Random Recipe Adventure, Week 11

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 11

The book

Food From The Place Below by Bill Sewell (with Ian Burleigh and Frances Tomlinson)

(The Place Below was a popular restaurant in the Norman crypt of St Mary-le-Bow church in the City of London. It is now Café Below, and no longer run by Sewell.)

How/where/when did I get it?

Bought it for myself some time between 1996 and 1997. I know this because it was published in 1996, and on page 40, next to the recipe for ‘Place Below Ratatouille’, I’ve written ‘7/97’ in pencil, with three ticks to denote, I presume, excellence (unless the scale goes up to ten ticks, in which case it’s hardly a ringing endorsement. I feel I should have been more explicit about how exactly my rating system worked.)

Have I used it since then?

Well, you know, I suppose at some stage I might have…

No.

What Did The Random Recipe Generator throw up?

A few things, the first of which was rejected for no better reason than that none of us particularly liked the sound of it. In the end we made a very good Spanish omelette and a strawberry cheesecake (we substituted the wildly unseasonal strawberries for equally unseasonal raspberries, simply because they were available and strawberries weren’t.)

So, what about it?

There are books of vegetarian cookery that feel as if they’re constantly apologising for not containing any meat. This is not one of those. There’s a lot of common sense, interesting and astute combination of ingredients, and a passion to the writing it’s easy to warm to. Sewell is also good at anticipating and puncturing prejudice.

Here he is on aubergine:

‘Too many people think they don’t like aubergines, whereas, I suspect, that all that they really mean is that they don’t like badly cooked aubergines.’

Yes.

And wholemeal pastry:

‘If you’re convinced that wholemeal pastry is inevitably thick, solid and unappetising, just suspend your judgement until you taste your first Leek and Gruyere Quiche (page 68).’

And tofu:

‘DO NOT SKIP THIS ENTRY! If you are one of the millions of people who think that tofu is inevitably disgusting, immediately turn to pages 127-8 and make the Roast Marinated Tofu.’

I haven’t, but I will.

The Verdict: Keeper or Chucker?

Keep, with a vow to use, even if what I really fancy is a steak.

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