A world of imagination

I read cookery books as much for pure enjoyment as for inspiration and recipes. For this enjoyment I reach for the classics written by Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson. Unlike modern cookbooks there are no photographs of the dishes described, merely words with the odd hand drawn, black illustration. These books need no photographs as the words do the work. They are so beautifully written, the descriptions of the food so evocative that they transport you into the kitchens in which they were written and where the dishes were first compiled or consumed.

What comes across also is the simplicity of the ingredients and the dishes detailed, real food, made using fresh ingredients with an intense concern for quality. It is also worth noting that most of the great English cookery writers were women cooks, immersed in the domestic tradition, which may explain why the writing is so evocative of the place and time in which it was written, those women were really living the experience of domestic cooking in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. In a world now dominated by short attention spans, a desire for instant pleasure and fast moving imagery it is easy to forget where we once were, in a culinary sense. I love returning to these old classics and slowing the world down for thirty minutes or so.