Book Reviews
The Mushroom Feast: A Celebration of All Edible Fungi Cultivated, Wild and Dried, with Recipes
Jane Grigson
I’m a bit of an expert on mushrooms. I can tell you which fields outside Canterbury to find the most in, as well as what to say to the nice policeman when he finds a big bag of them on you on your way to flog the little chaps to fellow students at the University of Kent. I think the offence is now too old for me to be prosecuted Ah those were the days.
Nowadays if I want to get 'off me head' its best Rioja all the way and I limit my mushrooms to the edible, non-hallucinogenic kind. I’ve joined mushroom hunts with expert leaders (always a good idea if you want to avoid a painful and lingering death) in France and Italy and nothing beats the taste of freshly picked mushrooms quickly fried with butter and garlic al fresco on a camping stove.
These days the range of fresh mushrooms available in supermarkets is remarkable, no longer will you just find the insipid white button mushrooms and their far tastier large flathead cousins. Now Japanese mushrooms, Oyster, Chanterelles and a range of others vie for your attention. And if you add in the number of dried mushrooms, you have a range to inspire your cooking.
So if you have a soft spot for the fungi, this book by the late, great, Jane Grigson will be just the thing. There are more than 250 recipes here that use mushrooms – and that means truffles, ceps, morels and more – in all kinds of ways. In pates, pureed into ketchup, baked in cakes and used as soups, stuffings and main courses.
Also here are plenty of tips for cultivating your own as well as preserving fresh mushrooms, a guide to help you identify mushrooms in the wild and line drawings of the most common UK species. As you’d expect from Grigson it’s written in a fine, slightly upper middle-class matrician style that’s literary and unashamedly intelligent.
Far from relegating mushrooms to a fried breakfast, with this book you’ll find yourself becoming a connoisseur of these strange beasts- sometimes so delicious, sometimes so deadly and, if you’re under 25, sometimes a bit of a laugh.
Find this book on Amazon.co.uk
Natural Ingredients. A taste of the Falklands
Julie Bellhouse and Alex Olmedo
When a cookbook called ‘Taste of the Falklands’ lands on your desk the temptation to make cheap jokes is irresistible. “First catch your penguin,” says our photographer as he ambles past. “150 ways with lamb and empty bullet cases,” offers another wag. It’s all rather unfair and uncalled for.
The fact that most of us of a certain age only remember the Falklands as part of our stamp collection, and then the location of a small war, doesn’t do these far-flung islands justice. The footage we saw on TV at the time made the place look as attractive as a wet weekend in Whitstable, but the glorious photos in this book reveal islands with stunning natural beauty and shimmering south Atlantic light. Far from being a place where the inhabitants huddle against piercing wind while eating corned beef out of tins, it’s a place of unspoilt beauty and abundant natural resources like beef, lamb, goose, shellfish, wild berries and dairy products. The lack of pollution means the islanders enjoy food that contains none of the toxins we’re so accustomed too.
As you enjoy the photographs, you can gorge on the food. Calamari and Scallops Etouffe, Seafood Cannelloni Pancakes, Calamari Patagonica, Stuffed shoulder of Lamb and Beef Ajiaco, a recipe clearly derived from nearby Argentina. A couple of things may be a trifle hard to source in our own islands, such as Kingclip and Toothfish, but they are easily replaced with other, similar, fish. In fact all the recipes are as simple but as packed with honest flavour as you would expect. This is a cookbook that is far more than a cookbook; it’s a colourful and fascinating look into the lives of the inhabitants of this far-flung corner of the UK and something to enjoy in the kitchen and in the sitting room alike.
