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 7
The book
Four Seasons Cookery Book, by Margaret Costa
How/where/when did I get it?
That’s easy enough. It was given to me for my 32nd birthday by my brother and his partner. I am the King of Memory. I am also the King of Reading Dedications in the Front of Books.
Have I used it since then?
Yes, but, like so many of the books in this project, not nearly as often as I should.
What Did The Random Recipe Generator throw up?
Seville Chicken, a magnificent construction involving olives and mushrooms and a red wine gravy.
So, what about it?
The first words of this book are ‘Pancakes are really ridiculously easy to make.’
THANK YOU.
This chimes so perfectly with my thoughts every year around Shrove Tuesday that I almost admitted the book to the pantheon without further thought. Honestly, people make such a fuss.
‘Ooh, I’ve got all the stuff ready – going to make pancakes!’
Eggs. Flour. Milk. Make sure you’ve got the body armour on and don’t forget to leave a contact number for your next of kin.
That’s got that off my chest.
Anyway, as far as this exercise goes, I’m going to get the tension out of the way. This book stays. Written in 1970, it was reissued in the mid-1990s as an antidote to the still relatively recent introduction of year-round fruit and veg. So intoxicated were we with this idea that it didn’t occur to us to think of fripperies such as taste.
‘Oh look, we can get kiwi fruit from the North Pole in December!’
‘They taste like moistened foam rubber.’
‘Yeah, but still… the North Pole!’
So the thesis of the book is seasonal cookery. It’s both an old and a new concept. Old, because before the days of global food shipping there was nothing else; and new, because since the days of global food shipping we’ve almost had to rediscover it as if from first principles.
But within that seasonal framework, by which the book is ordered, there is a wealth of knowledge and information – and not just arcane titbits, but of the kind that comes from a life of inquisitiveness and discovery, and that informs ones approach to food and changes habits. Good going for a book written in 1970, an era too easily dismissed as ‘the bad old days’.
I’m tempted to buy another copy for the bedside table. That’s how good it is.
There’s a recommendation on the back cover. It’s from the author of last week’s book, the magnificent Simon Hopkinson.
‘One of the most remarkable cookery books of all time.’
Good enough for Hoppers; good enough for me.
The Verdict: Keeper or Chucker?
Keep up, will you? I’ve already said.
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There is no hope for either of us – but I rather like the sound of that one!
Came to this a bit late! I received my 1st copy of 4 seasons cook book in 1971 from Margaret Costa herself. Both she and her husband were friends of my father and we used to eat at their restaurant, Lacey’s.. Its a wonderful book and I still use it after all these years. I am now on my third copy as they do fall apart. Owlwordsworth