2018 will in future be known as the year of the Great West Norwood Cookbook Cull. But which books to get rid of, and which to keep? The Random Recipe Adventure will help us decide (you can read a bit more about the premise here). Each week, a book will be taken from the shelves, examined, and cooked from. Losers go to Oxfam – winners stay on the shelves, with a promise that they will no longer be neglected quite as much as they have been for the last decade or so.
WEEK 12
The book
Casa Moro by Sam and Sam Clark
How/where/when did I get it?
A present, I seem to recall, from my brother. Regular followers of this series will detect a pattern: I don’t seem ever to have bought myself a cookbook. This is the way it should be.
Have I used it since then?
Oh yes.
What Did The Random Recipe Generator throw up?
Chicken braised with pine nuts, raisins and saffron
So, what about it?
1985 or so. Tuscany. We drive an hour, maybe more, towards the sea, but we stop short. It’s not a seaside day. We’ve had plenty of those this fortnight. We’ve done Florence’s heat, Lucca’s walls, Pisa’s leaner. Somewhere quiet today, somewhere to picnic, read, snooze. Perhaps some gentle frisbeeing if we can summon the energy.
There was a storm a few days ago, a proper riotous one – wind and thunder and heavy heavy rain – and the resulting carnage lies at our feet and as far as we can see.
Pine cones, from their branches untimely ripped.
After lunch my brother idly picks one up and throws it to me. An impromptu game of pine cone catch develops, the cone with its splayed scales scattering shells as the game becomes more vigorous. I pick up one of the shells. It has split, revealing a lone pale kernel. Only very slowly does it dawn on me that this is a thing I can eat, have eaten, would like to eat again. It’s not that I was ignorant of the provenance of food – just that I hadn’t consciously made the connection between the little expensive things in a plastic bag that 1980s Brits were just beginning to buy – along with polenta and balsamic vinegar – and an actual pine tree.
We spend the next hour or so happily gathering as many as we can, then we take them back to where we’re staying, and spend another couple of hours cracking them open, at an ‘eating-to-keeping’ ratio of, ooh, about 75-25. It’s intensive, painstaking work, and worth every second.
What I’m trying to say is: I love pine nuts.
I particularly love pine nuts when partnered with raisins, and especially particularly when garlic and saffron are thrown into the mix.
Which is just as well.
Sam and Sam Clark’s book is an old friend, and it was lucky hap that made the Random Recipe Generator deliver this recipe. I hadn’t made it before, but it was simplicity and deliciousness encapsulated and, like several of its companions, is destined to become an old favourite.
This book will please anyone with an interest in Spanish and North African cuisine – on our shelves, it fights a lone battle against the onslaught of Italiana, so is particularly cherished. It’s beautifully illustrated, but not too much so; the recipes are mostly simple, easy to execute – most importantly, they work, and the passion of the authors for this cuisine shines through.
Yes please.
The Verdict: Keeper or Chucker?
Definite keeper.
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Phew! I was beginning to get worried – definitely a keeper!