After several years of heavyish commuting and split-site living, it's good at last to be getting back into cooking. Today, it's also a pleasure to see Simon Hopkinson being singled out for star treatment now that his first book, Roast Chicken and Other Stories, has been chosen by his peers as 'the most useful cookery book of all time':
Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine had lined up a panel of more than 40 leading chefs, restaurateurs and food writers and asked them to consider 100 cookbooks, then choose the most indispensable one of all. Hopkinson's 1994 work, which is separated into chapters by ingredient headings such as Almonds, Duck, Lemons and so forth, was the outright winner.
It's my favourite modern work by an English cook. In it, Hopkinson
praises and thanks a number of friends and influences who have shaped
him as a cook. There's a wonderful tribute to Richard Olney
(alive when Hopkinson's book appeared): 'Richard Olney is not a
professional cook in the normal way of things. However, he is, in my
opinion, the greatest living writer on food and wine today. … it is his
writing on food that has given me the most pleasure and inspiration.
Both the French Menu Cookbook and Simple French Food are classics and
compulsory reading for all. Methodic descriptions are told in such a
gentle and prosaic way that the result and taste of the final dish
becomes perfectly obvious to the reader. He nudges you along so that
you get it right.' Hopkinson also has a wonderful description of lunch
with Olney (pages 125–6 in the original edition).
I've enjoyed recently making blackcurrant jam using Raymond Blanc's
innovative recipe (in Cooking for Friends), with much less sugar
content than is usual (perhaps 55% rather than 70–80) — sweet enough to
enjoy, but not so sweet as to bury the natural edge of the fruit's own tartness.
Finally, I came across some good postings about sushi last week, five in all. Here they are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Update (13.8.05): there's a piece on Hopkinson in today's Independent.
