Orchards in the Oasis

"A new book – I think it’s really nice, very entertaining, I’m already a fan of it: Orchards in the Oasis by Josceline Dimbleby. I really like the way she writes – very feminine! You really feel it’s a woman writing, and I like the way she starts from when she was a little girl, and she has a very interesting life: she travelled all over the world and then when she got married to David Dimbleby and had children she started to cook all this lovely food with all this influence from around the world and all these memories. So the book is going through her life and how she came across all these smells and senses and everything – it’s not really a cookery book, but it just happens to have recipes all along because obviously food has been linked so much with all her life. I really like this book and I reckon it will do really well because it’s so different. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter I think it’s always nice when you have this little bit extra – this human side. It’s like for me in the restaurant, I cook something and maybe somebody calls me to the table and I go there and start to talk, and I always find that maybe I have a dish they like and they say how much they like it and everything. And then if I say: I do this dish because my mother used to do something similar, I changed it a bit and I did this. They are always looking at you like they are listening to God talking! Because for them this extra information is something which makes them appreciate the whole thing even more than just taking the recipe out of a book or the internet. I think people love the story, and take it on board, and maybe they remember the story each time they eat. It seems to touch people, and in a different way than just taking information."