James
Martin's Easy British Food
There is a New Britishness abroad. Just as New Lads rebelled against Political
Correctness to allow blokes to be proud of being blokes, suddenly we are rediscovering
and celebrating Britishness. All too often, though, it’s done in an ironic
way and looks back to a mythical time somewhere around the 1950’s. We
never, in fact, had it so good.
James Martin’s Easy British Food is better than that, although it’s
a bit disconcerting to open the book at random and come across Pizza Margherita.
He’s a popular daytime TV chef and his recipes focus on things that are
easily achievable and things that, in general, feature UK ingredients. Egg
and bacon salad, Steak, Guinness and Oyster Pie, Cornish pasty and Roast Pork
with Roast Potatoes. He also offers some more exotic dishes such as Sea Bass
with Mango chutney and Red Pepper essence, which, again, rather stretches the
definition of Great British Food. Full marks for Duck a la Orange, though.
A 1970s classic, he recommends a prawn cocktail starter with a black forest
gateau dessert to follow. Ahhhh it takes me back to visits to the Berni Inn
in my dad’s Mark 3 Cortina. Thems were the days.
He’s a bit of a Yorkshire lad is our James so you’ll find recipes
for Parkin as well as Yorkshire Brack (a kind of fruit cake) plus Roast beef
and Yorkshire pudding, too and why not? Time to celebrate our national dishes.
A good and workable cookbook (although printed in China apparently) and one
well worth adding to your shelves.
