French Provincial Cooking

"It is a beautiful read. I find the recipes intensely inspiring. But I don’t follow them word for word. One of the things that very few people dare to mention about Elizabeth David is that some of her recipes don’t work. It’s heresy to say so, but they don’t. It’s the spirit of her recipes, and the way in which they’re written that’s inspiring. I find her very grounding. When you read chef’s recipes, and you suddenly think, ‘It’s all too fancy. I want to go back to basic good cooking!’ then I pick up French Provincial Cooking. Yes, there are complicated pâtés and terrines in there. But many of the recipes are quite quick – you can knock up one of her chicken sautés or a little pork au pruneaux very quickly. I think because of her descriptions and the way she writes, sometimes her recipes seem more complex than they are. Another thing I like about this book is the fact that it doesn’t date. A lot of books written in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when you look at them, they’re almost caricatures — you find it difficult not to laugh. Whereas this book, it’s as relevant today as it was then. She was lucky – she got to that classic stuff before anybody else did… I think the poulet à l’estragon. I use that a lot. It’s a very simple chicken dish with butter and tarragon. Elizabeth David’s recipes give you a sense of place: I feel as if I’m in France with her. For somebody who was so bad-tempered and snarly, that she should be able to write so beautifully, it’s amazing. I didn’t know her, but I had the odd communication with her. She was a regular customer in a shop I once worked in. She was quite bad-tempered, but she wrote magically."

"She was the first modern English food writer, although she is basically talking about French food. She never really wrote about English food. When I talked about cholent, that is really just a Jewish version of cassoulet. She has two different cassoulet recipes in it – cassoulet de Castelnaudary and cassoulet de Carcassonne. I used to cook every type of cassoulet when I lived in Paris in my early 20s. There she was in the 1950s with her incredibly complicated domestic life. In the same way as Nigel Slater, with his difficult childhood and his coming out, she had her issues as well. She was known as a monstrous shagger and I think people with incredibly complicated romantic lives bring something to the table as food writers. Even Gordon with his dalliances and bits and pieces has something. I just think she is a very good cookery writer. She is trying to explain to people in austere 50s Britain how to make a petit salé or a beef bourguignon. She’ll write things like, “Try and get hold of a bay leaf; you may not have heard of these things. You will sometimes find them in the delicatessens of Charlotte Street”. Bloody hell, what was England like? “If you can’t get ham, use luncheon meat.” So there was this post-war rationing. Her writing is escapism. It started with the English middle-class drift to the Dordogne. She tells endless anecdotes, which really works. One of them is how she tried to get her car fixed but there was a sign saying that they were closed “ à cause de cassoulet ”. So you actually have French industry stopping for the day to eat a really good dish of goose and beans. She was retelling that story in 1950s Britain when people were eating Spam. It has a sort of poetry to it."