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How to Cook without Recipes
Glynn Christian is one of my favourite food writers and this is another of his ‘non-recipes’ books, as the title would suggest. This is the cookbook you should read and inwardly digest before you buy a single recipe book.
How to Cook without Recipes will show you how to get the very best out of your cooking and will revolutionise the way you read cookbooks. No need to follow recipes slavishly but read and understand the taste combinations, look for the Flavour Trails, understand the concept of Taste Affinities. There are lists to help understand what goes with what, and by the time you have read the book you will understand why.
Glynn calls a spade a spade, and the book is all the richer for that. On the subject of baked custard: “You must never use only egg whites or too many egg whites when making any sort of baked custard: crème brulée in particular fails, becoming a legless, deathly pale scramble of egg and sugar. (If you’d like to try this, there is a clutch of restaurants I can recommend, all around the world.)”
With a bit of practice you will be able to adapt cheffy cookbook recipes to use your preferred ingredients. You’ll have the confidence to write your own recipes knowing that the result will be to your taste, and delicious. You’ll be a better and more confident cook.
This isn’t an anti-cookbook book. Glynn has a heart-warming section called Taking an Author to Bed, in which he pays compliments to the professional efforts of Ainsley Harriott, Nigella Lawson, Rick Stein and others. Glynn is well respected by chefs and food writers because he knows what he is talking about, and I am sure there are many of them that have this book as bedtime reading.
How to Cook without Recipes is the most informative book about taste and cooking that I have ever read. Glynn has, as usual, been thorough in his research. He writes in a style that brings great humour to what at first might seem a dry old subject. This is absorbing, and will make you think and mutter “I never knew that” at the start, but “Oh, yeah, that would work” as the penny drops at the end. This has got to be one of the best reads around and an essential volume for anyone who enjoys food. Another classic in the making.
How to Cook without Recipes
Author: Glynn Christian
Published by: Portico
Price: £12.99
ISBN 978-1-906032-23-4
