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A choice of cookery books

Elfreda Pownall

Wednesday, 5th December 2007

Elfreda Pownall

The pictures of Raven picking salads in her weed-free garden or lunching under a flowery loggia are haute-boho heaven. It’s real bohemian and more ramshackle at the East London allotment of Sam and Sam Clark, whose restaurant, Moro, pioneered the cooking of Moorish Spain and Muslim North Africa. The couple are photographed griddling kebabs and sowing and picking produce with their neighbouring Turkish, West Indian and Cypriot plot-holders in front of brightly-painted, dilapidated sheds. The resulting book, Moro East (Ebury, £25), of recipes from the eastern Mediterranean, uses produce that can be grown in Britain, with a smattering of unusual ingredients like farika, the Lebanese toasted green wheat, or zaata, a Middle Eastern spice mix, that have to be sourced from ethnic shops. The recipes are easy and tempting, especially the grilled onion, pepper and lentil salad or roast pork loin with pomegranates. Since the book was completed the allotments, donated in perpetuity in 1900 to East End families, have been bulldozed to make a walkway for the Olympics.

The earth-stained fingernails of East End plot-holders, painstakingly rolling flatbreads filled with freshly-picked poppy leaves, are a world away from Nigella Lawson’s polychrome world of 1950s kitsch, her self-confessed state of over-busy ‘psycho-fizz’ and her allure. There are lots of glamorous, full-page close-ups of the smiling author in Nigella Express (Chatto & Windus, £25). The book is about producing ‘good food fast’, and if this involves unashamedly using Smash, packet croutons and out-of-season strawberries, the authenticity brigade can go hang. The book has a restless tone and she frequently records her states of mind: ‘I realised how madly obsessive I was being.’ She divides people sharply and this sort of stuff makes Nigellaphobes want to chop her up with her own mezzaluna. For fans, the camp persona is, like her description of one of her puddings, ‘pure, all-encompassing bliss’. There are some good recipes (no-churn pomegranate ice cream, a muesli loaf) and lots to like about the book; and a list, almost an aside, about combining different dried fruits with their appropriate booze gives one a glimpse of the Nigella of her first, still unsurpassed book, How to Eat.

Jamie Oliver’s Jamie at Home (Penguin, £25) has him showing off his new vegetable garden, foraging for mushrooms and shooting and fishing with friends. Jamie is reliable; we know these 100 new recipes will work. To some his cheeky-chappie style grates, and this book, with its introduction entitled ‘a nice little chat’, is liberally sprinkled with ‘should be a laugh’ and ‘my missus’, but for his admirable campaigns (school dinners, training disadvantaged young people) I say ‘respect mate’.

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Felicity FitzGerald

January 16th, 2008 5:21pm

In the issue of The Spectator that has the above it says "The discount offers on books in this section remain open for 3 months from date of publication" but how does one go about ordering them to get the discount? They aren't in The Shop.

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