Paul Haggerty is head chef at Edinburgh restaurant First Coast.
‘The delicacy in some of the Michel Roux sauces is amazing and they‘re all collected in Sauces: Sweet and Savoury. Classic and New (Quadrille). The way it's done is so intricate and the dedication that goes into one individual dish is phenomenal. it does teach quite a lot. For the basics. Jamie Oliver's Naked Chef (Penguin) is among the best.”
Saturday Kitchen host Antony Worrall Thompson is the author of GL Diet Made Simple and runs five restaurants in . ; south east g ' 5 England. f Nose to Tail Eating (Ecco) by Fergus - ~ ' J Henderson is fantastic. His is all the gory bits of the inside of an animal. Using every single bit of the beast. He‘s got a fantastic restaurant called St John in Clerkenwell. London. and he just captures the real essence of why we have to kill animals. I mean he‘ll use the snout and the cars! But I just think it‘s a fascinating book and there‘s some great recipes in it.
Also. Elizabeth David — any of her books really. Elizabeth David was definitely my inspiration. I learnt about a lot of ingredients we‘d never seen — aubergines in those days.
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green and red peppers. And she opened the doors for supermarkets to try and find these things. So she was the one who broke the mould from our Edwardian grey traditions of eating boring food. Her writing is fascinating; it's a good read as well as a good cookbook. Her methods and the way she lays out her ingredients are a bit dated — you’ve actually got to read into it. It‘s not as easy as the modem cookbooks but still very relevant and still very good.‘
Jim Kerr is head chef at the Cristal restaurant in Glasgow's five star golf and spa hotel, Mar Hall.
‘I really do love La Potiniere and Friends by Hilary and David Brown. It really stands out like some of the very old traditional. great books in that it’s fun to read and you can actually feel where David and Hilary are coming from in
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WHAT CHEFS READ
terms of their cooking.
It‘s basically about their travelling and how Hilary was influenced by other Michelin star French chefs. To this day I still do a lot of Hilary‘s recipes. a lot of her basic stuli. They're really easy to execute but have great results because of the way she mastered the recipes over the years.‘
Pauline and Jackie O'Donnell are the culinary sisters who have expanded their successful The Sisters empire to a second Glasgow location in Kelvlngrove.
‘The old (‘racknell and Kaufmann Practical Cookery Book is about the only one which is just a massive encyclopaedia of recipes. There's one by Sue Lawrence - The Scottish Kitchen: (her I (X) Modern Recipes using 7htditional Ingredients (Headline) built up over a period of time by taking things and adding things. If you are interested in traditional cooking then I would recommend this book. Using Scottish produce is of course very important: using the larder we have on the doorstep makes it easier to actually source'
Veteran chef Antonio Carluccio is proprietor of Carlucclo’s restaurant in London and his latest book is Italia which studies recipes and customs of the Italian regions.
‘I discovered a book about ten years ago by Peligrino Artusi who was a chef around the l8()()s. His book Science in the Kitchen and the A rt ofEating Well (University of Toronto) was the first one that had unified ltaly regionally, writing with equal interest on each region. It confirmed for me that food is the second best thing in life. in fact. after sex or procreation. They are on the same level. A cookbook is the mirror of the culture of one's country. I like a book to say something to me — not just to know a damn stupid recipe.‘
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MEAT
11—25 May 2006 m: us? 21