Book review: Rekindling the Fire: Food and the Journey of Life by Martin Ruffley and Anna King
Martin Ruffley and Anna King's cookbook is not just recipes, but also part travelogue and part memoir
Rekindling the Fire is not your average cookbook. There are recipes, 65 of them, inspired by chef and lecturer at Galway Mayo Institute of Technology Martin Ruffley's 40 years of globetrotting culinary adventures, but the book is also part travelogue and part memoir of how Ruffley overcame an addiction to alcohol through practising mindful cooking.
The book is organised into chapters based around geographical locations, including Ruffley's home in Ireland as well as the Levant, southeast Asia and the Nordics. It contains impressionistic passages of literary prose and poetry written by Ruffley's co-author Anna King (which she says "draws upon her extensive experience of mindful meditation and organic agriculture"), as well as the recipes for dishes ranging from San Sebastian-style fish head and tails with pil pil sauce to a plant-based version of the Cambodian stew amok.
Whether Ruffley is making beef with horseradish and waffles (a dish he prepared for the key player in the Good Friday Agreement when he was head chef of the Maryfield Secretariat near Belfast during the 1990s) or a version of the tabbouleh he first ate in 1980 when working as a chef with the United Nations interim force in Lebanon, his focus is on sustainability and cultural specificity, using high-quality, local ingredients, especially plants.
He strives "to create the extraordinary out of the ordinary by becoming more familiar with each ingredient, and, in so doing, with oneself". It's this mindful process that he credits with helping him on his journey from the "paranoia, fear, shame, anger and disgust" of alcoholism that led to bouts of homelessness or waking up in a police cell after a drink-induced black-out, to sobriety.
In his foreword, Ian Scaramuzza, head chef of Melisse in Santa Barbara, who worked with Ruffley at Hibiscus in London, waxes lyrical about Ruffley's "talent for teaching and imparting information". That, combined with his brutal honesty about his addiction, makes Rekindling the Fire a truly inspiring read.
Rekindling the Fire: Food and the Journey of Life by Martin Ruffley and Anna King (Austin Macauley Publishers, £21.99)
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