The River Cottage Cookbook
by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Ten Speed Press, 2008
$35.00, cloth
447 pages
A man with lank hair wearing a grubby raincoat is working his way down a hill. The backdrop is a thick custard-colored sky and he carries a spotted piglet under each arm. Hardly the standard, food-porn glossy cover of contemporary cookbooks.
But Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is hardly your standard television chef. In fact, he's not a chef at all, but a writer, broadcaster, and intrepid home cook whose Dorset cottage kitchen, garden, and property have become the basis of BBC television shows and now this book, adapted for American audiences.
Fearnley-Whittingstall has thrown himself wholeheartedly, and sometimes quite literally, into local food, whether he's tending his garden, raising pigs, skinning hunted rabbits, or rooting around in hedgerows for mushrooms and nettles.
And though he writes (and writes) about how to do all these things and more, and that making the effort is important for the planet and our communities, and that it will lend meaning and savor to life, he still admits to eating packaged cheese-flavored potato chips and longing for Toblerone bars, despite Nestle's bad faith powdered milk in the developing world. He never eats at McDonald's though.
I'm with him on this. As he notes, we all live on a continuum of self-sufficiency and half the battle is being aware of and seeking out food alternatives. So I buy a community-supported farm share every year and do a lot of home baking, but I also love a street cart chili dog now and again. And though I don't think my neighbors would take kindly to a pigpen in my backyard, they are glad for a bouquet of herbs from by backyard garden. We should each do what we can and we can enjoy the vicarious life of River Cottage.
But more than vicarious, Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipes are very cookable. I love recipes like Tartiflette, that call for the last few rashers of bacon in a package, the potatoes you didn't finish up last night, and the heel of cheese that's too small for a sandwich. Chop up an onion, sauté it all, add a spoonful of cream, bake it in a hot oven, and your family will be asking for leftovers every night.
I like the creative frugality that makes something wonderful out of odds and ends, but I also like that Fearnley-Whittingstall assumes you can find your way around the kitchen. Cook it in a hot oven he says, until the cheese is bubbling; there's no need for precision in a dish like this. And it seems like the kind of recipe that can easily accommodate a clove of garlic if you're in the mood, some fresh herbs, or even a few carrots.
Often, Fearnley-Whittingstall comes up with dishes that hardly need recipes, but always adds a few things that you might never had thought of - a split pea puree spiked with brined green peppercorns and served with spiced pita breads, or a roast chicken stuffed with couscous, gently flavored with honey and cinnamon.
He is fearless though about using every bit of food he finds, even to the point of stuffing and baking puffball mushrooms. As you might expect, Fearnley-Whittingstall keeps desserts simple, mostly ices or crumbles based on fruit he's grown or scavenged.
Fearnley-Whittingstall calls his book "a manual" and it deserves to be well-used, splashed with wine and marked with gravied thumbprints. Even if you still get your food from "the shops," you can still use this book, to move yourself along the food continuum or simply cook dinner.
© 2008 Claudia Kousoulas
