Food for thought

Thanks for the thrifting tips. I've also done some searches on eBay, too, so I feel a bit calmer.

I don't mean for this suddenly to become a food blog, because I am definitely more interested in crafting at the moment, but as I was stuck on the sofa for an unusually long breastfeeding session, I got to staring at our cookbooks and picking out my favourites. With a self-satisfied sigh, I thought how terrible it was that not everybody knew about them, and decided there and then to share them with you.

I thought I might roll them out slowly, starting with some Asian humdingers.

The first is Irene Kuo's The Key to Chinese Cooking, which as far as I can tell is out of print, but well worth tracking down on Abebooks, or wherever you buy your hard-to-find books.



I love Chinese cooking, but find most Chinese restaurant food a bit... snotty. I can't remember exactly how I came upon this book, except that it must have been reading some mention of it on the web. I bought it when I was in a particularly boring job, which allowed for much internet surfing and daydreaming, and left me with enough pent-up energy in the evenings to want to cook something a bit more elaborate than pasta with tomato sauce.

Why is this book so brilliant? Kuo is a great teacher, explaining the whys and wherefores of the techniques. I've not been to China, but the recipes call for enough authentic ingredients to provoke a trip to Chinatown, yet are still straightforward enough so that cooking them doesn't seem too daunting a prospect. Everything I've made, I've loved and wanted to make again and again, from her simple rice recipe, to the meaty, morish pork buns, of which I can never eat enough.

A region of China I am particularly interested in visiting is Sichuan, and that is entirely Fuchsia Dunlop's fault, because she wrote Sichuan Cookery and it's brilliant, too.



Like Kuo, she communicates her passion very well, the recipes are enticing and the results are a revelation. I've made quite a few of the chicken and chilli dishes, an aubergine dish and a green bean dish, and they were all delicious. The late Alan Davidson, a towering figure in the UK food writing scene, wrote a quote for the cover that sums up my feelings, too: "It is a very long time since I saw a new book which is so patently an absolute 'must'."

I once had call to speak to Dunlop for work, and was embarrassingly gushy about the book, and she was suitably embarrassed for me. I think I muttered something about having bought a meat hook to make her bacon recipe. When the weather gets properly cold, I want to make her hotpot, which is like a chilli fondue. My love of this book also led me to Grand Sichuan in New York City, and it was one of the nicest meals I've ever had.

And it also lead us to one of the few Sichuan restaurants in London, Bar Shu, which we will always remember because we went there on my birthday and I ended up in hospital at 3am that night with a high blood pressure induced headache while 38 weeks' pregnant, which lead to two weeks of hospital visits that finally ended when I was induced and our daughter was born.

Last but not least - are you still there? - is Japanese Cooking, A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji. I have weighed this book, and it's 1.3kg, so I think that the title is a bit off the mark.





Also, while I bought this before travelling to Japan on honeymoon last year, I ate when we were there, as you do, and having re-read parts of this since then, I would say that I probably only really understand half of what he is on about. But it's great escapism reading, it's scholarly without being too intimidating, and the recipe for rice really works. One day, when I live closer to an Asian supermarket, I will cook more from it. In the meantime, who could resist a book with the drawings that illustrate the best techniques for gutting fish, and how best to chop a carrot? I can't.

So, that's enough for today. But what about you? Which are your favourites and why?