Book Reviews

Loving and Cooking with Reckless Abandon

by Kevin Gould, reviewed by Leslie Williams

As its title suggests this is no ordinary cookbook but rather a manual for living and loving, with good food as the fuel as well as the inspiration.

The title comes from a quote attributed to the Dalai Lama that we should "Approach Love and Cooking with Reckless Abandon". Gould chose this as his title because the idea of "recklessly letting go, of being brave enough to surrender to the unknown, proved so irresistible that it ignited the flame of abandon" in him and sustained him through the writing of the book.

I have to confess to being a little wary when I approached the book, as I was concerned that the manual for living sections might expect me to eat brown pasta or alfalfa sprouts, but thankfully my fears were wholly unjustified.

The book is split into six loose chapters covering produce, shops and shopping, kitchen yoga, food with families and friends, eating with a lover, eating your way to health, and lastly feasting. The ordering of the recipes is rather chaotic, even within chapters, but ordinary cookbook rules do not apply to this book.

All recipes (and philosophies) are given a context from a personal, historical or geographical perspective. While the you will find words like yoga, meditation and sufi popping up everywhere, you will also find words such as truffle and foie gras not to mention suckling pig.

Mostly this is a book about the wonderful things food can do for us - how it can banish cares, inspire love but also lovemaking, and how without it for inspiration we would be mere shadows. Gould is a true hedonist when it comes to food and takes absolute joy in describing everything from green tea to truffles and from olives to porcini stuffed poussins.

Recipes vary from the incredibly simple (wild mushrooms on toast, oysters and sausages) to banquet style dishes such as Roast Goose with foie gras, fried apples and lemon verbena.

For me the dish that typifies the book is "No Salt Massaged Shoulder of Lamb" from the Kitchen Yoga chapter. I cheated slightly and cooked this with a leg of lamb but it was stupefyingly good to eat and immediately entered my repertoire of outstanding lamb dishes (along with Raymond Blanc's herb roasted rack, Madhur Jaffrey's Lamb Raan and Pierre Koffmann's Gigot de Quatre Heures). The recipe simply involves massaging a mixture of garlic, olive oil, lemon juice and fresh mint leaves into the lamb for about 15 minutes, then rolling it and roasting it. The rubbing, pinching and massaging of the meat is intended to relax the chef as much as the lamb. The lamb comes out of the oven tender, succulent and absolutely overflowing with flavour. Trust me, you have forgotten just how good lamb can taste.

Gould quotes approvingly from Sophia Loren in the introduction to the cooking for friends and family chapter when she described cooking for her family as "like learning to conjugate the verb 'to love'". But Gould sees all cooking as an act of love, whether to oneself or to others. Gould includes his grandmother's recipe for chicken soup and a friend's mother's recipe for potato soup both of which have apparently similar penicillin like properties. By contrast (or is it to complement?) we are also given Tomatoes With a Love Injection (which appeared in the February issue of Megabytes), and Consummation Consommé.

The book is handsomely illustrated with photographs taken by the author on his travels. The recipes also traverse the world with examples included from everywhere from Armenia to the Antipodes and from Columbia to Cairo. There is a great sense of fun about this book and the vast amount of learning present is worn very lightly.

Frivolities in the book include Zodiac Mezze (are your dishes compatible?) and Chestnuts Rolled in Hundreds and Thousands. However, my favourite title for a recipe (possibly ever), has to go to Ravioli Stuffed with Prayers; whereby you write some prayers on the eggs for the pasta and then wrap them in a handkerchief and allow the prayers to soak in overnight.

As I hope is evident, I absolutely loved this book and found it a true breath of fresh air. There are practically no recipes in the book not worth investigating (though I welcome suggestions on where I might find wine from Gallipoli) and there are lots of useful tips on shopping and storing food including the definitive way to store olives.

The writing style is infectious and witty and while some of the philosophy left me unmoved, I was never bored. We could all do with more reckless abandon in our lives.

Click here to buy 'Loving and Cooking with Reckless Abandon'

Diary of a French Herb Garden

by Geraldene Holt (Pavillion). Review by Sally McKenna

One morning my eight-year-old picked up this book from my bedside and, after leafing through the printed pages with their lavender-coloured illustrations, instinctively held the book up to her nose and sniffed it.

It struck me as an appropriate thing to do, for here print on the page becomes a thing much greater than itself, in this loving diary of the re-imagining of a neglected jardin du curé to become a community garden for the lucky occupants of a village in the Ardèche.

Geraldine Holt actually created this garden - you can visit it in Saint Montan, where it is open to the public. And even if you can't picture all of the formidable list of plants which she actually planted in this garden, the lovely writing transports you right there, where you can imagine the fragrance of the clove pink, picture the tortoiseshell butterfly landing on a flowering philadelphus, or feel the cold dry air of the Mistral.

It's a hugely practical book too, from both the cook and the gardener's perspective - did you know that winter savory has the ability to replace garlic and pepper in a dish, or that the crucial four main constituents of herbes de Provence are thyme, sage, rosemary and marjoram, or that the trio of fennel, mint and marjoram 'tucked into the body of a freshly caught fish before cooking' (why not read Leslie William's piece on sourcing fresh fish) 'will complement its flavour superbly.'

The planting list at the back is a boon to anyone creating a potager or aromatic herb garden. And there's even a detailed plan of the garden to concrete the ideas on the page.

If you have your holiday booked, I could not recommend a better companion, a fascinating study on the idea of conceptualizing a garden brought gloriously to life. Smell the flowers!

Click here to buy 'Diary of a French Herb Garden'

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