On choosing a book

And so the hunt for a book started. Julie chose a book that was representative of her country, of her childhood, of her mother cooking; I wanted to choose something that was British without being stodgy, classic without being Prawn Cocktail, challenging without being impossible. Hwsgo had ensured that I had a good stock of classic books; Elizabeth David's French Country Cooking and French Provincial Cooking; Jamie Oliver's The Naked Chef, Simon Hopkinson's Roast Chicken and Other Stories, Julia Child's Mastering The Art of French Cooking, volumes 1 and 2, Nigel Slater's Appetite and Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book. He did soften a bit for Christmas though, and bought me two books closer to my own strange style: Nobu's Cookbook, and Marinetti's The Futurist Cookbook (you can look, but I think he found me the only copy for sale in England; yes, he really is that lovely...).

And there we have the candidate list. Not Julia: already done, not really in the British canon and involves killing things. Not the Davids: too difficult to find the ingredients, even if I can catch a ferry to France from here (here being West Sussex in SouthEast England). Not Nobu or Vegetables: lovely though they both are, I'd probably rebel. Which left a trio of blokes, and the one book that I sometimes flick through just to pass the time: Roast chicken and... I like the recipes in it. I could eat the recipes in it. And Hwsgo says it had the advantage of being short and should leave me with a stock of good recipes for life, which is a high recommendation from someone who knows what to do with an artichoke without having to look online for ideas.

So here we are. I don't know who Simon Hopkinson is (beyond him writing a food column for, I think, the Observer), but I like his book and although we don't almost share a name, it does give a nicely alliterative title to this blog. I'm hoping he doesn't mind me doing this, but I'm pretty sure he'll never find out. So here it is. One book, 169 (approx) recipes, one - well, let's not be too tight on the timing here but I'll try- year(ish). Me versus the (recently finished, as in finished the last bit last Sunday) kitchen: bring it on...