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HITLIST: FOOD BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS Feed your friends’ gastronomic enthusiasm or finish off your own present wish list with some of the best food books this year from local authors
Valvona & Crolla – A Year at an Italian Table Mary Contini (Ebury Press, £25) Mary Contini’s most recent books have told the complex and often poignant history of the Italians in Scotland, centred around the families connected to Valvona & Crolla. This is much more of a recipe book, focussing on ingredients stocked in the Valvona & Crolla delis and which therefore feature on the Contini family table at home. As one would expect, Italian dishes dominate a book shot through with a passionate appreciation of quality and the love of a story to go with every meal.
Feasts of India Mridu Thanki (Jaggnath, £17.99) An Indian cookbook from Edinburgh-based Mridu Thanki with various refreshing aspects. First of all, it’s focussed on vegetarian food, and is all the closer to typical Indian food for that. Secondly, there are simple, everyday recipes such as breads and dhals alongside the more complex, multi-layered curries that can often seem so daunting to novices. And finally it’s not an all- colour photographic fantasy, but is charmingly illustrated with black- and-white etchings influenced by traditional Indian folk art, so there are no artificially prinked images of dishes to aspire to. Mma Ramotswe’s Cookbook Stuart Brown (Polygon, £18.99) Stand aside Ma Broon, because Precious Ramotswe, the heroine of Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, has released a book subtitled ‘nourishment for the traditionally built’, stuffed full of the tastes, smells and recipes that have permeated the much-loved novels. Expect colourful and richly flavoured Botswanan stews for social eating, thought-provoking fruit cakes and creative ideas with redbush tea.
The Garden Cottage Diaries Fiona J. Houston (Saraband (Scotland) Ltd, £17.95) In 2005, Fiona Houston spent a year in a converted cottage- byre near Innerleithen with the clock turned back to the 1790s. The book is an honest and well-illustrated account of the challenges and revelations of the experiment, which hinged on her resourcefulness with local food, gardening, gathering and traditional cooking and housekeeping. In an age when ‘make do and mend’ is a quirky throwback, it offers a revealing perspective on modern-day luxuries. The How Not to Cookbook, Aleksandra Mir (Available from www. collective gallery.net, £30) Not a normal cookbook but an art project, commissioned and produced by the Collective Gallery in Edinburgh – but this should be of interest to any cook. In fact, there’s probably more sense in 1000 cooks learning by (and sharing) their mistakes than in a stocking full of lush Hughella Ramsay-Oliver tomes. Essentially it’s a long list of tips, regrets and wise-after-the-event suggestions, which Mir has compiled from open submissions. Eating is a human necessity. Screwing up is very human too.
From Nature to Plate Tom Kitchin (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £30) Tom Kitchin is the chef du jour in Scotland right now, so releasing a smart cookbook to tell his story, restate his commitment to great local produce and explain the recipes that are winning him so much attention seems like a pretty clever idea. There are plenty of photos of Kitchin striding about glen and garden with a brace of pheasants or an armful of asparagus. It’s cheffy stuff, but it really does make you feel proud of Scottish food.
3–17 Dec 2009 THE LIST 11