Tag: foraging

Faviken: 4015 Days, Beginning to End by Magnus Nilsson

Faviken 4015 Days

‘Why would anyone write a book about a closed restaurant? And who would want to read it?’ That’s the question chef and author Magnus Nilsson poses in his fifth book, and the second about his restaurant Fäviken, which closed in December 2019. For those of us who made the journey to the remote hotel and dining room in rural Jämtland in Sweden, the book acts as a thrilling reminder of Nilsson’s distinctive culinary style. Who else would serve diced raw ox heart with marrow from a bone that was theatrically sawn in half in the middle of the dining room?

For those who didn’t make it, Nilsson delivers much more than a mere ‘here’s what you could have won’ experience (although an eight page complete list of dishes served at the restaurant in chronological order is included). By contrasting text from the first Fäviken book published in 2012 with new writings, Nilsson offers an insight into the evolution of his cooking over the restaurant’s decade-long lifetime.

One of Nilsson’s most famous creations, almost burnt cream (served as an accompaniment to roasted king crab leg), developed from a combination of accidentally burning cultured milk for a sorbet, which he realised as he poured it away ‘actually smelled pretty good’, and tasting the residue of a cream sauce from a cooling pan. The result, Nilsson says, ‘was perfect, deep and toffee-like from the caramelised proteins and lactose’.

Nilsson further explores the notion of creativity in one of the book’s 17 short essays, using English social psychologist George Wallas’s five-stage model that divides the creative process into preparation, incubation, intimation, illumination and verification to explain how his dishes go from theoretical idea to  the plate.

Erik Olsson’s photographs that span the life of the restaurant provide a visually stunning counterpoint to  Nilsson’s recipes, stories, anecdotes and musings. Who would want to read a book about a closed restaurant? When it’s somewhere as remarkable as Fäviken, and written by someone as talented as Nilsson, who wouldn’t?

This review first appeared in The Caterer magazine.

Cuisine: Nordic 
Suitable for: Professional chefs
Cookbook Review Rating: Five stars 

Buy this book
Fäviken: 4015 Days, Beginning to End (FOOD COOK)
£45, Phaidon 

Roots by Tommy Banks

roots tommy banks

What’s the USP?  Fans of Kunta Kinte will be disappointed to learn that this is not another  update of Alex Haley’s famous slave saga. The title actually refers to the ‘root ingredients’ used fresh or preserved by acclaimed young chef Tommy Banks, who divides the year into three rather four seasons which he calls The Hunger Gap (January to May); Time of Abundance (June to September) and the Preserving Season (October to December) which reflects the way he cooks at his North Yorkshire restaurant The Black Swan at Oldstead.

Who’s the author? Tommy Banks has had something of a meteoric rise since taking over the kitchens of the family restaurant in 2013, aged just 24. He’s one of the youngest ever Michelin starred chefs in the UK and has become something of a TV personality, appearing on the Great British Menu where he cooked turbot with strawberries and cream (recipe included in the book) at the grand banquet at Wimbledon and was a featured chef on Masterchef the Professionals where he demonstrated his signature dishes including crapudine beetroot cooked slowly in beef fat with smoked cod’s roe and linseeds, also included in this, his debut book.

What does it look like? Bucolic. The North Yorkshire landscape looks stunning and there are plenty of shots of Banks posing in fields and on the family farm gathering his beloved ingredients. The food is colourful and attractive without being too tortured on the plate.

Is it good bedtime reading? The short autobiographical introduction is bolstered by chapter introductions and essays on favoured ingredients such as elderflower, summer berries and ‘hedgerow harvests’ making Roots more than simply a collection of recipes.

Will I have trouble finding ingredients? If you’re not a keen gardener then you might find it tricky to lay your hands on things like crapudine beetroot and courgette stalks, and you’ll need to follow Banks’s recipes for fermenting vegetables to make a number of dishes, plus you’ll need a good fishmonger if you’re planning on serving raw red mullet, and a decent butcher who can sell you sweetbreads and mince pork back fat for you, and you’ll need to get out picking elderflowers in June if you want to make elderflower drizzle cake, and…

What’s the faff factor? This is fundamentally a collection of restaurant dishes so expect to put in a fair amount of effort for your dinner.

How often will I cook from the book? This is more weekend project than mid-week supper cooking.

Killer recipes? See above, but also crab, elderflower and potato salad; scallops cured in rhubarb juice with Jerusalem artichoke, and potato skin and brassica broth with cheddar dumplings.

What will I love? All the recipes are rated either 1,2 or 3 for complexity which makes choosing what you want to cook from the book, depending on the time you have to hand easy. But this is more than just a collection of delicious sounding, interesting and characterful recipes, a real effort has been made to give a sense of Banks’s cooking ethos and life at The Black Swan.

What won’t I like? Some readers may feel they’ve been-there-and-done-that with the pickling, fermenting and foraging aspect of the book.

Should I buy it? Roots is a substantial debut effort from one of the UK’s highest profile young chefs with his own take on field to fork cookery which makes it well worth investigating.

Cuisine: Modern British
Suitable for: Professional chefs/Confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: 4 stars

Buy this book
Roots
£25, Orion Books