing fats and oils, Davidson gives exactly the level of data that a professional needs to know, from a table of the ratios of fatty acids in different oils to the effects of heat on their structure. Salmonella gets nearly as much space as salmon.
Just how influential this book will turn out to be over the next few years is hard to gauge. Anyone in catering with an open mind and a serious commitment to his profession will gain from owning a copy. "Essential reading" is an overused phrase, but in this case, it really does hit the mark.
Alastair Little's Soho Cooking (Ebury Press £25) could, with a bit more effort, have become a unique tribute to London's best-loved restaurant quarter. The book has plenty going for it: an obvious affection for the area coupled with an unmatched knowledge of its changing tastes and fashions. It has recipes spanning more than 20 years from every sector of the community, well-told anecdotes and unashamed prejudices.
As a cookery book, it's full of surprises. A clever section on Dover sole focuses on the highs and lows of Wheeler's in Old Compton Street before resurrecting sole dieppoise, normande, véronique and some other jet-lagged takes on the fish. It exposes secrets from Chinatown cooks, salt beef sandwich sellers and Italian delis.
Individually, the bulk of the recipes are none too original. But collectively they form a unique document of what Soho eating is all about. It also tells us a lot more about Alastair Little, the chef, than any biography could achieve.
Another year, another title from the industrious Gary Rhodes. New British Classics (BBC £20) is a contradiction in terms. Either it's new, or a classic; it can't be both. What he sets out to do is collate plenty of old favourites (from white sauce and roast parsnips to steak and kidney pudding and angels on horseback) with a mixture of reworked "classics" and some of his own restaurant dishes.
It's a hefty volume with hundreds of recipes and enough jam in the form of smart ideas sandwiched between the Mother's Pride of page fillers. Shepherd's pie fritters, a reinvented salad cream, Rhodes's signature braised meats or an individualistic Lancashire hotpot all show him willing to apply his chef's skills to updating the home-cooked dishes of long-gone grannies.
A note on the title page states that Rhodes did the food preparation for photography. It's a reminder that, despite the showbiz image, he is a serious professional. Aspiring commis chefs who want to understand the practicalities of modern British cooking could do worse than look to him for guidance.
"Not only was all the food cooked for the photos edible, but most of it was scoffed in the process," claims Denis Cotter in his introduction to The Café Paradiso Cookbook (Atrium £20). It's a typical remark from a cook whose enjoyment in his craft bubbles out of every page.
What makes this different from most chefs' ventures into publishing is his ability to communicate what's happening when he's cooking. He doesn't leave out the critical bits that turn ordinary food into something more sparky. He's like Keith Floyd in his heyday, except that the technique is much better and he is more sincere and more articulate.
Perhaps I should have mentioned it already, though it's actually incidental: Café Paradiso is probably Cork's best-loved vegetarian restaurant, so recipes for oyster mushroom and smoked Gubeen ravioli, or pan-fried Parmesan-stuffed artichoke fritters with basil oil, or gingered kale, walnut and pumpkin gratin are the norm. All that's missing is a jar of magic hair gel to turn the author into the star of the new millennium.
Phil Vickery may have left the Castle hotel, Taunton, where he was discreetly groomed for TV fame by Kit Chapman (as was Gary Rhodes, his predecessor), but he still has plenty to offer. In Just Food (Headline £18.99) he targets the general public rather than other professionals, but comes up with enough smart ideas to launch half-a-dozen bistros or brasseries. His recipes have lots of colour, lots of texture, lots of accessible flavours. He limits the number of ingredients per dish to manageable amounts: grilled mango with sugar and a sprinkling of chilli powder; a clove-flavoured cider jelly served with clotted cream; nettle soup with onions and chickpeas. This is simple, stream-of-consciousness cuisine for which Ready Steady Cook is at least partly responsible.
Chocolate, The Definitive Guide by Sara Jayne-Stanes (Grub Street £20) stops short of being aimed at professional chocolate-makers. It does, though, succeed at two levels: it's an authoritative textbook for anyone who wants to understand this addictive substance and hone their skills as a home cook or as a pâtissier; it's also a collection of recipes from some of the UK's and a few of France's finest chefs. Recipes from Michael Nadell, John Huber and Claire Clark, to name a few, rub shoulders with those from Maurice Bernachon, Michel Trama and Robert Linxe of La Maison du Chocolat.
A professional truffle-maker herself, Jayne-Stanes has a grasp of what distinguishes quality from run-of-the-mill. Her brownie recipe, chosen after experiments with dozens of contenders, is as good as there is, and the Black Forest gâteau has a roasted hazelnut and almond chocolate torte base with a kirsch and griottes filling.
The book is neither glossy nor heavily illustrated. It's a book for thumbing through, which will gradually acquire sticky brown stains over the years through constant use.
If you're scoffing a Bedforshire clanger with a fat rascal garnish while drinking cider with a Vimto top - so-called typical English nosh - thank the European Commission rather than William Hague. It paid for the research which led to the publication of Traditional Foods Of Britain by Laura Mason with Catherine Brown (Prospect Books £19.50). Quite simply, it's the best, the most comprehensive account of the foods that constitute our culinary heritage. Every catering college should immediately order six copies. Any publican should buy one to bone up on the origins of drinks from shrub to Plymouth gin. Chefs worth their Maldon salt need this to know their Gloucester Old Spot pork from their Middle White. Thanks to this book, bakers will be able to distinguish softies from stotties.
It's encyclopaedic, but not flawless. Bonchester cheese has gone down the chute since the list was compiled, and other cheeses have slipped through the net, but, taken as a whole, this is a unique inventory of our culinary heritage.
Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 2 - 8 December 1999.
