Simplicity sometimes just has to be the key. This is not a book aimed at stars or complicated techniques, it is a book of ingredients married together; advice and tips about how to enjoy creating a simple snack to a three course dinner. The vast majority of dishes are simple things I have picked up over the years, but some are more complicated – extracted from exciting adrenalin fuelled kitchens – that can still easily be recreated at home.
I cook far more often at home now than I do in the kitchen – after all I cannot be in them all, so it is better to be in none and influence them by taking my experiences and guiding menus, flavours, suppliers, butchers and fishmongers. It goes without saying that buying the best gives you every chance of creating something memorable, whether it is fresh herbs instead of dried, the butcher's shop well hung meat over a supermarket plastic wrapped bright red steak, or fresh fish over frozen.
Cooking at home, you don’t have the advantage or the product that a restaurant has. It is a specialist profession: you can never have the time nor the manpower of a brigade of chefs, nor the expertise of a wine merchant or sommelier. So what this book does is give the home cook – and the professional in some cases – the simple ways I have collected over the last 20 years to create something special: from a soup to a sandwich, from a steak to a soufflé.
Here's an example of how the simplest of ideas can have the best results: take some really good vanilla ice cream, pour over a good measure of Pedro Ximénez sherry and serve – it's the dog's wotsits.
Hope this keeps you in the kitchen – but not for too long.
– Paul Heathcote
No comments:
Post a Comment