The River Cottage Meat Book

"This is often described as the ultimate bloke’s cookery book, which is such a limited way to look at it – as if to say that women are always on diets and just want a piece of lettuce, which is simply not the case. For anybody, this book is crucial because it ties together the ethics of food production with what you put in your mouth, which is quite a hard message to get across. The intolerant right-of-centre in the media are all very pro factory-farming for economic reasons, and hate what they see as lefty thinking with animal rights. And then you get Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, this pukka English fellow, defending it. On the TV he is a bit of a div. You see him wandering around Tesco saying, “Oh you’ve got to spend a bit more on your chicken”. But I also do this with my writing. I campaign for organic and sustainable farming practices for a bit, and then everyone gets bored with it, so I stop for a while and then start again. Exactly. And this kind of thing waxes and wanes. The thing about Hugh is that he explains the whole meat process. Papers like The Daily Mail are always trying to explode the organic myth, saying it doesn’t make you any happier or live any longer. That is not what we are trying to do. It’s about the welfare of the animals as well. You might not care about chickens but in the end, as Hugh says, they will taste better if they have been properly looked after and aren’t factory chickens. He is also good at explaining food production – where the cuts come from, why an animal tastes the way that it does, why the things that it is fed on matter. It is just this great big book with everything that you could possibly need to know in it."

"There are a million cookbooks that I like. I have a huge library full of books, but I wanted to choose a selection of books that convey different things. What I like about this book, which is similar to my previous two choices, is that it is very serious and thorough. I like it when people go into a subject and explore it fully for me or with me. And Hugh does this in an amazing way. He goes through all these different cuts for different types of meat, and you feel that someone has done a serious job for you. I’m not the most professional of meat-eaters; I can’t butcher, and I don’t know how to cut properly. But when you go into this book, you really get the whole picture. Often, when I want to cook meat, I will consult this book; it has a seriousness about it that I appreciate. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter I think so. I can never shake that. I am quite academic – but also, with Hugh, I like the fact that there is a very personal voice. The book starts with a long introduction, which discusses the moral aspects of eating meat, and he really delves into it very seriously. He says you can make a moral decision and become a complete vegetarian, but, if you don’t want to do that, then at least you should know the issues surrounding meat eating, and the whole process involved. He looks at how the animals are reared and allows you to make an informed and moral choice about what you are eating."