A Book of Mediterranean Food

I'm not going to wax lyrical about the book which bought a little of the warmth, colour and flavour of the Mediterranean to a cheerless post war Britain. I had never heard of the author until I was about 21 and become a mother, a friend gave me their old copy of Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking. I was enchanted. I still can't quite describe what is so bewitching about her books? Maybe her written instructions reminded me of my own grandmother's? Or is it the brief, simple and precise recipes and their lack of hyperbole? Maybe it's because it reminds me of becoming a mother and the early days of the most wonderful and fullfilling time, a time where I excelled in my new occupation and was spellbound with my beautiful baby daughter, I discovered motherhood and food. I was needed and I was blissfully content.

Food will never be written about in the same way again. Now cookery books are more about lifestyle with beautiful glossy photographs of stunning houses with perfect happy families blurred in the background. It's about selling the image.

In Mediterranean Food Elizabeth David wrote about food remembered from a time in her life, just before the war, when she was young and carefree. She wasn't preaching or patronising in her writing, she was just 'passing on' what she had seen, cooked and tasted. Most recipes are just a paragraph. No separate ingredient list, no temperatures, just 'quick' or 'slow' fire and no photos. It was honest, intelligent and very clipped writing, no pretence but just peppered with anecdotes and stylishy simple illustrations.

She didn't preach the 'chef's oath' which seems to have been taken by anyone who cooks on TV "I am passionate about food and only cook seasonal, local ingredients" I could scream every time I hear this mantra chanted by another 'chef' (ex model/actress/rugby player etc), it sends all my cringe nerves rattling; you're a chef, do you really think that we automatically think you use mouldy rotting fruit and veg to cook? Do we really care if it's local, surely all food is local to somewhere? It's like saying "Mm, I absolutely love breathing and use only the finest oxygen and carbon dioxide for my gaseous exchange"

I digress...., returning to the book in question, I have simply decided to cook every recipe in the book. I'm not trying to do a Julie & Julia, that would be naff and pretentious, I just need to get my act together with this blog and having a list of recipes to cook will make it a lot easier - I will have to cook what's written rather than remembering to photograph the occasional biscuit I may have been bothered to bake. It would also be really love to bring each recipe to life with a photo!

The first chapter is 'Soups' and the first recipe I will be cooking is Soup Au Pistou.....

Elizabeth David

There were two moments in my life that I can still vividly remember, two moments which made me think about food differently. The first was my tenth birthday, my parents took us out for dinner to an Italian restaurant in Whitstable called Giovanni's, I think it might have even been the very first time I had been to a 'proper' restaurant? I had lamb chops. I will never forget how they tasted and my amazement at the flavour of the dried rosemary they had been sprinkled with, I had never tasted anything like it before and it was wonderful.

The second moment was just after my daughter R was born, we were staying with R's paternal grandparents for a few months. I spent a lot of time with R's Great Aunt N who lived next door. R's father would be away working on a film somewhere and her grandfather,C, would be down in the hop garden helping with the harvest. N and I would spend the mornings making soups or stews, at lunch time C and a small group of polish hop pickers would arrive for lunch. They were the simplest, most humble of lunches and the happiest of meals. Most of the ingredients were from my little vegetable garden or soups made from the biggest and most perfect Puffballs which kept appearing in The Valley that year, to this day I have never seen the like again.

During this time of discovery N gave me one of her copies of Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking, I read every page of it and was seduced by the modesty, the simplicity and the respectful understanding of food. I treasure this book, it is one of the tiny number of core books from which a million celebrity cook books have been spawned. Everyone should own a copy!

My First Cookery Book

I can still vividly remember being bought this book. I was ten years old and, probably due to my gender, had been allowed to accompany my mother and our neighbour Sheila on a shopping trip to SavaCentre. It was like being taken to another country as far as I was concerned, I mean we had to drive there! It was an epic journey out of Faversham and towards London, I think somewhere in my little head I thought we actually were going to London. But, in reality, it was thirty miles down the road to Gillingham.

Sheila lived down the road from us, she was one of those rare people who are almost angelic, you naturally felt happy and safe around her, she was just a very kind and happy soul. I remember that she was always smiling. My brothers and I loved to go and see her, we would ride our bikes down to her house and she would tell us stories, make us ice-cream sodas and feed us Wagon Wheels and Milky Bars. She loved children and would have been a wonderful mother, but life had denied her that wish. Even in my childish naivety I could sense a deeply buried sadness within her.

One day we went to see her. Her husband told us she had gone away on holiday and not to worry. All of the adults who lived in our road started to speak in whispers, we knew that we shouldn't ask.

Sheila had been suffering from cancer for a long time and, one day, simply didn't have the strength to smile anymore.

Sheila bought this book for me, that evening at the supermarket. I saw it on the shelf and must have taken it down to have a look. Sheila took it from me and winked. I'm sure that mum must have protested as mothers do, but that book was mine, I treasured it, reading it over and over, imagining what the food would taste like. It is quite amazing that it has travelled these thirty years with me and I still haven't cooked anything out of it!