Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many

The Times Food Book of the Year 2022

From a lifetime of cooking with some of the UK’s greatest chefs – as well as lessons from his cookery teacher mother’s brilliant home cooking – this book is about good food honed from good ingredients whether that be some great potatoes, asparagus or some berries. It is they that invariably and best spark the idea of what to cook for supper. The book is a masterclass in simply things done well.

There are sections on the usefulness and frugality of breadcrumbs, whether black olive crumbs or parsley to serve on spaghetti, impromptu puddings like peaches in wine with bay leaves or plum compote with ricotta and hazelnuts, pea dishes galore, the most useful jams and jellies from a Dundee childhood, classics like chicken with asparagus, potatoes and wild garlic aioli, essentials like anchovy dressing.

Jeremy’s voice is filled with lyric and wit, and a memory, tip or musing is never far from the page in what is sure to be one of the most distinctive cook books published for years.