Nigella Lawson swoons over a collection of recipes that’s been her standby for 20 years. Plus six essential dishes from the book, including roast lamb with anchovy, saffron mash and passion fruit bavarois
I wish I could say I bought Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken and Other Stories when it came out in 1996 for the title alone, but the truth is I’d eaten enough of his food to know I’d want any book he’d written. Nevertheless, it is, beyond doubt, the best title of a cookery book ever. I sometimes think (pace vegetarians) the one thing that links those who really love food is that when asked what their favourite thing to eat is they will invariably say roast chicken. But that’s not even it: what Simon Hopkinson understands, and every line of his book relays, is that a recipe, while it must be utterly reliable, is more than a mere formula. What breathes life into it is the story it tells. I’m actually not talking just about anecdote, though Roast Chicken and Other Stories is deliciously rich on this front, but about voice.
I’ve been rereading Roast Chicken a lot over the past weeks – an intensely comforting and enlivening experience – and my old copy is plastered with fresh Post-It notes. Suddenly, I feel I must make deep-fried calves’ brains with sauce gribiche, milk chocolate malt ice cream, onion tart, pickled endives, crisp parmesan biscuits (“delicious served with beef consommé or as an accompaniment to a very good dry martini”), potato purée with parsley. I could go on: there’s not a recipe here I don’t want to eat immediately.
There’s not a recipe here I don’t want to eat immediately
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