There’s a lovely 70s vibe to Mary Berry Cooks (BBC). Released from the demands of the The Great British Bake Off, Berry returns to her roots as a peerless interpreter of such classics as fish pie, tuna pasta bake and salmon and asparagus terrine. Her calm, clear approach makes you wish you could keep her in your store cupboard for special occasions, along with the anchovy paste. If it’s baking pure and simple you’re after, then toothsome Ruby Tandoh has produced the excellent Crumb (Chatto & Windus). Tandoh, of course, is the young finalist from last year’s Bake Off who piqued everyone’s interest with her flaky approach and last-minute triumphs. Here, she swerves away from the high-wire performances demanded by TV formats and concentrates instead on homely cooking. Try your hand at ginger biscuits, rhubarb-jam roly-poly and, particularly scrumptious, custard envelopes. With Scandinavia being every kind of cool at the moment, it didn’t take long before British publishers decided to produce a book of snitters, tebirkes, and frøsnappers. Scandinavian Baking (Quadrille) by Trine Hahnemann is an approachable feast of sweet-pastry dough, topped off with cardamom, spiced apple and fennel. This is not flash cookery and the visuals struggle a bit to show off the results to best advantage (there are only so many ways you can make a Danish pastry look chic). But the recipes are wonderfully clear and, if you follow them properly, the results are stunning. If this carb-heavy approach is making you feel a bit of a doughball, you might like to switch to Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty More (Ebury). Ottolenghi is all about vegetables, grains and legumes. His message, really, is that it’s no longer polite or sensible to nudge leafy greens and beige crumbly things off to the side of your plate. Redressed with new flavours, such former Cinderellas as beetroot, chickpeas and, yes, sprouts now have a starring role on the dinner plate. Take your pick from crispy saffron couscous cakes and squash with cardamom and nigella seeds.More
If this carb-heavy approach is making you feel a bit of a doughball, you might like to switch to Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty More (Ebury). Ottolenghi is all about vegetables, grains and legumes. His message, really, is that it’s no longer polite or sensible to nudge leafy greens and beige crumbly things off to the side of your plate. Redressed with new flavours, such former Cinderellas as beetroot, chickpeas and, yes, sprouts now have a starring role on the dinner plate. Take your pick from crispy saffron couscous cakes and squash with cardamom and nigella seeds.
No comments:
Post a Comment