TV chefs – Page 4

Sicilia by Ben Tish

Sicilia is a gastronomic tour of Sicily in recipes and essays courtesy of one of London’s top chefs.

The author is Ben Tish, chef director of the London-based Cubitt House group of upmarket gastropubs. His CV also included opening the Sicilian-Moorish influenced restaurant Norma, and the position of chef director of the acclaimed Salt Yard restaurant group, both in London. He is the author of five previous cookbooks, contributes to a number of newspapers and magazines and makes regular appearances on TV.

You should buy Sicilia for the tomato sauce and pasta all norma recipes alone, but also if you want to understand more about the diverse culinary heritage of Sicily. A regular visitor to the island and its satellites, Tish’s introduction takes a brief look at various aspects of the cuisine and food culture, from the influences from the Moors and the Berbers to the food markets and a hidden restaurant gem, Terra Mia on the slopes of Mount Etna. The main body of the book contained in nine chapters covers recipes for bread, fritti, pasta and rice, vegetables, fish, meat, sweets, granita and ice creams and sauces and basics. Other must-cook recipes include bignolati (Sicilian sausage bread ring); baked conchiglioni (pasta shells) with pumpkin and rosemary; grilled quid with peas, mint, tomato and sweet vinegar; stuffed and braised lamb’s hearts with broad beans and lemon, and iris (chocolate and ricotta-filled doughnuts), among many others.

Cuisine: Italian
Suitable for: For beginners/confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: Five stars

Buy this book
Sicilia by Ben Tish
£26, Absolute

A Curious Absence of Chickens by Sophie Grigson

A Curious Absence of Chickens is ‘a journal of life, food and recipes from Puglia’. On the cusp of her 60th birthday, renowned British food writer Sophie Grigson made the life-changing decision to relocate permanently from her home in Oxford to the small town of Candela in Puglia in southern Italy. In 10 chapters, the book covers a period of just over a year from June 2019 to Autumn 2020 and explores the culture, history and geography of the region all through the prism of food, documented in short essays and recipes. And that title? Grigson says you won’t find chicken on a restaurant menu in Puglia which she attributes to the fact that, traditionally in the region ‘a laying chicken was just too precious to kill off’.

The author is Sophie Grigson (daughter of legendary food writer Jane Grigson) who has written more than 20 books and has presented nine TV series for various British broadcasters.

You should buy A Curious Absence of Chickens for the carefully collated and curated collection of mostly traditional Puglian recipes (none of which are pictures, the only illustrations in the book are Kavel Rafferty’s charming drawings) including polpette di carne (meatballs); bombette (thinly sliced pork shoulder rolled with pancetta, parsley and cheese; ciambotto (fish stew with squid, chillies and tomatoes) and ciceri e tria (a dish from Salento in the south of Puglia of chickpeas cooked with cherry tomatoes and pasta and topped with fried pasta strips).

Although the book stems from a personal life choice, don’t expect Grigson to give too much away about herself in the book, which is more a journalist exploration of the regions food culture (and an excellent one at that) than traditional memoir.

Cuisine: Italian
Suitable for: For beginners/confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: Five stars

Buy this book
A Curious Absence of Chickens by Sophie Grigson
£20, Headline Home

This book was longlisted for the Andre Simon Food Award. Read more here.

Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci

Taste: My Life Through Food is a food-centric memoir with recipes.

The author is Stanley Tucci, the much loved American actor, writer, film producer and director, most noted for his performances in The Devil Wears Prada and The Hunger Games. However, foodies will know him best for the films Big Night and Julie and Julia and his excellent food and travel TV series Searching for Italy. He is the author of two cookbooks, The Tucci Table and The Tucci Cookbook.

You should buy Taste: My Life Through Food first and foremost if you are a fan of Tucci. The handful of recipes are for very familiar Italian dishes such as pasta alla Norma or are so simple, like a tomato salad or lamb chops, as to hardly warrant a recipe at all. Perhaps I’m missing the point.

However, you do get the recipe for Timpano, the spectacular centrepiece dish featured in Big Night that Tucci describes as ‘a baked drum of pastry-like dough filled with pasta, ragu, salami, various cheeses, hard boiled eggs, and meatballs’. There’s also some of Tucci’s favourite cocktails (including his now notorious shaken not stirred negroni), his wife’s recipe for roast potatoes and American BBQ chef Adam Perry Lang’s chimichurri sauce among other things.

But Tucci is an engaging writer and you will have fun discovering his childhood in upstate New York (as well as a year in Florence), his time working as a nineteen year old bar man in Alfredo’s restaurant in Manhattan and anecdotes from his life in the movie business.

Cuisine: Italian
Suitable for: For beginners/confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: Three stars

Buy this book
Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci
£20, Fig Tree

This book has been shortlisted for the Andre Simon Food Award. Read more here.

Sea and Shore by Emily Scott

Sea and Shore is a collection of recipes by a chef inspired by living and working in Cornwall. As there isn’t really such a thing as ‘Cornish cuisine’, it’s probably best to think of it as one cook’s personal culinary response to the produce and surroundings of the county.

The author is Emily Scott, chef of Emily Scott Food in Watergate Bay in north Cornwall and the former owner and chef of St Tudy Inn near Bodmin. She recently hit the headlines as one of the team who catered the G7 conference at Carbis Bay in Cornwall in 2021. Scott also appeared on the BBCs Great British Menu series in 2019.

You should buy Sea and Shore because you’ll want to make Cornish crab linguine with chilli, lemon and parsley; slow roasted lamb shoulder with smoked paprika, garlic and thyme; little gem tart with Keen’s Cheddar, spring onions and flat leaf parsley; meringue roulade with clementine curd, cream and passionfruit and Cornish faring biscuits made with coconut, ginger and golden syrup, plus many of the other 80 simple recipes, making it an ideal book for novice cooks. The food looks colourful and appetising while the Cornish landscape photography will inspire your next English summer holiday.

Cuisine: British
Suitable for: For beginners/confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: Four stars

Buy this book
Sea and Shore by Emily Scott
£26, Hardie Grant

Everything I Love to Cook by Neil Perry

Neil Perry defined 90s fusion cooking at his Sydney restaurant Rockpool. In 2020, he announced his retirement, selling Rockpool Restaurant Group for A$60million. He wasn’t gone for long; earlier this year he opened what he claims will be his last restaurant, Margaret, a glamorous neighbourhood brasserie, named after his late mother.

Everything I love to cook is not the cookbook of the restaurant, but it does share the same sustainable approach to food. Perry says in his introduction that ‘there’s no Planet B, so we have to do the right thing. Eat more plant-based meals’. So, there’s a chapter on vegetable main courses that, true to Perry’s eclectic, globe-trotting style, includes everything from Italian-style spinach torte to steamed silken tofu with black vinegar and chilli oil.

At over 450 pages long, there is plenty of room for a selection of favourite recipes culled from across Perry’s restaurant empire (he’s still a shareholder and consultant) including Rockpool salad with palm sugar vinaigrette; crudo of tuna with horseradish, coriander and lemon oil (from Rockpool Bar and Grill) and ramen noodle salad with chicken, ginger and spring onion (from Spice Temple Noodle Bar).

In addition to the comprehensive collection of 230 recipes, there’s articles covering kitchen basics like seasoning (‘the difference between a home cook and a professional chef is the amount of salt they use’) pasta (‘best hand made-I find pasta made in a food processor to be of inferior quality’) and desserts, which Perry says ‘can be as simple as a perfectly ripe piece of fruit…there is something sophisticated about being able recognise perfection and then standing behind it’.

With its near-encyclopaedic length and career-spanning content, the book would make a fitting finale to Perry’s 40 years in the professional kitchen. But with so many vibrant, inventive and delicious recipes, it seems that Perry has a lot more yet to share. Let’s hope that, unlike Margaret restaurant, Everything I love to cook is not a full stop but merely a comma in the chef’s influential and inspiring story.

Cuisine: International/Australian
Suitable for: confident home cooks/professional chefs
Cookbook Review Rating: Five stars

Buy this book
Everything I Love to Cook: 150 home classics to return to
£30, Murdoch Books

Cook from this book
Barbecued lamb cutlets with lemongrass and ginger by Neil Perry
Crispy pork belly with red onion, coriander, peanuts and sesame seeds by Neil Perry
Flourless chocolate cake by Neil Perry

This review was originally published in The Caterer magazine.

KARAAGE 6.0 by Tim Anderson

第６版の唐揚げ DAI ROKU-BAN NO KARAAGE

I‘m calling this Karaage 6.0 because it is, if memory serves, the sixth karaage recipe I’ve written. And it’s the best one … so far. There are so many variations of making karaage it’s hard to settle on a ‘perfect’ version. For this one, I’ve stripped it back to basics, with a really simple, classic marinade. The only thing unusual about it is that it uses a seasoned flour and white wine rather than sake, which gives a lovely fruity acidity that works perfectly with the chicken – a brilliant idea I heard about from chef Jon Sho of the excellent Knightsbridge sushi bar Kaké, as well as the food
writer and karaage pop-up chef Melissa Thompson.

SERVES 2_4
FOR THE MARINADE
10 garlic cloves
20 g (¾ oz) ginger root, peeled and thinly sliced
100 ml (3½ fl oz/scant ½ cup)
white wine
3 tbsp mirin
2 tbsp vinegar
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper

FOR THE SEASONED FLOUR
150 g (5 oz/1¼ cups) cornflour (cornstarch)
100 g (3½ oz/scant 1 cup) potato starch
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt
400 g (14 oz) (about 4–6) chicken thighs, boneless and skin on
about 2 litres (70 fl oz/8 cups) oil, for deep-frying
lemon or ponzu, store-bought or homemade, to serve (optional)

METHOD
For the marinade, blitz all the ingredients together in a food processor until no big chunks remain; alternatively, you can finely grate the garlic and ginger and just stir everything together. For the seasoned flour, simply stir all ingredients together until well mixed. Cut the chicken thighs into quarters (or thirds, if they’re quite small) and toss through the marinade, then leave in the fridge for at least 4 hours and up to 24 hours.

To cook, heat the oil in a deep saucepan to 180ºC (350°F). Remove the chicken from the marinade, letting any excess drip off, then dredge in the seasoned flour, ensuring that all the nooks and crannies are well coated.

Carefully lower the chicken into the oil in small batches, checking the temperature periodically to ensure it is between 170–180ºC (340–350°F) and fry for about 8 minutes. If you have a meat thermometer, use it: the chicken is done when it reaches an internal temperature of at least 65ºC (150°F). If you don’t have a thermometer, use a knife to cut into the biggest piece of chicken at its thickest point. If it’s still raw, keep cooking for another few minutes until it is cooked through.

Remove the cooked chicken from the oil and drain on paper towels. Karaage is juicy and flavourful enough to be enjoyed without a dip, but it’s also great with ponzu, or just a wedge of lemon.

Read the review

Buy this book
Your Home Izakaya: Fun and Simple Recipes Inspired by the Drinking-and-Dining Dens of Japan
£25, Hardie Grant Books

Fish Finger Hand Rolls by Tim Anderson

FISH FINGER HAND ROLLS
フィッシュフィンガー手巻き FISSHU FING TEMAKI

This dish was inspired by recipes by two cooks that I, and many others, idolise: Ivan Orkin and Nigella Lawson. In Orkin’s excellent The Gaijin Cookbook, he provides a guide for hosting a temaki party, a great way to enjoy sushi at home that requires
no particular skill or technique. You simply bring cooked and seasoned sushi rice, some choice fillings, nori and condiments to the table, and let everybody assemble their own little temaki, or hand rolls. It’s brilliant – we did this a few days after Christmas when I was craving Japanese food but had no fresh fish in the house.

Enter Nigella. Lately, everybody has been talking about her fish finger bhorta, a recipe she borrowed (with permission) from the journalist and activist Ash Sarkar. Basically, it’s a sort of dry curry made with smashed-up fish fingers; the kind of thing that’s so ingenious yet so simple that it has made us all wonder why we haven’t been making it our whole lives. Indeed, it’s certainly got me thinking why I’ve never utilised fish fingers in anything more interesting than a sandwich before.

This must have been in the back of my mind when I reached for them to use in our temaki party. If you think about it, it makes sense; fried seafood is no stranger to sushi, after all. I texted my friend Yuki (of Bar Yuki fame) a photo of my invention, expecting her to laugh at me. Instead, she simply replied, ‘Yummy, it’s like ebi-fry temaki!’ – referring to the perennial favourite, panko-crusted fried prawns (shrimp). So there you have it: fish fingers are just the poor man’s ebi-fry, and they make a killer temaki.

MAKES 8 LITTLE HAND ROLLS; SERVES 2-4
200 g (7 oz/1 cup) rice
2 tbsp vinegar
2 tsp sugar
¼ tsp salt
40–50 g (2 oz) daikon, peeled, or radishes
iced water
8 fish fingers
Japanese Mayo (see below) or Tartare Sauce (see below)
1 handful of pea shoots
2 sheets nori
soy sauce, as needed
wasabi, as needed

METHOD
Cook the rice according to the instructions on page 219. While the rice is cooking, stir together the vinegar, sugar and salt until the sugar and salt dissolve. Once the rice is cooked, spread it out in a large bowl or tray and sprinkle over the seasoned vinegar. Mix the vinegar through the rice using a rice paddle or spatula with slicing and turning motions. Let the rice cool to room temperature before making the rolls.

Slice the daikon or radishes very thinly – use a mandoline if you have one, and if you don’t, use a very sharp knife and take your time. Cut down the length of the daikon,
rather than across, so you have rectangles rather than circles. Stack the slices of daikon up and cut them again into very thin shreds. Transfer this to a bowl of cold water with a few ice cubes and leave to soak for about 20 minutes (if you don’t have ice, just put the bowl in the fridge).

Cook the fish fingers according to the manufacturers’ instructions, but I would recommend giving them a few minutes extra to get really crisp. Drain the daikon and dry it well with paper towels. Toast the nori by waving each sheet back and forth 15–20 cm (6–8 in) over an open flame on the hob, for about 30 seconds each. Cut each sheet into four squares.

Bring everything to the table along with chopsticks, side plates and little dip pots. To assemble, hold a piece of nori in your hand, then use the chopsticks to pile in a little mound of rice, then top with the mayo or tartare sauce, then some daikon and pea shoots, then the fish fingers. Wrap it up like something halfway between a taco and a burrito, and eat with your hands. Dip it in the soy sauce and a little wasabi with each bite.

NOTES:
JAPANESE BROWN SAUCE AND JAPANESE MAYO
Japanese brown sauce has many variants, such as tonkatsu sauce, yakisoba sauce, okonomiyaki sauce and takoyaki sauce. They all fall under the category of what’s simply called ‘sauce’ in Japan, as they have similar flavours, with slight variations in terms of consistency and balance. Tonkatsu sauce is a good choice if you need something that will work well in a variety of recipes. You can make it at home but I would strongly recommend buying it. The same goes for Japanese mayo, known for its creamier, eggier, deliciously MSG-enhanced flavour. The brand Kewpie seems to be everywhere these days, and while it is expensive, it’s worth it. Normal mayo just doesn’t cut it.

FOR THE TARTARE SAUCE
20 g (¾ oz) pickled ginger (any kind), very finely chopped
4 tbsp mayonnaise
½ tsp lemon juice
½ tsp English mustard
½ tsp dried dill
1 handful of chives, finely sliced

Stir together all the ingredients until well mixed.

Photography: Laura Edwards

Read the review

Buy this book
Your Home Izakaya: Fun and Simple Recipes Inspired by the Drinking-and-Dining Dens of Japan
£25, Hardie Grant Books

Pepper Steak with Garlic Soy Sauce Butter by Tim Anderson

ペッパーステーキの醤油ガーリックバター焼き PEPP SUTĒKI NO SHŌYU G RIKKU BAT YAKI

One of my very favourite lunch spots in Japan was a little fast food shop called Pepper Lunch. Pepper Lunch is a chain, with over 200 branches in Japan and even more outside Japan. It’s not exactly the pinnacle of Japanese gastronomy, and my Japanese colleagues teased me for liking it so much, but damn, did they do some good pepper steak. It was cheap – suspiciously so – but it was always cooked perfectly and it was also really good beef, highly marbled and incredibly tender. Of course, the seasonings were so tasty (lots of pepper, lots of garlic, lots of soy sauce) that you probably could have cooked an old shoe in them and it would have tasted reasonably good. So this is my loving homage to Pepper Lunch.

SERVES 2
1 tbsp oil
1 ribeye steak, 300–400 g (10½–14 oz) and ideally at least 2.5 cm (1 in) thick, patted dry with paper towels
a very generous amount of coarsely ground black pepper
4 tbsp water
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sake
1 tbsp honey
20 g (¾ oz) butter
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

METHOD
Set a frying pan (skillet) over high heat and add the oil. Season the steak all over with the pepper. When the oil is smoking hot, lay the steak in the pan and cook it on one side until nicely browned, about 2–3 minutes. Turn and brown the other side, again for about 2 minutes. By this point the steak should be rare; keep cooking for a further 2 minutes for medium-rare and another 2 minutes after that for medium, flipping the steak every 20 seconds to form an even crust and cuisson. When the steak is cooked to your liking, remove it from the pan and leave to rest on a chopping board.

Remove the pan from the heat and add the water, then set the pan back over the heat and add the soy sauce, sake, honey, butter and garlic. Simmer for 4–5 minutes until the liquid reduces slightly and the garlic infuses into the gravy, then remove from the heat. Slice the steak into bite-size cubes, about 2 cm (¾ in) wide, and toss through the pan sauce.

TIP
Use your senses and intuition cooking steak or, better yet, a probe thermometer, to gauge the steak’s doneness. And remember: if you’re not sure how cooked it is, err on the side of rare. You can always cook it more. If you’re using a cut other than ribeye, slice the steak across the grain as you usually would; otherwise, the meat will be too
tough and chewy.

Cook more from this book
Fish Finger Hand Rolls by Tim Anderson
KARAAGE 6.0 by Tim Anderson

Read the review

Buy this book
Your Home Izakaya: Fun and Simple Recipes Inspired by the Drinking-and-Dining Dens of Japan
£25, Hardie Grant Books

Your Home Izakaya by Tim Anderson

What’s the USP? A Japanese cookbook inspired specifically by the cosy izakaya bars of Japan. More casual than restaurants, izakayas are often compared to Spain’s tapas bars and, occasionally, to English pubs. The latter feels a little like a stretch, though – the delicious snacks izakayas offer are a big part of their appeal, and whilst I’m a big fan of Smith’s Scampi Fries, it’s pretty hard to romanticise their role in pub culture.

Who wrote it? Tim Anderson, the former Masterchef winner who went on to found Nanban. He left the restaurant last year to focus on, amongst other things, his cookbooks. Nanban’s loss is our gain. Your Home Izakaya is Anderson’s fifth book, and an interesting take on the increasingly crowded Japanese cookbook market. Focusing on the casual dishes most likely to be found in izakayas, Anderson’s book continues his refreshingly unprecious look at the cuisine. Fusion dishes abound here, the result being an engaging and very approachable collection.

Is it good bedtime reading? Whilst not exactly a lot of reading, there’s more than you’ll find in a lot of cookbooks – and those few lengthier chunks of prose are very enjoyable. Opening and closing with the pandemic reflections that you suspect will be commonplace on our shelves for the next year or two, and supplemented with the standard explanations of cuisine-specific ingredients, Anderson also finds room for touching tributes to individuals and practical explanations of technique. Occasionally a recipe will start a page later than you’d expect thanks to a particularly effusive introduction.

How annoyingly vague are the recipes? Ingredients are listed with clear and precise measurements for Brits and Americans alike, but it’s fair to say that Anderson’s prose-heavy instructions can be a little hard to follow – at least in a literal sense. Recipes are written in chunky paragraphs that often contain a dozen or so steps. It looks nice, but makes it easy to lose your place as you switch between stove top and cookbook.

Will I have trouble finding the ingredients? Anderson lives and works out of London, and with one or two optional exceptions the city should be able to offer everything you need. That said, those shopping in small cities and towns will want to find out where their nearest Asian supermarket is and stock up – from dashi powder to daikon radishes, there are plenty of ingredients here that won’t be popping up in your local Asda.

What’s the faff factor? Two of Anderson’s biggest books to date have been his Japaneasy titles, which specialised in simple dishes. If you’re looking for really quick and easy recipes then these will remain your best bet – but much of the ethos present in those books has been carried over to Your Home Izakaya too. Yes, dishes like Braised Pig’s Trotter with a Crispy Crust require a bit of waiting, but anyone willing to eat pig’s trotter is usually willing to wait for it too.

How often will I cook from the book? Eager home cooks may find themselves pulling this from their shelf on a very regular basis – there’s plenty to love here, and dishes like Cheese Dakgalbi, Chicken Katsu Curry Spaghetti and Fluffy-Creamy Omurice lend themselves to a rich and filling weeknight dinner.

What will I love? Another hangover from his last book, Vegan Japaneasy, is the wealth of vegan and vegetarian friendly recipes here. Whilst the tail end of the book tends to weigh a little heavier with meaty recipes, the opening chapters are overwhelmingly veggie, and readers will find it easy to put together tasty menus that suit their own needs.

What won’t I love? It’s actually pretty hard to find a flaw in Your Home Izakaya – the photos are vivid and tempting, each recipe comes complete with suggestions both for other dishes that might share a table and the best drink to serve alongside your meal. The biggest issue is those hefty paragraphs in the recipes, but it feels like a petty sticking point.

Killer recipes: The Pepper Steak with Garlic Soy Sauce Butter was a brilliant success when cooked on a quiet weekday evening, and served (as per the book’s suggestion) over rice with an egg yolk on top. Elsewhere, there’s Furikake Potatoes, Japanese Fish and Chips, a fantastic section on yakitori including some delicious Chicken Thighs with Yuzu-Kosho. Tucked away between the desserts (Sake Glass Jelly with Seasonal Fruit!) and some useful essentials like Dashi are a smattering of cocktails – a Salted Grapefruit Shochu Highball being a particular highlight.

Should I buy it? Fans of informal Japanese cooking will be well served by this thoughtful (and fun!) new cookbook by Tim Anderson. Those looking to replicate high-end dishes or create perfectly formed sushi will be better off looking elsewhere. But if you want to explore the cuisine whilst having a little fun, I’d suggest turning directly to page 161 – Prosciutto-wrapped Crab and Avocado Sushi Rolls.

Cuisine: Japanese
Suitable for: Beginner and confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: Five stars

Buy this book
Your Home Izakaya: Fun and Simple Recipes Inspired by the Drinking-and-Dining Dens of Japan
£25, Hardie Grant Books

Review written by Stephen Rötzsch Thomas a Nottingham-based writer. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @srotzschthomas

Christmas at River Cottage by Lucy Brazier and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

What’s the USP? Everything you need to know in order to do Christmas the River Cottage way, which roughly translates as sustainable, organic and do-it-yourself. After reading this book you’ll be ready to start knocking up your own homemade mince pies, gifts and decs while necking copious amounts of rumtopf. That sounds like a Merry Christmas to me.

Who wrote it? Lucy Brazier is a writer and course tutor at River Cottage, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s HQ in Axminster that offers courses in cooking, gardening and artisan skills. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a multi-award-winning writer and broadcaster and environmentalist committed to seasonal, ethically produced food. He is the author of numerous cookbooks and has fronted many TV series including River Cottage for Channel 4, the series that first brought him to the nation’s attention. His campaigning TV programmes have included Hugh’s Fish Fight, Hugh’s War on Waste and Britain’s Fat Fight.

Is it good bedtime reading? You’ll want to get comfortably tucked up in bed with Christmas at River Cottage ideally a year ahead so you can put in to action all the advice in the ‘Planning Ahead’ chapter and begin growing your own produce and buying all the preserving kit you’ll need to make your own jams, pickles, booze, non-alcoholic drinks, syrups and cordials and fermented drinks. You’ll be in the perfect place as you’ll be exhausted just reading about all the work in store for you, never mind actually doing it. And that’s before you get to ‘Decking the Halls’ where you’ll learn how to craft your own willow Christmas wreath, make tree decorations from dried orange and apple slices and how to make your own calendar in the ‘Advent’ chapter.

What’s the faff factor? It depends if you view the planning-ahead required to make things like red cabbage and beetroot pickle which needs to be prepared several weeks in advance, or marrow and chilli relish that needs six months to mature. But there are plenty of do-on-the-day recipes such as quick kedgeree and kale with anchovy cream that are straightforward enough.

How often will I cook from the book? If you take the homemade ethos to heart, then you may be cooking regularly from the book throughout the year making the jams, preserves and pickles in time for the big day, otherwise, it’s going to be mostly useful to you once a year.

What will I love? The book covers everything you need for a homespun festive break, from table decorations and drinks to the Christmas roast with all the trimmings and your own homemade Christmas pudding.

Killer recipes: Lentil salad with herby dressing; midwinter vegan tart; curried potato tart; beef and stout stew; mulled wine; prune and apricot stollen; Yule ham; Christmas Eve pizzas; turkey au vin.

Should I buy it? If you’re no longer satisfied with store-bought decorations and a turkey breast joint from Iceland and you want to get seriously hands-on with Christmas preparations all year round, then this is an essential purchase. Even for the less dedicated, there’s plenty of inspiration to make your Christmas a bit more special and personalised than it might usually be.

Cuisine: British
Suitable for: Beginner and confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: Four stars

Buy this book
Christmas at River Cottage
£22, Bloomsbury Publishing