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WORK TITLE: How to Eat a Peach
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://dianahenry.co.uk/
CITY: London
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British
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| 670 | __ |a Crazy water, pickled lemons, 2002: |b t.p. (Diana Henry) jkt. (TV producer & writer on arts & cookery; lives in London) |
PERSONAL
Children: two.
EDUCATION:Oxford University, English literature.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist, broadcaster, television producer, food writer. BBC, television producer; Sunday Telegraph, food writer; Stella, columnist; BBC Good Food Magazine, columnist.
AWARDS:Guild of Food Writers, Cookery Journalist of the Year, three times, Cookery Book of the Year, for A Change of Appetite, 2015; Fortnum & Mason Food & Drink Awards, Cookery Writer of the Year, 2013, 2015; James Beard Award, 2016, for A Bird in the Hand.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to House & Garden and Red.
SIDELIGHTS
Diana Henry is an award-winning British journalist, broadcaster, and food writer who has published numerous books on cooking and arts. She is food writer for the Sunday Telegraph, a columnist in Stella, a columnist in BBC Good Food Magazine, and contributor to House & Garden and Red. She has been named Cookery Journalist of the Year by the Guild of Food Writers, and won several awards for her cookbooks. Growing up in Northern Ireland, Henry has been cooking since she was six. She studied English literature at Oxford University, and worked at the BBC as a television producer for arts and human interest documentaries.
Pure Simple Cooking and A Change of Appetite
Henry published Pure Simple Cooking: Effortless Meals Every Day in 2009. The book emphasizes how busy people can make no-fuss meals with staple ingredients like chicken, sausage, pasta, potatoes, and even summer berries. Inspired by French, Italian, Northern African, Greek, and other international flavors, the more than 150 recipes are pure, simple, and fresh. Recipes include salmon ceviche garnished with mango and avocado, and a Spanish version of French toast. “This reasonably priced title [is] ideal for the novice home cook in need of a bit of encouragement in the kitchen,” according to a writer in Publishers Weekly.
In 2014, Henry published A Change of Appetite: Where Healthy Meets Delicious, a chronicle of her own desire to change her old routine and adopt a diet with less meat, more vegetables, fish, and grain-based meals. Inspired by cuisines from the Middle East, Far East, Georgia, and Scandinavia, she provides recipes that offer a healthier and fresher way of eating. For example, she includes Japanese family chicken, egg, and rice bowl; and salmon burger with dill and tomato sauce. “The book offers a nice mix of food from around the world” that are easy on the digestive system, noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer. “This [is] an exciting winner documenting the author’s year-long culinary odyssey,” according to a California Bookwatch critic.
Roast Figs, Sugar Snow and A Bird in the Hand
Roast Figs, Sugar Snow: Food to Warm the Soul, published in 2014, offers cold-weather recipes from snowy climates like North America and Northern Europe. With potato and cheese dishes from northern Italy, and pastries from coffee houses in Vienna, Henry’s book of country scenes and cultural flavors offers a “range of dishes that use familiar foods in unfamiliar ways,” noted a Bookwatch critic. Bucking the trend of writing seasonal cookbooks focused on summer, a book about winter ingredients makes “Henry’s new book all the more welcome for its uniqueness,” according to a reviewer in the Bookseller.
Henry published A Bird in the Hand: Chicken Recipes for Every Day and Every Mood in 2015. The world’s most versatile poultry takes center stage in Henry’s collection of chicken recipes from around the world that are comforting, quick, casual, and celebratory. From Vietnamese lemon grass and chili chicken, to barley and feta stuffed roast chicken with eggplant, recipes include budget-friendly, but also international ingredients. Praising the collection for not having a single bland dish, Lisa Campbell in Library Journal reported that Henry’s “new chicken dishes promise to reinvigorate even the tiredest taste buds.” In a review in Press Herald Online, Mary Pols explained her fascination with the book, saying, “The book was pretty, with a layout that manages to be both sumptuous and simple, so I took it home and resolved to experiment with it. Break the habits. Go beyond my basics. As soon as I hit the section titled ‘Chicken loves booze,’ I got lost in Henry’s authorial voice—friendly but firm, charming but not gooey. Bridget Jones with self-respect.”
Simple
Henry’s 2016 Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavors, a follow-up to her 2009 Pure Simple Cooking, again gathers no-hassle starters, sauces, main dishes, and sides. Full of flavor, these low-effort recipes include simple ingredients found in most people’s pantry or easy to find in stores, for example, cumin-coriander roast carrots with pomegranates and avocado; and parmesan roast chicken with cauliflower and thyme. These clever food combinations are “just a few of the dishes that will expand palates that come together quickly,” said a writer in Publishers Weekly. “These dishes are inventive, intensely flavored, and seductively new,” declared Brian O’Rourke online at Huffington Post.
Readers “will find particularly fabulous choices here,” according to Library Journal contributor Lisa Campbell. Commenting on how fully stocked her pantry is, Henry told Melissa Clark in an interview in the New York Times Online: “I think a larder is all about possibilities,” she said. “It gives me freedom when I’m writing recipes to know that if I’m putting together sweet potatoes with preserved lemon, if I suddenly decide I need to add walnuts for texture, I’ll be able to follow it through. And I’m constantly writing recipes.”
How to Eat a Peach
In 2018, Henry published How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places, in which menus are paired with personal essays about places or themes that explain the choice of dish. The choice of food and menu varies according to temperature, weather, time of year, season of the food, and supply of food or beverage to pair it with. For example, if it’s too hot, an Italian cook will put out a bowl of peaches that diners can cut up and put in a glass of chilled Moscato or Marsala to marinate. In an interview with Elisabeth Sherman online at Food and Wine, Henry explained that food doesn’t have to be complicated to be good, and that fruit and wine are a simple combination. And if someone doesn’t like the wine, “There will always be people who find the wine too sweet altogether,” said Henry, “so you give them their peach and their knife and fork and let them get on with it.”
Henry provides twenty-four menus and a hundred recipes. Other pairings tied to the seasons are an autumn seasonal fig and honey cake. Susan Bethany noted in Reviewer’s Bookwatch that the book “is a simply wonderful read” that combines interesting commentary and elegant recipes. In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer commented: “Her stories of unforgettable meals along with sophisticated-yet-simple menus will encourage cooks to create their own food memories.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Bookseller, July 29, 2005, review of Roast Figs, Sugar Snow: Food to Warm the Soul, p. 34.
Bookwatch, September 2014, review of Roast Figs, Sugar Snow.
California Bookwatch, September 2014, review of A Change of Appetite: Where Healthy Meets Delicious.
Library Journal, April 15, 2015, Lisa Campbell, review of A Bird in the Hand: Chicken Recipes for Every Day and Every Mood, p. 110; August 1, 2016, Lisa Campbell, review of Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavors, p. 117.
Publishers Weekly, December 1, 2008, review of Pure Simple Cooking: Effortless Meals Every Day, p. 43; June 2, 2014, review of A Change of Appetite, p. 55; June 20, 2016, review of Simple, p. 51; March 5, 2018, review of How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places, p. 64.
Reviewer’s Bookwatch, April 2018, Susan Bethany, review of How to Eat a Peach.
ONLINE
Food and Wine, https://www.foodandwine.com/ (May 8, 2018), Elisabeth Sherman, review of How to Eat a Peach.
Huffington Post, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (December 22, 2016), Brian O’Rourke, review of Simple.
New York Times Online, https://www.nytimes.com/ (September 27, 2016), Melissa Clark, author interview.
Press Herald Online, https://www.pressherald.com/ (September 16, 2015), Mary Pols, review of A Bird in the Hand.
About
Diana Henry head and shoulders.
Diana Henry is an award-winning food writer, journalist and broadcaster. She is the author of ten books including ‘Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons’, ‘Cook Simple’, ‘Roast Figs, Sugar Snow’, ‘Food from Plenty’, ‘Salt, Sugar, Smoke’, ‘A Change of Appetite’ and ‘A Bird in the Hand’. ‘Simple’ is her tenth. ‘A Bird in the Hand’ was a Top 10 Bestseller and also won a prestigious James Beard Award in March 2016. It won widespread critical acclaim with John Vincent writing in Metro, “I feel like becoming a monk and dedicating my life to Diana Henry and her chicken.”
Diana is the Sunday Telegraph’s food writer and has a column in Stella, the newspaper’s magazine. She also writes a monthly column in BBC Good Food Magazine and writes regularly for House & Garden and Red. Diana was named Cookery Writer of the Year in both 2013 and 2015’s prestigious Fortnum & Mason Food & Drink Awards. She has also three times been awarded ‘Cookery Journalist of the Year’ by the Guild of Food Writers. A Change of Appetite was named Guild of Food Writers Cookery Book of the Year 2015. Recent broadcasts have included a dedicated two part special on Diana Henry on BBC Radio 4 The Food Programme and she is a regular on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour.
Diana was brought up in Northern Ireland in a family of keen cooks – one of her earliest memories is of sitting, aged three, on the counter top in the kitchen eating freshly baked wheaten bread smeared with butter and home-made raspberry jam. With her mum turning out cakes for bring-and-buy sales and working her way through her Cordon Bleu magazines, Granny Miller regularly producing tins of beautifully decorated fairy cakes and Granny Henry starting each day making soda farl at the kitchen table it comes as little surprise that a young Diana was soon drawn to the kitchen.
At six she was making peppermint creams, coconut ice and fairy cakes. By sixteen, she was hosting her first dinner party – an effort, she says, not appreciated by her fellow sixteen-year-old guests. Leaving Northern Ireland at eighteen to go to Oxford University to study English Literature (her other passion), Diana was surprised to find her love of cooking was not only not shared but viewed by many of her peers as a sign that she was not a liberated woman.
At one dinner, upon Diana producing a French apple and frangipane tart, one girl gasped, ‘God, did you make that yourself?’ Glowing at the prospect of the praise that would ensue she was taken aback to find that this did not impress but rather horrified the girl. Why would anyone want to spend so much time making a tart? Cooking was frivolous; her consciousness needed to be raised.
It was on moving to London after university that Diana really found her culinary stride and more like-minded peers. Living in a flat surrounded by Greek and Turkish shops, Diana would while away weekends on the Edgware Road, with its Middle Eastern cafes, hubba-bubba pipes and mint tea. During the week, Diana worked at the BBC as a TV producer making arts and human interest documentaries (in the cookery field she eventually worked on many of Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall’s series) but she spent her weekends cooking her way through Claudia Roden’s Book of Middle Eastern Food, Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and Alice Water’s Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook. It was only many years and a Leith’s cookery course later that, as the mother of an eight month old baby, Diana turned to food writing as a career and she’s never looked back.
Diana lives in London and when she’s not whipping up a feast in the kitchen, she can be found planning trips around the globe – Russia and Alaska are next on the list – watching Scandi drama and reading American and Irish literature.
« back to journal
Diana Henry Owns 4,000 Cookbooks But Can't Stop Buying (& Writing) More
The Curious Pear by The Curious Pear • September 30, 2016 • 14 Comments
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Diana Henry has over four-thousand cookbooks. Some line the staircase, some are by her bed, and most stare down at us from the shelf that stretches across her airy North London kitchen, where we talked with her about food, family, and her book collection.
The sun that comes through the floor-to-ceiling doors from the garden has left many of them faded in various shades of pastel. It’s hard to tell the new from the old; each one looks as worn and loved as the last.
Photo by Issy Croker
Yet there is order in their chaos. Diana runs her hands over each shelf, taking us on a tour of the sections: Italian, Scandinavian, French, Middle Eastern, British, Preserving, Baking. There are a couple dedicated to American food writing, a genre that she says influenced her hugely. The latest in her collection is Renee Erikson’s A Boat, a Whale & a Walrus, which she adores.
“Americans are less inhibited when it comes to food,” she says, topping up our glasses with a potent elixir of Prosecco and Cointreau with raspberry coulis and vodka. “They are happy to make it personal and poetic. That doesn’t happen as much here.”
She glances at her watch. “Oh no! I forgot to put the chicken on! I’ve been talking too much!” Turns out that even the woman described as “the quiet star of British food writing” forgets to put lunch on until 3 P.M. (just like us). She returns to the other side of the island, where a bowl of bead-like lentils stand beside a sticky apricot cake garnished with a sprig of lavender.
Photo by Issy Croker
When Diana Henry was in her late twenties, she quit her job in television to enroll at Leiths Cookery School. After her youngest son was born, she began writing about food full time. She published her first cookbook, the iconic Crazy Water Pickled Lemons, in 2002.
The title alone captured people’s imaginations: It spoke of a poetic, enchanting world of food that had for so long remained out of the spotlight in the U.K. The recipes themselves explored the heated flavors of North Africa and the Middle East and the bright dishes of the Mediterranean and Diana’s loose, sentimental writing was unique, too, with stories about her life bound up in each one. She wrote about food not just as fuel or flavor, but as an emotional, sensual experience. And this is what she looks for in the books that fill her house: “For me, a good cookbook has to be connected to the person.”
Photos by Issy Croker
All eight of Diana Henry’s celebrated cookbooks are dotted around her kitchen, wedged in beside her favorite writers. The most recent, A Bird in the Hand—which she refers to as “the chicken book”—explores the endless possibilities of a meat we often shun as too simple, too plain. Diana makes simple, earthly dishes special, and makes everyone feel like they can cook.
“More than anything, I like a cookbook to be honest; to be a real portrayal of the author.”
—Diana Henry
“I admire chefs greatly. But I like home food. Often, chefs like technique, and they like to do complicated food. And I neither want to cook nor eat that stuff. More than anything, I like a cookbook to be honest; to be a real portrayal of the author. I think they can often be quite flat and not show the personality of the person. They shouldn’t be separated,” she thinks. “I’m a big believer in the beauty of the ordinary. We have to look for that in life.”
This month sees the release of Diana’s tenth book, Simple. Revisiting Cook Simple, which she released in 2007, it showcases bold, colorful flavors and effortless cooking. It is a book for the home cook, infusing magic into midweek meals. Each dish—inextricably linked to Diana’s personal world—romanticizes the possibilities of the everyday.
A Bird in the Hand, Signed Copy
A Bird in the Hand, Signed Copy
$30
Simple, Signed Copy
Simple, Signed Copy
$33
Growing up in Northern Ireland, Diana watched from the stairs as her parents entertained guests at dinner parties and used to borrow her mother’s Le Cordon Bleu books and stay up late into the night until her eyes were sore. “I could see that with food you created a world. You entertained, you created atmosphere.” Since then, Diana has never been far from her favorite cookbooks. They have accompanied her through life, informed her own writing, and inspired her recipes.
“These were not ‘foodies’—they just loved food. ”
—Diana Henry
At fifteen, Diana made her first trip out of Northern Ireland, traveling to France to stay in a “rickety house in the Champagne area. [...] It was really basic. But the meals we produced from this kitchen were exquisite,” she remembers.
There, Diana learned the ways of “proper” vinaigrette and the simple beauty of beginning a meal with a bowl of herby lentils or a tomato salad with lemon. “They really thought about flavor and the small details. These were not ‘foodies’—they just loved food. Because food is part of life. I can’t tell you how unbelievably affecting this was.”
Photo by Issy Croker
Moving to London after graduating from Oxford, Diana found herself submerged in world food: markets selling yams, tropical fruits, and spices; Turkish shops selling pails of olives; Italian delis stocked with Parma ham and ricotta. “I nearly lost my mind! I couldn’t believe this stuff was on my doorstep. You could have been in Palestine or Rome! [...] I just thought, “The whole world is here.””
It was during those first flourishes of life in London that Diana picked up two cookbooks that would reiterate something she already knew: that simple food can be the most decadent.
The first was Claudia Roden’s Book of Middle Eastern Food—“It was a whole world of exoticness”—and then Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook. The recipes in these books didn’t just appeal to Diana: They moved her.
“I’ve never thought it was just about the cooking. It was about everything else that surrounded the food.”
—Diana Henry
“In London at the time, it was all about nouvelle cuisine. And then here was Alice Waters, talking about goat’s cheese with roasted garlic and toasted sourdough. Or grilled pork with red peppers. Or fresh cherries with almond cookies. That food sent shivers down my spine. It was so different. It was simple in a very beautiful way. Both Claudia’s and [Alice's] food seemed to have a similar enchantment. I remember taking them back to my basement flat. It was really rainy outside and I lay on the sofa reading them both.”
Both of these books still lie at the top of the pile of Diana’s beloved collection. Beside them are a few other books that have shaped her life and work. “The best thing you can do is be immersed in other people’s good work,” she tells us as she walks us through her favourites. She picks up a copy of Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book. “Jane Grigson was the first food writer I properly read. Her books are a mixture of biography, travel, poetry, history. And the food has to do with everything.”
This interlocking of food and life appealed to Diana. “I’ve never thought it was just about the cooking. It was about everything else that surrounded the food.” She reaches for A Well-Seasoned Appetite by Molly O’Neill, who she admits is “probably my favorite food writer.”
Photo by Issy Croker
We have lunch late in the afternoon. The long wooden table, where Diana writes most of her articles and books, was heaving with food: a cold, nutty lentil salad (“yesterday’s leftovers”); sweet, soft harissa-roasted tomatoes; silky spheres of burrata sharpened with anchovies, capers, flat-leaf parsley, fennel from the garden, and some excellent olive oil. Beside it, there is soft sourdough bread; a dish of salt, butter, and—of course—chicken, spatchcocked with chile and breadcrumbs.
“I thought, this is a Monday, we can’t be having anything too fancy.”
Words by Meg Abbott. Photos by Issy Crocker.
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The Curious Pear
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Best friends Issy and Meg have spent the last decade sitting across tables from each other, travelling the world knife and fork in hand. Photographing bowls of steaming noodles, exotic street food and some of the world's most exciting cooks, Issy makes up the photography side of the duo, while Meg records each bite in words. Considering their equal obsession for food and each other, it was inevitable that the two would eventually combine to become The Curious Pear, intent on bringing you reviews, food features and interviews with the culinary crowd, as well as pieces on their favourite eating spots from around the world. The Curious Pear are the contributing Food Editors at SUITCASE Magazine, bringing you a weekly food column at suitcasemag.com, as well as contributing for Time Out, Food52, Life & Thyme, Trends on Trends, Guest of a Guest and more!
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Author Diana Henry Answers Questions from the Cookbook Club
Lindsay-Jean Hard by Lindsay-Jean Hard • April 14, 2017 • 4 Comments
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This week in our Cookbook Club, members submitted questions they wanted to ask Diana Henry, author of this month's featured book, Simple. She answered queries on everything from her favorite cookbooks (not easy to do when her collection tops 4,000) to the differences between British and American palates. Read on to find out about those topics (and much more) and check out photos of what members have been cooking this week. Plus, if you join the Cookbook Club today, she might answer your question next week!
Didn't know we have cookbook clubs? Click below for the details!
What's Ahead for Our Cookbook Club(s)
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What's Ahead for Our Cookbook Club(s) by Lindsay-Jean Hard
Cooking & More
Dina Rizzuto-Francis: I have over 1000 cookbooks in my collection. You have been my favorite author for years! I am so happy you are this month's selection! I would like to know your favorite time of year and recipes for that season?
Diana Henry: I have about 4,000 books in my collection—it’s an obsession! Actually, I started buying them when I was pretty young (12 years old). You can gather up a lot if you start that early.
My favorite time of year to cook is autumn. I love that sense of returning to the kitchen after the summer. The summer is a bit all over the place—traveling, the kids not at school—there is less of a routine than usual, and in the UK, the weather fluctuates. Sometimes it can be hot, sometimes just warm, like spring, other times (like last year) it can simply rain for days on end. But the autumn is definite. The weather is what you expect it to be. Early autumn can have those lovely blue skies and cool air. September is great because it feels like a new beginning (the start of the school year) and there is a real overlap in summer and autumn ingredients: corn, plums, blackberries, tomatoes and figs are all around, but they are joined by roots, nuts, wild mushrooms and, in the UK, damsons. I love that. It is such a time of plenty.
A bit later in the season afternoons start to get misty at about 4 pm and you feel you need a jumper. That’s when you start thinking about pumpkins and mussels. It seems right to be cooking pots of beans and lentils again too. And I start to bake on Sunday afternoons (something I don’t do during the summer). You sort of turn inwards—back towards the home and the kitchen—and that’s a good feeling.
The autumn dishes I love are nearly all based on pumpkin and squash—I love their sweetness: pasta with roast pumpkin, chunks of ricotta and shavings of smoked cheese; pumpkin and mussel soup (this is from Normandy–it’s gorgeous); pumpkin and fennel lasagne. I like autumn fruits too. Apple and blackberry crumble (what you call a ‘crisp’ in the US) really reminds me of home in Ireland—we had it at the beginning of every autumn, after going blackberry picking—and I love making desserts with pears. They are one of the best ingredients for desserts and you can make very simple things with them–pears baked with Marsala, upside-down pear and cranberry cake, pear tarte tatin. I love pears poached in red wine with bay leaves and cinnamon—an old-fashioned dish that has been around for a long time (and for good reason).
Bridget Laird: If you could only eat one more meal but it could be anything you wanted, what would it be?
Diana Henry: Fresh pasta with white Alba truffles, roast chicken (stuffed with black olives, pancetta, garlic and waxy potatoes) with fennel gratin, French cheeses (a whole trolley – especially cheeses from Provence and the Savoie), autumn fruits baked in red wine and crème de cassis, served with crème fraîche
Dina Rizzuto-Francis: What are your hobbies outside of cooking?
Diana Henry: Outside of cooking, I love literature—I’m a massive reader, particularly of Irish and American literature. I studied English literature at university, and when I was a television producer, one of my happiest times was when I worked on a book program.
I am a total drama junkie too—The Sopranos, Mad Men, Six Feet Under, and all the Scandi stuff such as The Killing and The Bridge—I have devoured them. Netflix can’t actually offer me enough! I also go to the cinema a lot.
Diana Henry Owns 4,000 Cookbooks But Can't Stop Buying (& Writing) More
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Diana Henry Owns 4,000 Cookbooks But Can't Stop Buying (& Writing) More by The Curious Pear
Cookbooks & Cookbook Authors
Anna Čorak: What are your top 10 favorite cookbooks?
Diana Henry: My top cookbooks of all time are these:
Marcella Hazan’s The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook (also her dessert book)
Molly O’Neill's A Well-Seasoned Appetite
David Tanis' A Platter of Figs
Judy Rodgers' The Zuni Café Cookbook
Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book
Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book
Claudia Roden's A Book of Middle Eastern Food
Anne Willan's French Regional Cooking
Nigella Lawson's How to Eat
Susanna Orr: What are the top 5 or 10 most influential books in her collection?
Diana Henry: The books that have most influenced me are The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book and Vegetable Book, and Claudia Roden’s Book of Middle Eastern Food. Alice Waters' book was just very different—when it came out, it showed what simple food could be like. We’ve forgotten how revolutionary that seemed. She has had an enormous impact. Jane Grigson’s books and Claudia’s books showed me what food writing could be—a mixture of memoir, travel, literature, history, anthropology. They didn’t just offer wonderful recipes but recipes within a personal and cultural context. Before I discovered them I was a really keen cook, but they showed me something else. It was a total thrill to find them. They are great writers—not just great food writers.
Huevos Rotos; Spaghetti with Spiced Sausage & Fennel Sauce Photos by Damon Green, Sajini Christman
Hayley Evans: What are your current favorite top 3 cookbooks/cookbook authors?
My favorite food writers—for prose—will always be Claudia Roden, Jane Grigson, and Molly O’Neill. They have been favorites for years. If you mean who am I noticing right now, I am very keen on the work of Olia Hercules, Gill Meller, Caroline Eden, and Meera Sodha (all British). I think Nigella Lawson writes the best—the most exquisitely elegant prose—of anyone writing about food now. Her voice has such poise. I have all of Naomi Duguid’s books and I think she is a brilliant anthropologist and collector of recipes. I cook out of her stuff a lot. Alice Hart, another British writer, does great vegetarian recipes—such a range of ingredients and flavors. Probably my very favorite book of last year was Taste and Technique by Naomi Pomeroy. I thought it would smash it in the Piglet! Another American cookbook I love is A Boat, A Whale and A Walrus by Renee Erickson—that book is a triumph in that design and content and tone really come together into one whole. That is rare.
Laura McDonald: Which fellow cookbook author is your biggest influence?
Diana Henry: That’s really difficult—I feel my influences are more from people who’ve been writing for a long time (or, as in the case of Jane Grigson, who aren’t alive anymore) than from people writing now. I suppose if you want to know whose writing I most admire who is currently writing it would be Nigella Lawson’s. We are very close in age, though, so I suppose we are both influenced by people who have gone before us, if you see what I mean.
Writing & Recipe Development
Catherine Sharp-Aouchiche: Do you feel there are significant differences between the UK and American palate, and what influence, if any, does that have on your writing process? Could you describe your writing process?
Diana Henry: I think about my whole audience when I write, not just a UK or an American audience. I was always very drawn to American cookbooks and American food writing—the whole Californian culinary revolution had a big influence on me, even though that seems odd for an Irish woman living in London. So I feel just as close to people who buy my books in the States as to readers in the UK. I think you need to be true to yourself when you write recipes, and shouldn’t really be restricted by what you think people will want—I think my job is to offer inspiration and new things (but not new for the sake of it).
I feel that British people are probably—on the whole—keener to try new ingredients, funnily enough, but that is because we’ve always loved and stolen from other cultures. We love Indian food; in fact, we take very eagerly to food of all the cultures who have made a home here. I think we particularly love hot and spicy stuff. I have observed that Americans tend to like sweetness more but so do I, so that is not a problem.
Writing. I have talked and written a lot about this. My journalism—I write features for newspapers and magazines as well as recipe-led pieces—is quite different to my books. My books are where I am most truly myself. The best thing I can say is that the process is about getting yourself in a place where you want to talk—quite intimately—with someone. I do a lot of my writing late at night and in the early hours of the morning. It’s still and quiet. I always imagine—without trying at all hard —that I am in a kitchen talking to someone. I think I am standing right beside them. You also have to do this thing which is like going down into your deepest self to find what you really want to say. All I can say is that it’s a bit like swimming underwater—sometimes I literally look down—to find the right way to convey something. I think as much about words as flavors. It sounds a bit New Age–ish but it’s hard to describe how it happens. I am very happy in that place, though. I would like to write fiction because I like being in that place so much.
Black Linguine with Squid & Spicy Sausage; Burrata with Citrus, Fennel & Olives Photos by Sheila Scully, Abbie Argersinger
Christine Leong: What's her recipe development process?
Diana Henry: People ask this quite often. When The New York Times came to interview me last year—Melissa Clark was with me for days—that is the what they were really keen to find out. I think about flavors all the time. I’ve always done that. Cooking is about technique, yes, and texture, but what intrigues me most is what ingredients cooks decide to put together. Traveling is the thing that really opens my eyes to this and not just because I’m eating in good restaurants; different countries have different palates and you can find combinations of flavors you’d never dreamt of. When I first ate Georgian food in Russia—before the end of communism, Georgian restaurants were the only really good ones there—I immediately pounced on the idea of mixing dill, walnuts, cayenne, and pomegranates together. We tend to think of dill mainly as a Scandinavian herb, one that goes with salmon and sour cream, not one that goes with fruit and heat.
I had a week in Copenhagen recently and came home with pages of notes I’d scribbled on what I’d eaten (in both fancy and more down-to-earth restaurants). At Amass—one of the best restaurants in the city—I asked where the little bursts of citrus I detected in one dish came from. The waiter took me into the kitchen and showed me. The chefs had been throwing away lots of squeezed out lemons but didn’t like the waste so they came up with the idea of chargrilling the skins, then pureeing them with a sugar syrup (made of water and brown sugar) and Danish beer. The result—bitter, sweet and citrusy—had become one of their favorite condiments. At Manfreds & Vin— another ‘New Nordic’ place—they served leeks with elderflower and bergamot. This didn’t entirely work, but I got to thinking about leeks with elderflower, lemon, and goat cheese, that would work. (I just made the dish tonight, and paired it with spelt.) At Restaurant Schonnemann—a Danish institution specializing in smørrebrød—they served strong cheese with caraway seeds, chopped onion, radishes, port jelly, and rye bread. There were ideas everywhere—and dishes that don’t work give you as many ideas as things that do.
Sometimes ideas come by simply thinking hard about an ingredient: Make me sit for 30 minutes with a piece of paper and the instruction to think about tomatoes, and I’ll come up with dishes I’m excited about—in fact, I really enjoy this. I end up with something that looks like what my children call a ‘mind map’—the word ‘tomatoes’ in a circle in the middle, and lots of arrows and ideas coming out of that. You think first about the obvious pairings, and then you think about what wouldn’t work, and see where that takes you. Luckily, even as I’m cooking a dish, I’m busy thinking of variations on it, then that leads you onto another dish. It kind of snowballs.
Once I have an idea, I write it up roughly, then I test it, standing at the cooker with measuring spoons and scales, jotting everything down. My children are the first people to taste new dishes, and they’re harsh critics. Ideas come often come by observing and being exposed to another culture. You can apply the simplest ideas to your cooking at home by keeping your eyes open when you’re on holiday. If you’re a keen cook, take a notebook.
Mallory L. N. Johnson: I notice that many of your recipes draw on Middle Eastern influences, and I'm wondering if you could comment on why those flavors have a particular affinity for you. The simplicity? The spice? Acidity? Maybe a particularly good food memory from your travels or dinners in London?
Diana Henry: I don’t know what it is about Middle Eastern food but I fell in love with it immediately. A lot of the ingredients—figs, flower waters, pomegranates, saffron—were the kinds of foods I used to daydream about when I was growing up in Ireland. Nothing there was exotic—though the raw produce was very good—so I thought a lot about food from other places. I came to England to go to university but there was nothing very exotic in Oxford either at that time (though I’d never even eaten Indian food until I arrived there). When I moved to London to do post-grad, I discovered Claudia Roden’s work and fell not just for the food but for the stories and the cultural references (and the details of her life too). I could get any food I wanted in London—I used to spend my weekends going all over the place, hunting for the right kind of pepper, or dried barberries, or a particular brand of rose water—and the food of the Middle East seemed the most exciting. I loved the earthiness of cumin (still one of my favorite spices) and the way sweet and savory are combined (in the food of Morocco and Iran). The flavors are big, the techniques are simple, their rice cooking is masterly. It seems like honest food, full of warmth. And it looks great too—very decorative, intriguing. One of the reasons I like food so much is that it enables one to eat another culture—that is quite something.
These days I cook just as much food from southeast Asia, though—I love that hot, sour, salty, sweet thing. I will never get tired of Italian, and French is the cuisine I first fell in love with (when I went on an exchange trip there when I was fifteen).
Bucatini with Asparagus, Peas & Saffron topped with a dollop of Crab & Cilantro-Chile Mayo; Cumin-Roast Eggplants, Chickpeas, Walnuts & Dates Photos by Susanna Orr, Sarah Hodge
Simple
Cindi Rocks: Is there an ingredient or instruction that you would change in any recipe in Simple?
Diana Henry: Every time I get a noteor a complaint (via Amazon, or an email to my website) about unusual ingredients in Simple, I want to tear my hair out! When this happens I momentarily wonder if I should have done something different, used an ingredient that is easier to find—but I wouldn’t change any of the ingredients, though I sometimes regret not giving enough substitutions. (I do where I can, though.) I sympathize with people who find it hard to get everything—especially as I grew up in the countryside in Ireland where it was hard to get unusual ingredients—but now so much is available (there’s not much you can’t get online). I never use an ingredient just for the sake of it—I think about flavors a lot and I think a good store cupboard is the secret to making simple food that is also interesting food. The techniques in my latest book are simple, and the flavor combinations have taken a bit of thought. But it’s an interesting question, this one. I wonder what prompted you to ask it.
Nanda Garber: Do you have any suggestions for those of us in the USA regarding the amounts listed in your ingredients? Like the number of chicken pieces instead of weights, number of fruits instead of weights, etc?
Diana Henry: Usually I suggest the number of chicken pieces, as I then know how many each person will be served. I tend to think of them in that way instead of by weight (except if it’s a whole chicken, of course). When it comes to fruit it depends on the recipe. If it’s a pudding and I want each person to have one pear then I will suggest the number of pears. It isn’t much help to have a weight if you end up with four pears—because they’re heavy—to serve six people. Do people find this aspect of my books difficult in the US? I do want to make them as user-friendly as possible (without completely changing my style).
Hayley Evans and Meryl Becker Waters: What's your favorite recipe in Simple?
Diana Henry: That’s really hard as I cook all of them a lot—I do use my own cookbooks! The one I cook most often is probably the Parmesan Roast Chicken with Cauliflower and Thyme. It’s a sheet pan dish and brilliant for family in the middle of the week. Now that it’s coming into good weather, though, I am really looking forward to making the salad of cherries and cucumber with rose petals. Summer!
Greens with Chili, Olive Oil, Eggs, Feta & Seeds; Root, Shiitake & Noodle Salad with Miso Dressing Photos by Jane Kelly, Pat Weingartz
Kelly Warner: Not a question, but can you please tell Diana she has changed my life with this book—I've never found a book so simple with that wow factor. Just love this book!
Diana Henry: Thank you so much! I don’t really know what to say to that except that it makes my job worthwhile.
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I like esoteric facts about vegetables and think ambling through a farmers market is a great way to start the day. My first cookbook, Cooking with Scraps, will be published in October 2018.
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Comments (4)
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over a year ago amysarah
amysarah is a trusted home cook.
I’m glad to see your comments about Molly O’Neill – oddly, I don’t recall her mentioned on F52 before. Lindsay-Jean, maybe she’ll be featured here at some point? (I think she still does food writing programs and such.)
I’d also rec her NY Cookbook - a personal favorite for 20+ yrs. Really vivid writing about the history of NY food culture(s) – your great-grandmother’s LES, Italian food by way of Arthur Ave, Bensonhurst, etc., Caribbean, Indian, Polish, Chinese… the recipes feel like organic parts of a narrative that would be fascinating even if you didn't cook.
↩
over a year ago Diana Henry
Diana is a British food writer and columnist, and the author of ten books, including the James Beard Award-winning ‘A Bird in the Hand’. She gathers inspiration from all over the world and loves home cooking more than any other kind.
I do have that book amysarah! I bought it in New York about 24 years ago. And you're right, a fascinating read. She is really interested in where food comes from. I think she is very unsung. I have introduced her to lots of British readers
↩
over a year ago Lindsay-Jean Hard
Community Editor at Food52
Thank you for the suggestion amysarah, noted!
↩
over a year ago Kristen Roberts
What wonderful responses to a lot of thoughtful questions! Thank you for this, and thank you for featuring my photo too!
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Print Marked Items
How to Eat a Peach
Diana Henry
The Bookwatch.
(May 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Midwest Book Review http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bw/index.htm
Full Text:
How to Eat a Peach
Diana Henry
Mitchell Beazley/Octopus Publishing www.octopusbooksusa.com 9781784724115 $34.99
How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places pair personal essays from author Diana Henry with insights on how menus can change the nature of food choices and pairings. The title refers to how Italians end a meal in the summer (with peaches and chilled moscato), and considers the simplicity of both cooking and choosing foods that don't need much preparation but which benefit from fine pairings with other foods and weather. From a very simple recipe for said White Peaches in Chilled Moscato to a chocolate-coffee Piedmont drink Biccerin, or a autumn seasonal Fig and Honey Cake, full-page, lovely color photos of finished dishes compliment an appealing cookbook especially recommended for prior fans of Henry's style and food pairings that are exceptionally simple to replicate.
Please Note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Henry, Diana. "How to Eat a Peach." The Bookwatch, May 2018. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A542244519/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=584c2db0. Accessed 14 July 2018.
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How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places
Publishers Weekly.
265.10 (Mar. 5, 2018): p64. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places
Diana Henry, photos by Laura Edwards. Mitchell Beazley, $34.99 (224p) ISBN 978-1-784-72411-5
Henry (A Bird in Hand), a British food journalist and James Beard Award winner, wonderfully evokes relaxing meals of simply prepared seasonal ingredients. Inspired by the memory of Moscato-infused sliced peaches she ate during her first visit to Italy, Henry has assembled 24 seasonal menus featuring 100 recipes. Using menu planning "rules" (eat seasonally, avoid repeating ingredients, utilize small plates, etc.), she offers menus of three to five courses for stress-free entertaining; dishes primarily utilize French, Italian, or Mediterranean cooking techniques. A menu for the warm months includes zucchini ricotta fritters, nasturtium-festooned raw sea bass salad, lemony roast chicken, and apricot tart. Come autumn, scallops in brown butter, slow-roasted duck legs in plum sauce, and a pear-blackberry-hazelnut cake offer cold weather comfort. Along with navigating some British culinary terminology, American cooks may have difficulty finding such ingredients as pandan leaves, ox cheek, and Indonesian soy sauce, though online sources are listed; recipes provide both international measurements and American equivalents by weight. For Henry, cooking is "about revisiting places." Her stories of unforgettable meals along with sophisticated-yet-simple menus will encourage cooks to create their own food memories. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places." Publishers Weekly, 5 Mar. 2018, p. 64. Book
Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530430322/GPS?u=schlager& sid=GPS&xid=ca89cea4. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530430322
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Henry, Diana. Simple
Lisa Campbell
Library Journal.
141.13 (Aug. 1, 2016): p117+. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
* Henry, Diana. Simple. Mitchell Beazley: Octopus. Sept. 2016. 320p. photos. index. ISBN 9781784722043. $32.99. COOKING
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Food writer Henry (A Bird in the Hand) has a knack for genius flavor combinations, and her latest doesn't disappoint. This follow-up to her 2009 cookbook Pure Simple Cooking features a low-effort style of cooking suitable for weeknights and spur-of-the-moment occasions. Recipes such as cumin-coriander roast carrots with pomegranates and avocado, honeyed pork loin with plum and lavender relish, and sherry-roasted pear and chocolate sundaes have relatively short ingredient lists and call for minimal to moderate chopping and active cooking. VERDICT Those looking to enliven their daily toast, eggs, pastas, and salads will find particularly fabulous choices here, along with other delicious mains and desserts.
By Lisa Campbell, Univ. of Michigan Lib., Ann Arbor
Campbell, Lisa
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Campbell, Lisa. "Henry, Diana. Simple." Library Journal, 1 Aug. 2016, p. 117+. Book Review
Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A459805128/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=bf4044cb. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A459805128
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Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavors
Publishers Weekly.
263.25 (June 20, 2016): p151+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavors
Diana Henry. Octopus, $32.99 (320p) ISBN 9781-78472-204-3
Henry (Roast Figs Sugar Snow) takes a low-key turn in this elegant cookbook focusing on simple, tasty recipes for all times of day that can be prepared with a minimum of fuss. She delivers on that promise with toast with linguine all'amalfitana (linguine with anchovies and walnuts); Parmesan roast chicken with cauliflower and thyme; and a refreshing salad of cucumbers, radishes, cherries, and rose petals, all well within the abilities of even the most novice of home cooks. Drawing from a pantry full of global ingredients, she creates a leek and feta omelet with sumac, stir-fried squid with ginger and Shaoxing wine, and roast chicken with chiles and migas. These are just a few of the dishes that will expand palates that come together quickly. Readers with fully stocked spice racks will get the most out of the book. Fans of Henry's previous work (this is a quasi-sequel to 2014's Cook Simple) will find this one equally rewarding. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavors." Publishers Weekly, 20 June 2016, p. 151+. Book Review
Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A456344794/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=0dbde793. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A456344794
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Diana Henry: The Gastropub Cookbook
The Bookseller.
.5189 (July 29, 2005): p38. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2005 Bookseller Media Limited http://www.thebookseller.com
Full Text:
Diana Henry The Gastropub Cookbook Mitchell Beazley, October, 14.99 [pounds sterling], 1840007427 Good paperback edition of the deservedly popular Gastropub Cookbook. Handy as a guide to the better gastropubs around Britain (150 are featured) and with great recipes for those who want to cook.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Diana Henry: The Gastropub Cookbook." The Bookseller, 29 July 2005, p. 38. Book Review
Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A135284047/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=9411a639. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A135284047
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Diana Henry: Roast Figs, Sugar Snow
The Bookseller.
.5189 (July 29, 2005): p34. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2005 Bookseller Media Limited http://www.thebookseller.com
Full Text:
Diana Henry Roast Figs, Sugar Snow Mitchell Beazley, October, 20 [pounds sterling], 1840008881
To date, seasonal books have tended to focus on summer, which is probably seen as more evocative and photogenic (all those sunkissed tomatoes, warmed berries and Mediterranean backdrops) but this only makes Diana Henry's new book all the more welcome for its uniqueness. Roast Figs, Sugar Snow is physically a beautiful book--with the most wonderful photography from Jason Lowe--but besides that this collection of food for the cold months is chock-full of irresistible northern recipes arranged around winter ingredients (pumpkins, mushrooms, pungent cheeses, quinces, cranberries). Both Diana's previous titles, Crazy Water Pickled Lemons and The Gastropub Cookbook, sold well and we expect great things from this new title.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Diana Henry: Roast Figs, Sugar Snow." The Bookseller, 29 July 2005, p. 34. Book Review Index
Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A135284010/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=32b33637. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A135284010
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Henry, Diana. Plenty: Good,
Uncomplicated Food for the
Sustainable Kitchen
Carrie Scarr
Library Journal.
136.5 (Mar. 15, 2011): p130+. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2011 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
* Henry, Diana. Plenty: Good, Uncomplicated Food for the Sustainable Kitchen. Mitchell Beazley, dist. by Hachette. 2010. 320p. illus, index. ISBN 9781845335731. $29.99. COOKING
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
During these tough economic times, many are cutting back and doing more with less, but that doesn't require sacrificing flavor. Henry (Roast Figs Sugar Snow: Winter Food To Warm the Soul) offers recipes from around the world--e.g., Lamb, Beer, and Black Bean Chili; Thai Mussels with Coconut, Chile, and Lime; and Blackberry and Ricotta Hot Cakes with Honey-- demonstrating that great food can come at a reasonable price. A very timely book--sure to appeal to many cooks.
Scarr, Carrie
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Scarr, Carrie. "Henry, Diana. Plenty: Good, Uncomplicated Food for the Sustainable Kitchen."
Library Journal, 15 Mar. 2011, p. 130+. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com /apps/doc/A251460231/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=9732f6b2. Accessed 14 July 2018.
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Henry, Diana. A Bird in the Hand:
Chicken Recipes for Every Day and
Every Mood
Lisa Campbell
Library Journal.
140.7 (Apr. 15, 2015): p110. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2015 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
* Henry, Diana. A Bird in the Hand: Chicken Recipes for Every Day and Every Mood. Mitchell Beazley: Octopus. Apr. 2015. 224p. photos, index. ISBN 9781845338961. $29.99; ebk. ISBN 9781784720254. COOKING
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Not a single bland dish appears in this outstanding chicken cookbook by acclaimed food writer and Telegraph columnist Henry (A Change of Appetite). Complemented by gorgeous photographs, her recipes (e.g., Mexican chicken and pumpkin with pepita pesto, Vietnamese caramelized ginger chicken, Indian-spiced chicken with cilantro chutney) feature a wide range of tastes, textures, temperatures, and preparations. None is overly complicated, but because the recipes feature numerous international ingredients (e.g., tamarind paste, palm sugar, Shaoxing wine), they require some preplanning. Budget-friendly and flavorful chicken thighs are Henry's favored cut, but she also uses breasts, legs, whole chickens, and squabs. VERDICT Whether herbaceous, aromatic, sweet, or spicy, these new chicken dishes promise to reinvigorate even the tiredest taste buds.
By Lisa Campbell, Univ. of Michigan Lib., Ann Arbor Campbell, Lisa
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Campbell, Lisa. "Henry, Diana. A Bird in the Hand: Chicken Recipes for Every Day and Every
Mood." Library Journal, 15 Apr. 2015, p. 110. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A409550418/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=f674e6d0. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A409550418
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Pure Simple Cooking: Effortless Meals Every Day
Publishers Weekly.
255.48 (Dec. 1, 2008): p43+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2008 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Pure Simple Cooking: Effortless Meals Every Day
Diana Henry. Ten Speed, $21.95 (192p) ISBN 978-1-58008-948-7 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Most cookbooks start off with chapters dedicated to appetizers, soups or salads. Henry, food columnist for London's Sunday Telegraph magazine, cuts right to the heart of the matter--and the center of the plate--with sections devoted to chicken, chops, sausages, leg of lamb, fish and pasta. After all, the question "what's for dinner?" is never answered with "a platter of crudites." Her latest collection of 150 recipes focuses on simple weeknight dishes, most of which can be prepared in under an hour and with only a handful of ingredients. Strong emphasis is placed on seasonal produce, with vegetable and fruit chapters broken down into "spring and summer" or "autumn and winter" categories. While Henry hails from Ireland and resides in London, her recipes reflect a distinct global influence: salmon ceviche garnished with mango and avocado; pork chops flavored with Thai spices and nam pla; and torrijas, the Spanish version of French toast. Endless variations for savory sauces, poultry stuffing, roasted potatoes and even whipped cream pepper the text, and many of the recipes contain footnotes offering simple substitutions. Even the baked desserts are streamlined, such as an all-in-one chocolate cake that employs self- rising flour and salted butter and is mixed entirely in the food processor. One hundred sumptuous, full-color photographs serve as both illustration and inspiration, making this reasonably priced title ideal for the novice home cook in need of a bit of encouragement in the kitchen. (Apr.)
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Pure Simple Cooking: Effortless Meals Every Day." Publishers Weekly, 1 Dec. 2008, p. 43+.
Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A190244576 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=08f55a62. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A190244576
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A Change of Appetite: Where Healthy Meets Delicious
Publishers Weekly.
261.22 (June 2, 2014): p55. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2014 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
A Change of Appetite: Where Healthy Meets Delicious
Diana Henry. Octopus (Mitchell Beazley, dist.), $34.99 (336p) ISBN 978-1-8453- 3892-3
In her eighth book (after Salt Sugar Smoke; Gastropub Cookbook), Henry tries to dramatically change her own diet after having "a change of appetite." Focusing on vegetable-, fish-, and grain- based dishes, she minimizes the heavy food, like meat, that could weigh a person down. Drawing influence from around the world, Henry creates flavorful dishes that won't force eaters to sit and wait for their stomach to settle. With classical dishes from the Middle East and Far East, like "Japanese family chicken, egg, and rice bowl (oyaka domburi)" and "persimmon, pomegranate, and red Belgian endive salad with goat cheese and toasted hazelnuts," and more Western dishes like a salmon burger with dill and tomato sauce or a salmon tartare with pickled cucumber and rye crackers, there is a taste here for everyone. Broken down by season, the book offers a nice mix of food from around the world that will not take a toll on the digestive system. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"A Change of Appetite: Where Healthy Meets Delicious." Publishers Weekly, 2 June 2014, p. 55.
Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A370457873 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=9573d838. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A370457873
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A Change of Appetite
California Bookwatch.
(Sept. 2014): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2014 Midwest Book Review http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
A Change of Appetite
Diana Henry
Octopus Publishing
236 Park Avenue, New York NY 10017 9781845338923, $34.99, www.octopuspublishing.com
A Change of Appetite: Where Healthy Meets Delicious offers the dishes author Diana Henry created when she began to crave a different kind of diet: one with less meat and heavy food and more vegetables, fish and grain-based dishes. Henry lost weight on this diet but also discovered a different way to eating: her cookbook offers recipes arranged by season to use the best of seasonal ingredients, pairs international dishes with these fresh local offerings, and offers plenty of insights on nutritional values and changing one's palate to accept new flavors and possibilities. Any who look for a cookbook introduction to new culinary opportunities will find this an exciting winner documenting the author's year-long culinary odyssey.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"A Change of Appetite." California Bookwatch, Sept. 2014. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A382951096/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=efd322e7. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A382951096
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Salt Sugar Smoke
California Bookwatch.
(Dec. 2015): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2015 Midwest Book Review http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Salt Sugar Smoke
Diana Henry
Mitchell Beazley
c/o Octopus Publishing
236 Park Avenue, New York NY 10017 9781784721190, $24.99, www.octopusbooksusa.com
Salt Sugar Smoke offers some unique flavor combinations - not the usual recipes that come to mind when one thinks of mixing salt, sugar and smoke - and so cooks will find within another treasure trove of recipes that offer fare not to be found elsewhere. From a Rhubarb Schnapps drink to Maple-Cured Pork Chops with Pear and Juniper Relish and Earl Grey Tea Jelly, color photos supplement recipes that offer not just fresh new ideas for pairing flavors, but tested creations that are a cut above the ordinary. Diana Henry's cookbooks all hold her signature brand of tested dishes and unusual flavor combinations that work, and Salt Sugar Smoke is no exception, recommended for any cook's collection unique cookbook keepers.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Salt Sugar Smoke." California Bookwatch, Dec. 2015. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A439035284/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=8810d7e6. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A439035284
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A Change of Appetite
The Bookwatch.
(Aug. 2014): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2014 Midwest Book Review http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bw/index.htm
Full Text:
A Change of Appetite
Diana Henry
Mitchell Beazley
c/o Octopus Publishing
236 Park Avenue, New York NY 10017 www.octopusbooksusa.com 9781845338923, $34.99, www.amazon.com
A Change of Appetite offers a fine collection of recipes for healthy eating and offers dishes inspired by world cuisines from Russia to Scandinavia, packed with flavor and appeal. While 'healthy' here is profiled, it's less about weight loss than about flavor and freshness. Chapters are packed with recipes organized by season for maximum use of fresh, seasonal ingredients and pair this approach with dishes packed with unusual flavor combinations from Ricotta with Summer Berries and Honey to Shawarma Chicken with Warm Chickpea Puree and Sumac Onions. Expect something delightfully different with this appealing coverage, recommended for any cookbook collection looking for something different.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"A Change of Appetite." The Bookwatch, Aug. 2014. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A381408086/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=686be232. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A381408086
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Roast Figs Sugar Snow
The Bookwatch.
(Sept. 2014): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2014 Midwest Book Review http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bw/index.htm
Full Text:
Roast Figs Sugar Snow
Diana Henry
Mitchell Beazley
Octopus Publishing
236 Park Avenue, New York NY 10017 9781845339593, $29.99, www.octopusbooksusa.com
Roast Figs Sugar Snow focuses on cold-weather main courses from Europe and North America and provides a range of dishes that use familiar foods in unfamiliar ways. From a Sobronade (similar to a French cassoulet and packed with pork and beans, root vegetables and spices) to a chapter on smoked foods from Haddock and Leek Risotto to Salad of Smoked Duck with Farro, Red Chicory, and Pomegranates and a Russian Georgian Lamb with Damsons and Walnuts, this pairs lovely color photos of foods and country scenes with cultural insights and flavors. The result is a warm cookbook perfect for cold weather.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Roast Figs Sugar Snow." The Bookwatch, Sept. 2014. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A382807440/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=c84b1f3a. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A382807440
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Plenty
The Bookwatch.
(Feb. 2011): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2011 Midwest Book Review http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bw/index.htm
Full Text:
Plenty
Diana Henry
Mitchell Beazley
c/o Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York NY 10017 9781845335731, $29.99, www.hachette.com
PLENTY packs in over 300 recipes based on budget preparations and tips on how to spend less, waste less, and eat better. These recipes come from around the world and showcase great food that can be made on a budget. Leftovers can be transformed into outstanding winners, bumper crops of garden produce can become main dish meals, and less expensive cuts of meat can produce new options and variety. From a Creamy White Vegetable, Chestnut and Cranberry Gratin to Granny Miller's Beef, Potato and Parsley Stew, this showcases many dishes unique to this book and belongs in any culinary collection.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Plenty." The Bookwatch, Feb. 2011. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com
/apps/doc/A249137449/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=f6c3f17e. Accessed 14 July 2018. Gale Document Number: GALE|A249137449
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Henry, Diana (text) & Jonathan
Lovekin (photogs.). Pure Simple
Cooking: Effortless Meals Every Day
Judith Sutton
Library Journal.
134.3 (Feb. 15, 2009): p124. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2009 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Henry, Diana (text) & Jonathan Lovekin (photogs.). Pure Simple Cooking: Effortless Meals Every Day. Ten Speed: Celestial Arts. Apr. 2009. c.192p. photogs. index. ISBN 978-1-58008-948-7. pap. $21.95. COOKERY
Henry, food columnist for London's Sunday Telegraph magazine, wrote this cookbook after having two children and changing her cooking style. It is a collection of quick and easy recipes influenced by a variety of cuisines, from Pomegranate-and-Honey-Glazed Lamb Chops to Georgian Eggplant Salad to Peaches in Rose Syrup.
By Judith Sutton, New York Sutton, Judith
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Sutton, Judith. "Henry, Diana (text) & Jonathan Lovekin (photogs.). Pure Simple Cooking:
Effortless Meals Every Day." Library Journal, 15 Feb. 2009, p. 124. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A199462113/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=2a3bc2b1. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A199462113
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How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories
and Places Diana Henry
Susan Bethany
Reviewer's Bookwatch.
(Apr. 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Midwest Book Review http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places
Diana Henry
Mitchell Beazley
c/o Octopus Publishing
236 Park Avenue, New York NY 10017
www.octopusbooksusa.com
9781784724115, $34.99, HC, 224pp, www.amazon.com
Synopsis: When Diana Henry was sixteen she started a menu notebook (an exercise book carefully covered in wrapping paper). Planning a menu is still her favorite part of cooking.
Menus can create very different moods; they can take you places, from an afternoon at the seaside in Brittany to a sultry evening eating mezze in Istanbul. They also have to work as a meal that flows and as a group of dishes that the cook can manage without becoming totally stressed. The 24 menus and 100 recipes in this book reflect places Diana loves, and dishes that are real favorites.
The menus are introduced with Diana's personal essays is about places or journeys or particular times and explains the choice of dishes. Each menu is a story in itself, but the recipes can also stand alone.
"How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places" is a culinary title that refers to how Italians end a meal in the summer, when it's too hot to cook. The host or hostess just puts a bowl of peaches on the table and offers glasses of chilled moscato (or even Marsala). Guests then slice their peach into the glass, before eating the slices and drinking the wine.
That says something very important about eating--simplicity and generosity and sometimes not
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cooking are what it's about!
Critique: Beautifully illustrated throughout, "How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places" is a simply wonderful read combining interesting commentary with elegant recipes for dishes that would grace any and all dining occasions. Exceptionally well organized and presented, "How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places" will prove to be an immediate and enduringly popular addition to personal, family, and community library cookbook collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that "How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $34.99).
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Bethany, Susan. "How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places Diana Henry." Reviewer's
Bookwatch, Apr. 2018. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc /A539772230/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=de5bf5a5. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A539772230
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How to Eat a Peach
Internet Bookwatch.
(May 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Midwest Book Review http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
How to Eat a Peach
Diana Henry
Mitchell Beazley/Octopus Publishing www.octopusbooksusa.com 9781784724115 $34.99
How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places pair personal essays from author Diana Henry with insights on how menus can change the nature of food choices and pairings. The title refers to how Italians end a meal in the summer (with peaches and chilled moscato), and considers the simplicity of both cooking and choosing foods that don't need much preparation but which benefit from fine pairings with other foods and weather. From a very simple recipe for said White Peaches in Chilled Moscato to a chocolate-coffee Piedmont drink Biccerin, or a autumn seasonal Fig and Honey Cake, full-page, lovely color photos of finished dishes compliment an appealing cookbook especially recommended for prior fans of Henry's style and food pairings that are exceptionally simple to replicate.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"How to Eat a Peach." Internet Bookwatch, May 2018. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A543465062/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=53755fb4. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A543465062
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Plenty: Good Uncomplicated Food
Internet Bookwatch.
(June 2017): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 Midwest Book Review http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Plenty: Good Uncomplicated Food
Diana Henry
Mitchell Beazley
c/o Octopus Publishing
236 Park Avenue, New York NY 10017 www.octopusbooksusa.com
9781784723002, [dollar]29.99, HC, 320pp, www.amazon.com
Kitchen cooks browsing through the pages of Diana Henry's "Plenty: Good Uncomplicated Food" will discover how to cook well, eat deliciously and produce plenty, all while saving money, reducing waste and availing of local resources. "Plenty" is a culinary compendium about creating great, satisfying meals without being extravagant or spending a fortune. By planning ahead, shopping carefully, using value cuts, cooking seasonally and making the most of left- overs, James Beard Award-Winning food writer Diana Henry shows that less can be more and flavor still plentiful. "Plenty: Good Uncomplicated Food" is packed with 300 beautifully illustrated recipes drawn from around the world. Of special note is the section on using less expensive cuts of meat will to create mealtime favorites such as Roast Pork Shoulder with Baked Squash and Braised Lamb Shanks. There are also great ideas for using the best value fish, from Baked Mackerel on Potatoes with Thyme, Onions and Lemon to Fish Pie with Leek Mash. Leftovers are also at the heart of "Plenty: Good Uncomplicated Food" offering an abundance of ideas for transforming roasts and other big family meals, for example taking what's left of a simple Roast Chicken and turning it into a fabulous Greek Chicken, Pumpkin, Feta Pie. A simple pleasure to browse through and inspiring to plan menus with, "Plenty: Good Uncomplicated Food" is strongly recommended for personal, family, and community library cookbook collections.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Plenty: Good Uncomplicated Food." Internet Bookwatch, June 2017. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499493995/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=d3414cc7. Accessed 14 July 2018.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A499493995
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A Change of Appetite
Internet Bookwatch.
(Aug. 2014): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2014 Midwest Book Review http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
A Change of Appetite
Diana Henry
Mitchell Beazley
c/o Octopus Publishing
236 Park Avenue, New York NY 10017 www.octopusbooksusa.com 9781845338923, $34.99, www.amazon.com
A Change of Appetite offers a fine collection of recipes for healthy eating and offers dishes inspired by world cuisines from Russia to Scandinavia, packed with flavor and appeal. While 'healthy' here is profiled, it's less about weight loss than about flavor and freshness. Chapters are packed with recipes organized by season for maximum use of fresh, seasonal ingredients and pair this approach with dishes packed with unusual flavor combinations from Ricotta with Summer Berries and Honey to Shawarma Chicken with Warm Chickpea Puree and Sumac Onions. Expect something delightfully different with this appealing coverage, recommended for any cookbook collection looking for something different.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"A Change of Appetite." Internet Bookwatch, Aug. 2014. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A381408297/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=ba120f43. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A381408297
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Roast Figs Sugar Snow
Internet Bookwatch.
(Sept. 2014): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2014 Midwest Book Review http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Roast Figs Sugar Snow
Diana Henry
Mitchell Beazley
Octopus Publishing
236 Park Avenue, New York NY 10017 9781845339593, $29.99, www.octopusbooksusa.com
Roast Figs Sugar Snow focuses on cold-weather main courses from Europe and North America and provides a range of dishes that use familiar foods in unfamiliar ways. From a Sobronade (similar to a French cassoulet and packed with pork and beans, root vegetables and spices) to a chapter on smoked foods from Haddock and Leek Risotto to Salad of Smoked Duck with Farro, Red Chicory, and Pomegranates and a Russian Georgian Lamb with Damsons and Walnuts, this pairs lovely color photos of foods and country scenes with cultural insights and flavors. The result is a warm cookbook perfect for cold weather.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Roast Figs Sugar Snow." Internet Bookwatch, Sept. 2014. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A382807566/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=70d10b4b. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A382807566
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You've Been Eating Peaches Wrong Your Whole Life (Says Food Writer Diana Henry)
How to Eat a Peach
Laura Edwards
The author of the upcoming cookbook How to Eat a Peach shares the ultimate move for enjoying this taste of summer.
Elisabeth Sherman May 08, 2018
Peaches are uncomplicated fruit: Sweet, soft, and a little tart, they're an invitation to summer, both a fruit and an experience. Diana Henry, author of forthcoming cookbook How to Eat a Peach (which is organized into a series of three-course menus that coincide with the seasons) appreciates the simple power of the peach more than anything, and she’s here to tell you exactly how to eat this classic stone fruit. Hint: It's much more satisfying than simply cutting it into slices.
According to Henry, peaches are best enjoyed in a glass of Moscato. She first started enjoying peaches this way while visiting Italy in her early twenties, and it stuck with her. At dinner one night, Henry watched as the waiter brought a nearby table a bowl of peaches. The diners sliced the fruit themselves and dropped hunks into glasses of the cold white wine on their table, letting the fruit marinate for a few minutes before eating each slice, “now flavored with the wine, and drank the wine, now imbued with the peaches.”
“It was all about the bite, [and] paying to the small things. Paying attention to the wine. Paying attention to the peach,” she tells Food & Wine. You don’t have to make food that is complicated for it to be wonderful.”
In order to assemble this effortless dessert at home, first, you need to know how to buy the right peaches. Henry prefers which peaches, usually picking those that have a “blush” because they look prettier in the glass.
“You might think that the color is an indication of flavor. It’s not really,” she says. “With a peach, you need to smell it and you can press it near where the stem has been attached to the tree. Feel around there—it should be slightly soft there.”
Next, you'll need to find the perfect wine to accompany your peaches, which might prove a little trickier. Your dinner guests might balk at the idea of a sweet wine like Moscato, but Henry insists that you need to serve the peaches with a floral wine. To that end, you could try a “late harvest Reisling, Muscat de Beaumes de Venise.” (Though be warned that the latter is a heavier dessert wine, so you’ll want to serve less of it in the glass.)
If one of your guests rejects the wine altogether, Henry has an answer:
“There will always be people who find the wine too sweet altogether,” she says, “so you give them their peach and their knife and fork and let them get on with it.”
Giada De Laurentiis Thinks This Is the Most Underrated Region in Italy
Plus, more highlights from her interview with The New York Times.
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The one thing you should never serve alongside your white peaches and Moscato? Cream.
“That would be awful,” Henry warns. “Then you’re muddying the waters…Sometimes it's just about putting things together that are unbelievably simple. You pay more attention to them and you get more out of them.”
How To Eat A Peach by Diana Henry
Posted by Nigella on the 3rd April 2018
Image of Diana Henry's Roasted Tomatoes and Fennel Salad
Yes, I know there is a quote from me on the cover - the peachily fuzzy-feel cover - of Diana Henry’s wonderful new book letting you know how enthusiastic I am about it, but I really felt I had to draw it to your attention here, too. For the book really is doubly a joy: a writer’s enquiry into place, memory and identity, and a cook’s offering of food - presented in a series of menus - that uplifts, comforts, delights and inspires.
The roast tomatoes, fennel and chickpeas with preserved lemons and honey is actually from a Summer menu, but I’m finding the fennel so glorious at the moment that I didn’t see why you should have to wait!
From How to Eat a Peach by Diana Henry.
Imagery credit: Laura Edwards.
Published by Mitchell Beazley, £25 (www.octopusbooks.co.uk)
Book cover of How To Each A Peach by Diana Henry
How to Eat a Peach with Diana Henry
Categories: In the Kitchen, At Home, Archive
While she was still in her teens, food writer Diana Henry hosted her first dinner party for her school friends. There were candles (too many), dessert (confoundingly, pineapple water ice), and, most importantly, a genuine enthusiasm for entertaining. Diana thanks her laid-back parents as the catalyst for her passion for “having people over.” Hers is a barefoot-with-a-bourbon approach where an easy-going, warm spirit is as important as the effortless, tasty menu.
Luckily for us, Diana graciously compiled the best menus, decorating suggestions, and stories from her life of hosting in her most recent cookbook, How to Eat a Peach. Full of lavish photography, personal anecdotes, and customizable recipes, this a cookbook you’ll want to read through - and cook from. Even better? Diana will be joinng us later this month at the terrain cafe in Westport for a cocktail party where she'll sign copies of the book and chat with James Beard award winner Elissa Altman. We chatted with the London-based cookbook author for her rules on menu-making, her favorite way to dress up a dinner table, and, of course - a lesson on how to each a peach.
terrain: Thanks for talking with us, Diana! We’re so curious – how do you eat a peach?
Diana: In the book this refers to a dessert I saw being served in a restaurant in Italy on my first trip there. The diners at the next table were brought a bowl of peaches and a bottle of cold Moscato. They halved, stoned, and sliced their peaches and dropped slices into their wine glasses, then they topped this up with wine. They left this for about ten minutes, then they ate the peaches – now flavoured with the wine – and drank the wine (now imbued with the flavour of the peaches). This made a huge impression on me as it showed me that you didn’t always have to make complicated food, and that it is important to taste what you are eating. With two good ingredients that is possible. It was a simple and quite magical end to a meal.
terrain: How do your menus come together? Do you always start at the same point or does each menu happen naturally?
Diana: Sometimes I just think about where I would like to go, like maybe I fancy going to the French coast, so I think up a menu that is rooted in Brittany. Sometimes an ingredient has just come into season – like apricots or asparagus – and I start with that and work around it. You don’t have to think about the main course first (most people do). You can start with whatever course you like. Then you think what dishes work together in terms of flavour and ingredients and the ‘weight’ of the meal (in that you don’t want a meal that is too rich) and that you will be able to produce without getting frazzled. It goes without saying that it should always be seasonal, too. No strawberries in the winter!
terrain: You give a lot of great guidelines for creating a menu - can you share a couple with us?
Diana: It’s important not to repeat ingredients. So, if I was going to serve a pork dish for the main course I wouldn’t serve a pork terrine or rillettes for the appetizer. Sometimes this ‘rule’ can be bent a bit – I don’t mind a fish appetizer and a fish main course, for example. And you don’t want too much to do at the last minute, so some of your dishes have to be made ahead of time. You’re having friends round, not running a restaurant!
terrain: In many of the recipes in your book, you’ll mention when store bought ingredients can suffice in place of homemade. What are some items you always have on hand?
Diana: It’s absolutely fine to buy little biscuits to have with the pudding – making your own shortbread or cookies can just seem a push too far at times and the same with bread. Also, I don’t often make my own charcuterie, so French rillettes and saucisson and that kind of thing are perfectly okay to buy. I don’t like to be rigid about this question, though – cooking is not about stress, it should be about having a good time. The French usually offer store-bought patisserie for dessert - they don’t slave all day making their own glazed tarts!
terrain: What are some small touches you like to do for a dinner party – things that make the night feel the most special (aside from the food, of course!)?
Diana: I love table linen – I have masses of table cloths – and old cutlery, but I try not to go over the top so people don’t feel that the event is formal. I usually only go all out with silver and beautiful glassware during special holidays. But small things do make a difference – a nice water jug, a small vase of flowers (big flower arrangements can be hard to see over). I never do place cards unless there are more than twelve people. It feels like a wedding, otherwise. I suppose I’m a fan of things being beautiful but not grand.
terrain: Do you have one piece of advice for someone who’s intimidated and easily stressed by the idea of having people over for dinner?
Diana: Don’t feel you have to have three courses if you can’t manage it. Just do a main dish and a pudding (and you don’t even have to do a pudding – a dessert wine and some cantucci are fine). Cook things you know how to cook – don’t do a dish for the first time when you have people coming for dinner.
terrain: Apologies if you’ve been asked this countless times already, but it feels particularly appropriate for this book – if you could host a dinner party for anyone, who would you invite, and which menu would you serve?
Diana: I like this question, actually! Though the answer has much more to do with who I want to talk to than what I want to cook. Some of these folks are now dead but this is who I would invite if I could: the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, the Irish writer Flann O’Brien, the American writer Ariel Levy, American actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and American memoirist (and friend) Elissa Altman. All of these people are interested in what makes people tick, and they also love words, so I think it would be a very interesting evening. Because of the two Irish writers I would serve what I have described in the book as ‘a British-Irish lunch’: smoked eel with beet remoulade and Guinness bread, partridge and red cabbage with blackberries, Seville orange tart. It makes a good Sunday lunch, full of ingredients (smoked eel, Guinness bread, blackberries and game) that remind me of home.
After you've stocked up on moscato and table linens for your next summer party, be sure to join us with Diana on June 21st in Westport for a cold cocktail and great conversation.
Photos courtesy of Octopus Publishing Group
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Diana Henry on new book How to Eat a Peach
Back with a new cookbook, the food writer talks Ella Walker through How to Eat a Peach
Menus are usually things you quickly scan before discarding, that you spill red wine on, or fold up to stabilise a wobbly table leg. For food writer Diana Henry though, menus are so much more than that, and not purely the domain of restaurants either.
"At the weekend, I've always got friends calling me asking, 'Di, what can I do for a starter that's really quick?', or they'll have decided on the main course but will say, 'What can I do for a pudding?'
"I'm always telling people what goes with what," she explains. "I love the challenge of standing in the greengrocer's and putting things together."
A resource not just to her friends, the Sunday Telegraph and Waitrose Weekend writer's new cookbook, How To Eat A Peach, combines her love of matching ingredients with planning meals. "I love putting menus together for no reason whatsoever," she says, remembering how she'd jot down food plans as a teenager, filling a 'fantasy' notebook with meals she'd cook in an ideal world.
She began having people round for supper when she was about 16 (her parents had parties, not dinner parties), and the menu planning never ceased: "I do it now still - I think of a menu, and then I think about who would like to eat it."
Cooking is about knowing when to stop
How To Eat A Peach was inspired, both in title and content, by an evening Henry spent in Italy, watching a group of Italians slicing white fleshed peaches and dropping them into glasses of ice cold Moscato, only to drink the liquid and then pick out and eat the soft fruit, sticky and plump with the booze.
"It's such a lovely way to end a meal, but is also a really good approach to cooking," says Henry. "It's about knowing when not to do anything, and when something is just elegant and lovely in itself."
The book, as a result (with a peachy, softly furred jacket), helps you tread the line between "when to not do very much, and when to do very much". Just don't expect it to be about 'entertaining'...
"I hate that word," says Henry with a grimace. The word "hosting" gets similarly short shrift: "I just have people in!"
Food can help you travel and explore - even if you're stuck in one place
The collection is woven through with a sense of place, with each chapter grounded by a moment in time, a memory of a place, a season, as well as a single, or set of, ingredients. "Each menu is its own little world," says Henry, flipping through evocatively titled examples like, 'Drunk on olive oil', 'Take me back to Istanbul', and 'Monsieur Matuchet plays the piano'.
"One of the main reasons I cook is to go back to places; or go to places," she explains. Henry, now London-based with two sons of her own, travels a lot (Russia is a current focus), but didn't as one of four children growing up in Northern Ireland ("The way I travelled was by reading, and by cooking - I so wanted to go elsewhere, desperately").
"It seems crazy, but in the mid-Seventies, you couldn't get peppers and aubergines in Northern Ireland - those were exotic" she says, recalling how she wrangled her greengrocer into ordering them especially so she could make ratatouille. "If you've never cooked aubergine before, that melting texture and that taste which is hard to say what it is at all - that was the way I went places."
Aged 15, she finally went abroad for the first time - to France on an exchange trip, where a boy taught her to make perfectly lacy crepes (she still has the recipe written on blue airmail paper and it's recreated in the book, with added sauteed apple and caramel), before years of Easters spent in Normandy and Brittany followed. The memories are stirred intrinsically into chapter one, 'Cider and gitanes', while the time she went to meet a man about a horse in a bar with her father in Spain ("It had these great leather chairs and smoke in the air") defines 'Darkness and light', where squid ink and rice are paired with romesco sauce.
Food doesn't have to be complicated, but it should involve care
Henry did train at Leiths Cookery School, and formerly worked in TV, but considers herself a home cook ("I don't especially like complicated stuff"), and says she couldn't be a professional chef because she'd grow too bored making the same dishes on repeat. "And I'm slow, and I'm really messy."
Instead, she spends her time constantly thinking about combinations, asking herself: "What is good with that? You think about flavour and texture; you think about what you want in your mouth - lots of cooking is about contrast."
Her recipes often develop as ways to solve problems - for instance, what to eat when it's too hot to cook, or, when you're having people over and one of your dishes requires a lot of effort (like Henry's apricot tart: "It's one of my favourite things"), how to surround it with plates that are simple (like her courgette fritters hot out of the pan, and roast chicken with lemon).
"It's about having a little bit of thought." And no one's food is more thoughtful than Diana Henry's.
How To Eat A Peach by Diana Henry, photography by Laura Edwards, is published in hardback by Mitchell Beazley, priced £25 (octopusbooks.co.uk)
You can see Diana Henry at the Wealden Literary Festival this summer
Cookbook Review: How to Eat a Peach by Diana Henry
by Brian | May 14, 2018 | Cookbook Review, Cookbook Reviews | 0 comments
Any book by Diana Henry is one you want to add to your kitchen library. This prolific British author is famed for her distinctive recipes featuring ideas, ingredients, and techniques from around the world. London is truly a culinary capital with stores offering ingredients from every continent. Diana seems to know every market on every street and maintains multiple pantries, stocked to let her tackle any idea that zips into her creative mind.
And the ideas happily burst onto the pages here for us. Diana began her culinary career at sixteen by creating menus for dinner parties. Today, she says, creating a menu is her favorite part of cooking. First comes the menu for a dinner party and then she decides who to invite, who might enjoy her exceptional meal.
This is certainly a cookbook but it is more: it is a menu cookbook. There are twenty-five menus here, twelve for Spring and Summer and thirteen for Autumn and Winter. I will say I have read the menus and already I can see myself doing a little mix and matching here. I mean, the Autumn and Winter section offers an homage to New York: a Missing New York menu that is pure Manhattan:
Oysters with Mignonette
Hanger Steak with Roast Beets and Horseradish Cream
Manhattan Creams with Citrus Caramel
I don’t want to wait six months for that horseradish cream
The menus span both the season and the globe. A sample of menus includes:
My Spanish Cupboard
Take Me Back to Istanbul
How to Eat a Peach [the Italian solution to hot weather: dip peaches in wine]
I Can Never Resist Pumpkins
Drunk on Olive Oil
Drunk on Olive Oil? Well, those menu items are surely olive oil based:
Crostini with Lardo, Chestnuts and Truffle Honey
Tonno del Chianti [not tuna at all but pork shoulder!]
White Beans with Red Onions, Parsley and Lemon
Chocolate and Olive Oil Cake
It has always been fun to read a Diana Henry book and ponder “how would I use that recipe.” Now, Diana takes us by the hand, bunches the recipes into groups of three or four and announces: “Do it this way.”
There is no better advice.
In true Diana style, the recipes are meticulously presented. Clearly written and designed for the home cook, there is nothing here that you cannot do.
Of course, these are recipes of culinary substance. Expect to spend a half hour or more for the typical dish and do make sure your pantry is well stocked. Diana loves those “little ingredients” you may not ordinarily stock: gelatin leaves, hard cider, truffles, or pomegranate seeds. A quick visit to your local market — for nothing here is that exceptional — and you are Diana-Henry-ready. It’s just where you want to be.
Cookbook of the week: With 'Simple,' Diana Henry proves again that simple is often best
By Amy Scattergood
Sep 08, 2016 | 8:00 AM
Cookbook of the week: With 'Simple,' Diana Henry proves again that simple is often best
"Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavors" by Diana Henry. (Laura Edwards)
With all the cookbooks that come out each year, repeating volumes filled with market-driven dishes prettily photographed in vintage cookwear on hardwood tabletops, it's easy to overlook some of the best examples of the genre. This would be a shame, not least because in the rush for more exotic culinary locales or flashier titles you might miss "Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavors." This is the 10th cookbook from Northern Ireland-born, London-based cookbook author Diana Henry, who won a James Beard Award for her 2015 cookbook "A Bird in the Hand."
Henry, a prolific writer who is also a longtime food columnist for the Sunday Telegraph, has collected more than 150 recipes in her latest book, which she describes as a follow-up to her 12-year-old cookbook "Pure Simple Cooking," calibrated for the wider array of ingredients now available online and with a shift toward cooking that's more grain- and vegetable-focused. Thus there are recipes for everyday sorts of things, divided up by headings as simple as the conceit of the book: eggs and roasts, vegetables and toasts. All this happy simplicity isn't deceptive as it is with some cookbooks engineered by lesser writers. Rather, the forthright recipes and chatty asides are plain in the way that Jane Grigson and Richard Olney were plain, which is to say that these writers share a lovely economy both of language and of the cooking itself.
Recipe for orange-oregano roast chicken with olive gremolata from the book "Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavors" by Diana Henry.
Recipe for orange-oregano roast chicken with olive gremolata from the book "Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavors" by Diana Henry. (Laura Edwards)
Recipe: Orange-oregano roast chicken with olive gremolata » »
But don't think that "Simple" is a simple book in scope, as Henry's recipes include a pantheon of flavors (Middle Eastern, Moroccan, Nordic, Indian), along with techniques and ingredients ('Nduja, salmon roe, harissa) pulled from other cultures. The first recipe in the book is for a donburi, or Japanese rice bowl, that Henry says she stole from Nobu; the last is for a Turkish coffee pudding. In between are pages loaded with Laura Edwards' appealing photography (ceramics, jam-filled spoons), Henry's cheerful commentary (the joys of canned food) and of course, a lot of truly wonderful recipes. We made her orange-oregano roast chicken in the L.A. Times Test Kitchen, and there is no greater recommendation than four people gathered around a hot All-Clad sauté pan, the air perfumed with oranges and herbs, the only sound one of spoons against metal.
Cookbook of the Week: "Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavors" by Diana Henry (Mitchell Beazley, $32.99)
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Cookbook Review: Simple by Diana Henry
12/22/2016 08:43 pm ET
Diana Henry’s newest book will send you dashing off to the grocery store. You can be home in an hour, with some veggies and protein, perhaps a fish or a chicken. Time to break open the spice rack, find those onions, and grab your knife.
Simple to Diana means pretty easy, pretty swift. Simple does not mean, in any sense of the word, that there is any compromise here. These dishes are inventive, intensely flavored, and seductively new.
Chapters here offer ideas ranging from the deceptively simple to the elegantly simple.
There is a toast chapter. Can you make a real meal, not just breakfast, based on toast? Well, how about toast topped with crab and a cilantro-chile mayo. A few slices of those, some salad, a glass of wine and you have dinner.
And the elegantly simple? There is Honeyed Pork Loin with Plum and Lavender Relish. Oh, and dessert can be the Espresso Loaf Cake with Burnt Butter and Coffee Icing.
The recipe titles here are never short. Diana’s kitchen in London is packed with food products. Besides cooking, her favorite activity is to tour the markets of that city, and ethnic food shops abound. She has one entire set of shelves just for Middle Eastern components. The Middle East and Asia pop up on many of the pages here.
There are chapters for:
Eggs
Salads
Toast
Pulses
Pasta and Grains
Fish
Roasts
Chops & Sausages
Chicken
Vegetables
Fruit Desserts
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Other Sweet Things.
Right there you see the British influences. Eggs get an entire spotlight for a British breakfast without eggs is, I have heard, impossible. Most Americans think a pulse is a heartbeat, not a bean. And while Roasts and Chicken are natural meat avenues, an entire chapter for Chops & Sausages lets you discover meat in the way only the British can reveal. It’s a different food journey.
Here are some particular recipes that caught the eyes of my wife Suzi and me [she’s the vegetable person, I’m the one into honey, and we both like pork and lamb]:
Andalusian Chicken with Honey, Saffron and Almonds
Artichokes, Carrots and Preserved Lemons with Ginger and Honey
Coffee Brined Pork Chops with Hot Sweet Potatoes
Lamb Chops with Walnut, Chile and Honey Salsa Verde
Pork Chops with Mustard and Capers
Rhubarb and Raspberry Crumble Cake
Roast Maple and Mustard Spatchcock with Figs
Thyme-Baked Mushrooms and Cranberry Beans with Roast Garlic Crème Fraiche
Ah that last recipe, the mushrooms in roast garlic crème fraiche. Suzi and I are spending Christmas week in our kitchen. Cooking and cooking. Searching for recipes for her cooking school, Cooking by the Book. The mushrooms are destined for Christmas dinner. And New Year’s will be devoted to the Coffee Brined Pork Chops.
You, too, can easily fill a week with Simple. It’s a great getaway book for that ski weekend or some summer beach time. One book to do it all. One exceptional book that will delight and please you night after night. And breakfast, too. Don’t forget those Egg and Toast chapters.
Here’s a final temptation. A picture of Diana’s Parmesan Roast Chicken with Cauliflower and Thyme. Just the dish for a family on a winter night.
For more cookbook reviews and thousands of recipes, please visit Cooking by the Book. You’ll discover how we do Culinary Team Building for corporate teams!
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Cookbook Review: Simple by Diana Henry
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Diana Henry Writes Hundreds of Great Recipes a Year. How Does She Do It?
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Diana Henry at her London home.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times
By Melissa Clark
Sept. 27, 2016
LONDON — If you want to peer into writers’ souls, the saying goes, you peruse their libraries. But for food writers, you’ll also need to snoop around their larders.
Diana Henry studied English at Oxford before deciding to write about food, so sure, she had Yeats, Colum McCann and Anne Enright on the shelves of her North London home.
But far more revealing are the multiple jars of pearly goose fat, the brackish squid ink, the pickled rhubarb and the 15 varieties of homemade jams and jellies (medlar, passion fruit, quince) that overflow her pantry, taking up every possible inch before creeping down to the floor and annexing a swath of the laundry room.
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Ms. Henry invents and tests hundreds of recipes a year.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times
“I think a larder is all about possibilities,” she said on a recent afternoon. “It gives me freedom when I’m writing recipes to know that if I’m putting together sweet potatoes with preserved lemon, if I suddenly decide I need to add walnuts for texture, I’ll be able to follow it through. And I’m constantly writing recipes.”
To say Ms. Henry is highly prolific is to understate the case. She has a weekly recipe column for The Sunday Telegraph, she contributes regularly to other publications and she hosts BBC radio programs as often as she can manage it. Then there are her cookbooks, of which she’s written 10, including her latest, “Simple,” which has just been published in the United States by Mitchell Beazley.
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But despite winning a slew of prestigious food writing awards and having a growing number of devoted fans, she is not a household name in Britain or the United States in the same way as, say, the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver or the cookbook author and chef Yotam Ottolenghi. Part of this may be because widespread recognition comes more slowly without the platform of television, or several critically acclaimed restaurants.
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Ms. Henry shopping at her favorite greengrocer in Highgate, North London.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times
Instead, her copious energy goes into her writing, and into researching, inventing and testing dozens of new recipes every single month — hundreds per year — all by herself in her spacious, light-filled kitchen.
What distinguishes her work isn’t just the quantity of recipes she produces, but their quality and originality, particularly in the creativity of her flavor combinations. Seasoned with Kashmiri chiles, saffron, grape must and tamarind; garnished with pomegranate seeds, fresh mint, dill and parsley; and drizzled with prodigious amounts of sour yogurt, her dishes are intelligently conceived without being pretentious.
“Diana doesn’t start from zero when she writes something,” Mr. Ottolenghi said. “She references others, she does research. And she thinks about food not just in terms of flavors but in terms of context.”
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Our reporters and editors review new releases from Alton Brown, Diana Henry and more.
Sept. 27, 2016
She also seems to know what her audience wants to eat a step ahead of everyone else. Her first book, “Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons,” was published in 2002, half a decade ahead of Mr. Ottolenghi’s self-titled cookbook, in which he explored and popularized very similar Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flavors and techniques.
“She’s very much a London cook,” said Nigella Lawson, the food writer and TV personality. “It’s such a cosmopolitan city, and the range of ingredients is so invigoratingly varied, that it informs her cooking.”
Then there is the writing itself, luminous and evocative. In “Roast Figs, Sugar Snow,” her 2011 book celebrating the wintry cooking of northern climates (including Scandinavia, Russia, the northern part of the United States and Canada), she writes of plums and figs: “I’m drawn to their rich, purplish blotches of color: Study them through half-closed eyes and it looks as if they’ve been drawn in smudgy pastels.”
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The latest of Ms. Henry’s 10 cookbooks is “Simple,” just published in the United States.CreditAlessandra Montalto/The New York Times
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It’s the kind of prose that makes you want to run immediately into the kitchen to have your way with some figs. And when you get there, you discover that none of her recipes are fussy, and all of them work. To be accessible, reliable and still thrilling is a very rare achievement indeed.
“She can write a recipe for cucumbers with radishes, cherries and rose petals,” Ms. Lawson said. “With another writer you wouldn’t trust it, but with Diana you want to give it a go because it feels both safe and inspiring.”
Ms. Henry was born in Northern Ireland, one of four children in a home where her mother was a good if predictable cook.
“My parents weren’t foodies, but we had properly cooked food every day,” she said. “There was pheasant someone gave us, or wild salmon, or runny homemade jam from a neighbor, but it wasn’t fancy.”
Her culinary epiphany came at age 15, when she went to a small town in France as an exchange student. There, she learned how to dress salads with extra-virgin olive oil, fresh herbs and Dijon mustard. Even familiar meats like pork chops and steaks were better in France. She kept cooking when she returned home, making quiches and tarts to the delight of her family.
After graduating from Oxford, she got a postgraduate journalism degree, then began a career as a television producer at the BBC. That came to an abrupt halt in 1998 when she had her first son, Ted. The exhilaration she once felt working 12-hour days, six days a week, in an office turned to agony.
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To create her recipes, Ms. Henry does research. “And she thinks about food not just in terms of flavors but in terms of context,” the chef Yotam Ottolenghi said.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times
“I couldn’t bear to leave him, so I knew I’d have to find something I could do at home,” she said.
She began again by ghostwriting a cookbook. Then, the idea for “Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons” came to her, inspired by cooking out of Claudia Roden’s books, and tinged with memories of the exotic-seeming ingredients — figs, pomegranates, rose water — she read about in “The Arabian Nights” as a child.
When she sold the cookbook in 1999, she didn’t have a mobile phone, so she called her mother from a call box on the street outside a cafe where she had just met with her new publisher, breathless with glee.
More books and another son, Gillies, now 11, followed. A few years later, so did a divorce, which brought financial difficulties — as well as a freedom she had not expected, but relished.
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Having written 10 cookbooks herself, Ms. Henry has a collection of many, many more.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times
“Because I’m divorced, I do have to look after myself,” she said. “No man ever will, so I just get on with it. That, in itself, is liberating.”
And she was able to give free rein to her workaholic tendencies — she could work until 2 or 3 in the morning, those quiet, stolen hours, without anyone complaining.
“Sometimes I don’t know when to stop,” she said. “But I love it, I suck life up. I wish I had 48 hours instead of 24 in every day because there’s still so much to learn.”
She travels frequently to research cuisines, a now-essential part of her creative process. On a trip to Iceland, for a forthcoming book called “North,” a more in-depth study of some of themes from “Roast Figs, Sugar Snow,” she sampled rye rolls that were served with a green butter made from spruce needle oil. She thought it was just like eating trees:the rye so woodsy and so earthy, the butter so green and sweet.
“I thought, how can I eat trees at home?” she said. Without spruce oil, she couldn’t simply replicate the dish.
Her brain whirled, finally landing on roasted beets, another Icelandic staple that, like rye, is earthy and sweet. The rolls became a crisp bread-crumb topping. Then she added goat cheese for creaminess, and dill for something green and fresh. The recipe landed in the vegetable chapter of “Simple” as roast beets with goat cheese, rye and dill.
It was completely different from the dish that inspired it, but the endpoint was a satisfying recipe that could be made in any of her readers’ kitchens.
“There are some people who chase an idea rather than a dish, and I don’t think that usually works,” she said. “Deliciousness is just too important.”
Recipes: Sweet Potatoes With Yogurt and Cilantro Sauce | Breton Tuna and White Bean Gratin | Lamb Chops With Dates, Feta, Sumac and Tahini
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Simple — Diana Henry
Diana Henry should be far more popular. I get the sense that outside of the UK, she is not as known or appreciated as she could be. This is not to say she languishes in complete obscurity outside the UK. Indeed, a glowing New York Times piece covered her output, something which is prodigious in both quantity and quality. Those that do speak of Diana Henry do so in reverent and knowing tones.
If I had to describe Diana Henry—and, I admit, writing a review does leave one with such a duty—I would liken her to another leading light of the food world: Nigella Lawson. I think both authors share a general approach and have similar writing styles. Indeed, the sticker on the cover of my copy of Simple certainly invites you to draw this parallel and make a such comparison.
I hesitate to say this because of my immense fondness and respect for Nigella, but Diana writes better recipes. And I think also has a more confident and modern palette and approach to food. I own all of Nigella’s books (perhaps when I get over my last every book from author x roundup I will do another one) and yet rarely cook from them. I only own a few of Diana’s recent books yet have cooked a fair amount from them all—and have loved everything I have made.
I have wanted to review Diana’s latest book, Simple, for some time. I became convinced I had to review the book after reading this unfair train wreck of a review. After all, when someone is wrong on the internet, something must be done. Of course, Diana does not need me to rally to her defence! Nonetheless, here we are.
Simple is Diana’s 9th book and is, I think, the strongest. The focus of the book is, as the title suggests, a collection of recipes that strive for maximum flavour at minimum fuss.
This is one of the key trends in contemporary food writing. Everyone, apparently, is super busy. And no one wants to open a cookbook that is filled with labour intensive recipes (or, even worse, sub-recipes!) The result is a proliferation of books aimed at cutting down the time one spends in the kitchen.
There are two ways this trend manifests itself: One, the sacrifice approach, results in nonsense books like 15- or 30- minute meals from the once joyful Jamie Oliver. Two, the smart approach, where books try to find smart ways of creating food with minimal labour and angst. Simple, happily, takes the latter approach.
Structure and Design
Hardcover. A glorious ribbon. Given the reported size of Diana’s cookbook collection it is no surprise to see such a thoughtful inclusion.
336 pages split across the following chapters:
Eggs
Salads
Toast
Pulses
Pasta & Grains
Fish
Roasts
Chops & Sausages
Chicken
Vegetables
Fruit Puddings
Other Sweet Things
The design of the book is simple and elegant. Generous use of white space, elegant typography and restrained photography all combine to suggest a polished, calming book.
It’s something that immediately invites confidence. Nothing in this book tries too hard—instead it is quietly confident. It is Obama, not a certain orange buffoon.
A few days ago on twitter I rallied against a trend in food photography: where a few ingredients of the dish are ‘artfully’ (read: artlessly) scattered around the workstation/bench/table to frame the finished product. So, a roast lamb on a platter might be surrounded by a few rosemary needles and garlic skins. Or an otherwise pristine photograph of a cake on a tray might be ‘enhanced’ by an oh-so-casual scattering of sugar and flour on the table.
A few photos in this book come close to this crime. However, in another demonstration of Diana’s taste, things are arranged to look more documentary than clumsily staged.
The majority of photos in this book are strong. There’s a real consistency between photographs that speaks to a single, compelling vision. The lighting and styling is consistent, but not to the point of monomania. The photos are delightful.
I do think the type sizing is slightly smaller than would be ideal—cookbook designers, I suspect, forget that cookbooks are often used at much greater distance than regular books: so while size 9 type might be perfect in a novel held close to the head, size 9 type in a cookbook is far from ideal. I tend to end up squinting a lot while trying to cook from books like these.
There is a risk that to some the design of this book might feel a little staid. Take the cover of my edition as an example: pork chops in a cream sauce on a wooden table, is a study in various browns and beiges. It is a bold choice if not a bold design. Yet writing off this book as boring or old fashioned would be a great mistake, as it is anything but!
Thoughts
Diana loves food. You cannot avoid that impression. I also think she has a genius approach towards the concept of simple food. Under her expert guidance, simple food is not joyless, lacking food. It is not food that has been dumbed down to the point of becoming bad airline food.
Instead, as the subtitle on the cover proclaims, the book celebrates “effortless food [and] big flavours.” At times, after eating things from this book, I was in a state of disbelief: it had not felt like I had made any obvious sacrifices or compromises, and yet I had only been cooking for a short while minutes and had produced something tremendously exciting.
Diana’s talent (or rather, one of her talents) is an ability to pick apart the core of a recipe and discard anything unnecessary. The results are full in flavour, but without the heartache you might have otherwise suffered.
Simple’s strength is that it is not trying to be a soulless “30 minute recipes” clone. The recipes do occasionally ask for chunks of your time. But rarely is this all active time: it might ask you to roast something in the oven for 45 minutes after say five quick minutes of choppin’ and slicin’. I think this is a perfect trade off.
In fact, some of the happiest hours in my week are when I have something simmering away on the stove, and I have a few minutes to read something or otherwise entertain myself. It feels like joyfully stolen time.
At the risk of pouring further fuel on the hot trash fire of a review linked above, I take exception to any argument that this book is especially British or especially fussy. Diana’s palette is admirably global. The book features recipes inspired by Japanese, Korean, Indian and Mexican cuisines. Yet, I do not feel this has resulted in inaccessible or overly broad ingredient lists.
Similarly, the food is not fussy. Anyone who writes a cookbook review website, and cooks from new recipes more nights than not, is perhaps not best qualified to make the following argument, but here I go: dumbing down food is a bad idea. Dumbing down concepts stops people from ever learning or expanding their horizons. It leads to incurious people with incurious palettes. This leads to people further considering skills in cooking to be unnecessary luxuries, which is by and large the problem we find ourselves in now. This leads to joyless “5 ingredient” cookbooks.
I think Diana’s recipes do not require anyone to be a graduate of culinary school. They do require someone who is willing to try, and to open themselves to potentially doing things in a new way. Call me a fool, but isn’t that just what we ask from our cookbooks? Or that someone more experienced than we are teaches us things?
So, no, the food is not particularly British or boring: I suspect that reviewer was using British as a code for boring. And nor are the recipes fussy. The book lives up to its claim of providing recipes for “effortless food.”
Of course, no cookbook can please everyone. I have found one or two of the recipes in Simple to not appeal to my particular tastes. Diana, it must be noted, does seem quite fond of a creamy dressing. I am a real acid-fiend, so these can feel a little tame and muted to me. However this is easily fixed, and in a way that does not suggest the underlying recipe was fundamentally incorrect.
Here is what we have made so far:
Parsi-style scrambled eggs (it is hard to go back to regular scrambled eggs after eating these, so utterly alive and vibrant)
Griddled courgettes, burrata and fregola (We cooked this quite early on, so I was a little weary, but the end result was texturally diverse and with enough interest to be far more memorable than expected)
Tomatoes, Soft Herbs & Feta with Pomegranate (A perfect dish for warmer weather: it would also make a smashing bruschetta topping.)
Root, shiitake, and noodle salad with miso dressing (an exceptional dressing and a fair salad. The dressing could become a real favourite.)
Cool Greens, Hot Asian Dressing (I am a firm believer in the life affirming powers of a gutsy nuoc cham—and Diana’s version went very well with crisp greens. The avocado was an unexpected but pleasing touch.)
Warm salad of squid, bacon, beans & tarragon (This was let down by the dressing: a muted mixture of cream, oil, tarragon and lemon.)
Mumbai Toastie (I could comfortably eat on this for the rest of my days. The ultimate toasted sandwich. I wonder if I can convince the owner of Melbourne’s best new cafe/bakery to add this to their menu?)
Simple Goan Fish Curry (I was terrified of this for some strange reason, but it turned out to be a highlight. Complex, spicy, aromatic. Very good.)
Pork chops with mustard and capers (I followed Diana’s instructions and bought the best pork I could find, so I don’t know if the recipe was exceptional or the pork was exceptional and the recipe did not get in the way of that. At any rate, I often lay awake at night and think about this.)
Spaghetti with spiced sausage & fennel sauce (There are many sausage pasta recipes out there. Some are good. Some are not. This is my new benchmark. The fennel added a sweetness that made this dish so memorable.)
Korean chicken, gochujang mayo, sweet sour cucumber (Grilled chicken thighs, spicy mayo, refreshing pickled cucumber relish. You could not ask for a more compelling package.)
Chicken with Haricots & Creamy Basil Dressing (Chicken breasts have it tough. And are often tough. However cooked carefully, lovingly, they can be quite special indeed.)
Broccoli with Harissa & Coriander Gremolata (I can always use another trick to dress up old mate broccoli and this was a good trick. Our Harissa was a little mild, so I would have liked this to have a little bit more of a kick.)
Tomatoes, Potatoes & Vermouth with Basil Creme Fraiche (I think the basil creme fraiche does not add a lot to this dish and could safely be omitted. Omitting to make this dish at all would be a shame and deny you an excellent, easy meal.)
Baby potatoes with watercress and garlic cream (Not sold on the dressing in this, I confess.)
Fragrant Sichuan aubergines (A really accessible and really bloody good version of one of the greatest Sichuan dishes: fish fragrant eggplant. I am near to drooling just thinking about how good this was. Fussy English food, indeed not!)
Why this book?
You want to make good food without diving into complex recipes
You have a global palette and get tired of eating the same sort of flavours over and over again
You want to make the best pork chop recipe you will ever come across
Score
Nigella ░█░░░ Donna Hay Attractive, evocative writing versus simple and direct?
Ottolenghi ░░░█░ Barefoot Contessa Elaborate or involved recipes versus quick and easy?
Mark Bittman █░░░░ Ferran Adrià Can you cook the food every night or is it more specialist or obscure?
Gwyneth Paltrow ░░░░█ Diana Henry Do you see photos of the author or photos of the food?
#KonMarie █░░░░ “Skinny Latte” And does it just spark joy?
Diana Henry’s work needs to receive greater attention. She has an amazing palette and produces books of quiet confidence. She understand what it is to be a modern home cook, and writes books for that market better than anyone else I know.
Also published on Medium.
Posted on 2 October, 2017Author BenjaminCategories ReviewsTags author: diana henry, country: uk, cuisine: modern everyday, diet: carnivorous, published: 2017, publisher: mitchell beazley, verdict: approved
Cookbook Review: A Bird in the Hand by Diana Henry
by Brian | Mar 30, 2016 | Cookbook Review, Cookbook Reviews | 0 comments
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On the back of this book is a single quote: “Everything Diana Henry cooks I want to eat.” That’s from Yotam Ottolenghi, a man exceptionally recognized for his cooking, his recipes, and his writing.
Diana Henry is equally talented and surely as deserving of fame, better known perhaps in Great Britain than here. But her time has definitely come. With something like a dozen cookbooks in her portfolio, Diana has simply perfected the writing of cookbooks. They are ideal: in terms of recipes, writing, ease of use, style, photography, and creativity.
When I began to leaf through this book, I immediately understood Yotam’s statement. I, too, want to make everything in this book. If you were headed to that desert island, or a year in Antarctica, and could only take one savory cookbook, then this just might be the book.
It’s a chicken book. Okay, I know, “tastes like chicken” can be a phrase of praise or a damnation. This book is one you will praise.
To be very clear, Diana has two strategies for dealing with chicken boredom. She can surround it with flavor or she can infuse it. There are both styles of recipes here, using her expertise of cuisines from around the world. Here are some sample recipe ideas:
Chicken Legs in Pinot Noir with Sour Cherries and Parsnip Puree
Bourbon and Marmalade-Glazed Drumstick
Chicken with Marsala, Olives, and Blood Oranges
Buttermilk Chicken with Chipotle Slaw
Chicken, Bacon, and Potato Salad with Buttermilk and Her Dressing
Lemon and Pistachio Chicken
Roast Chicken, Garlic and Potatoes in the Pan with Watercress, Cashel Blue and Walnut Butter
Indian-Spiced Chicken with Cilantro Chutney
Chicken, Leek, and Hard Cider Pie with Sharp Cheddar and Hazelnut Crisp]
Hot and Sweet Lime Chicken Wings
That first recipe is an example of the “surrounding” strategy. The chicken itself is happily flavored by the wine but the cherries and parsnip puree make for a complex plate of flavor, color, and texture. The last recipe, the Hot and Sweet Lime Chicken Wings, has you let the chicken marinate for hours, so the flavors penetrate. The cooked wings are an amalgam of meat penetrated with the zing of red and green chiles, garlic, ginger, and lime marmalade.
The book’s chapters take you on a very diverse culinary journey. What day of the week is it? Do you have a lot of time to cook or are you rushed? Diana has a solution for you:
Suppers offers dishes readily prepared for every night of your busy week
Spice Route suggests ways to make chicken taste, well, extra flavorful [it’s curry and lemongrass territory!]
Main Attraction suggests pathways for Sunday dinners or posh parties
Chooks, Shoots and Leaves provides new avenues for the venerable chicken salad [that Chicken, Bacon and Potato salad]
Summer and Smoke introduces new concepts for barbequing and grilling [that Indian-Spiced Chicken]
Pure Comfort puts happiness right on your table [those Hot and Sweet Lime Wings]
Remains of the Day lets you employ leftovers for another round of great meals [that Chicken, Leek and Hard Cider Pie
There are several reasons to immediately grab any book by Diana Henry. First, the recipes are delicious. I can personally attest to that. Second, you can make them successfully, for they are written for mere mortals. You don’t need a CIA education to achieve excellence. Excellence is literally baked into each recipe.
My third, and last reason, for recommending Diana’s books is the creativity evident on each page. Recipes ideas are here from around the world, offering you to try both new techniques and new ingredients. With the beautiful photos in this book, you receive irresistible invitations to bring some chicken home.
It would be easy to use A Bird in the Hand once a week. It would be hard not to.
Cookbook review: Diana Henry’s ‘A Bird in the Hand’
This book full of intriguing recipes is worth more than two in the bush.
By Mary PolsStaff Writer
“A Bird in the Hand: Chicken Recipes for Every Day and Every Mood.” By Diana Henry. Mitchell Beazley Publishing. $29.99
On average I make two roast chickens a month and usually two other dishes involving pieces and parts of the bird. My go-to dishes reign supreme: Marcella Hazan’s simple roast chicken, the one stuffed with a lemon; a tarragon, shallot, tomatoes and vinegar dish from Patricia Wells; and a little something I call Breaded Chicken alla Mother Too Tired for a Dispute on Dinner Content.
Courtesy photos
Courtesy photo
Courtesy photo
ROOPA’S LEMONGRASS AND TURMERIC CHICKEN WITH POTATO SALAD AND DATE-AND-TAMARIND CHUTNEY
Or rather a slightly bastardized version of the recipe in the book. I substituted ground turmeric for the fresh called for. My chicken was nearly twice the size called for in the recipe – not a problem. Also, I forgot to add the stock, but the chicken turned out fine, though perhaps with a little less sauce and a more challenging cleanup. Henry advises her readers to let this and every chicken you roast rest before slicing. She gives the advice because she wants you to make a better bird. Listen.
Serves 6
THE BIRD:
1/2-inch piece fresh turmeric (or 1 tablespoon ground)
2 lemongrass stalks
3 red chilies, chopped
3 ounces ginger root, peeled and chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup rice vinegar
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1-1/2 teaspoon cracked black peppercorns
1 whole (3.5 pound) chicken
2 limes, halved
1 small bunch of Thai basil or mint
1/2 cup chicken stock (optional)
The day before you want to serve the chicken, peel the turmeric, if using fresh, and chop coarsely. (Wear gloves, the yellow stains.) Remove and discard the outer layers of the lemon grass and the top and base, then chop the remainder. Combine the lemon grass with the turmeric, chilies, ginger and salt. Blend in food processor with vinegar and oil, then add the pepper.
Make slashes with a sharp knife on the chicken’s breasts and legs. Rub the paste over the whole chicken, pushing it into slashes and the bird’s cavity. Cover with plastic wrap and marinate overnight in the refrigerator.
On day two, bring the chicken to room temperature and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Stuff the cavity with three lime halves and the basil or mint. Squeeze the remaining lime half over the bird. Roast for 1-1/4 hours or, if the chicken is larger, add 15 minutes per pound. Add stock, if using, to pan halfway through cooking. Let the bird sit for 15 minutes before cutting.
THE CHUTNEY:
If like me, you can’t find tamarind paste, substitute 3/4 cup water, topped off with 1 fresh squeezed lemon, 3 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce and enough rice vinegar to round out the measurement.
1-1/4 cups tamarind paste
1 cup chopped pitted dates
1 cup jaggery or dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1-1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted and ground
Put the tamarind paste, dates, sugar and 2 cups of water into a pan and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the dates are soft and mixture is reduced to about half, about 30 minutes.
Let cool. Stir in the spices, blend in a food processor until smooth. Add water if the chutney is too thick.
THE POTATO SALAD:
1 pound, 2 ounces small red or white potatoes
Juice of 1 lime
1 small red onion, minced
1/2 teaspoon cracked black peppercorns
1 green chile, seeded and minced
1 red chile, seeded and minced
2-1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted and ground
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
Leaves from 6 sprigs of mint, torn
Cut the potatoes in half and boil until tender (if you’re using new potatoes this won’t take more than 15 minutes). Add the lime juice, onion, pepper, chilies and cumin. Stir, let cool and then toss with 1/4 cup of the chutney. Serve warm.
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In short, I didn’t think I needed British food writer and columnist Diana Henry’s “A Bird in the Hand: Chicken Recipes for Every Day and Every Mood.” But the book was pretty, with a layout that manages to be both sumptuous and simple, so I took it home and resolved to experiment with it. Break the habits. Go beyond my basics.
As soon as I hit the section titled “Chicken loves booze,” I got lost in Henry’s authorial voice – friendly but firm, charming but not gooey. Bridget Jones with self-respect.
You know the scenario. You’re home late. You’re tired and worn out. You could murder a bag of potato chips and a gin and tonic (and consider pouring yourself a glass, even though the tonic has gone flat). This is the kind of night when you need a treat. Self control has no place here. The key thing, though, is to give yourself a treat worth having, a slightly luxurious meal, but one you can make quickly.
I reached for the closest thing I could find, a stack of my son’s baseball cards, and started bookmarking the dishes I wanted to try. Henry made me want to run out and buy 12-packs of chicken thighs to start experimenting. The last time that happened was never.
After my son complained that I was depleting his collection of cards, I settled on my test recipe, an Indian spin on a roast chicken that Henry describes as one of her favorite dishes in the book. She got it from her friend Roopa Gulati, whose mother used to make it.
Its official name is “Roopa’s lemongrass and turmeric chicken with potato salad and date and tarmarind chutney.” I’m on my third day of eating leftovers and I am completely excited to turn the rest of it into a soup for the freezer. It was also the perfect dish to slip past my son, who declines all my entreaties to go out for Indian food. He savaged a drumstick, ignoring the potatoes, and then a pile of perfectly tender, flavorful breast meat. He almost tried the chutney, thinking it was barbecue sauce but then pulled back. Next time I’ll lie.
A proviso: This recipe contains ingredients I consider an utter pain to even attempt to acquire. And I used to be that dork you spot in the supermarket with three lists spilling out of her bag and a cookbook propped open in the front of the cart, quizzing the store manager about why there is no this or that available and then going to two obscure ethnic markets to find some necessary gnarled root. Now I just roll with it and look up substitutions that seem reasonable.
Case in point, this dish called for fresh turmeric. Are you thinking, “That’s a thing?” I was. Good luck finding it at Hannaford. (Maybe British supermarkets are better supplied for Indian cooking.) I used ground turmeric. Henry offered ginger as a substitute for galangal and I happily took it. Ditto for the mint instead of Thai basil.
As for tamarind paste; is there tamarind paste in Maine? Probably somewhere. But not anywhere I could find. I made my own concoction (see recipe).
Henry’s book is exactly what I want as summer fades away. After the success I had with this first recipe, I believe her “Bird in Hand” is going to amount to many, many more birds in my oven and on my stovetop.
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A bird in the hand by Diana Henry - book review: An utter delight for chicken lovers
Chicken is almost infinite in its variety - although mercifully there isn’t a preparation for chicken sashimi
Lisa Markwell
@lisamarkwell
Saturday 7 March 2015 13:00
0 comments
Chicken: ‘The meat most people will eat’
Chicken: ‘The meat most people will eat’ ( Lauren Edwards )
Diana Henry is a prolific food writer – and her last book came out only very recently. A Change of Appetite informed of a delicious way to eat a little more lightly, more healthily. I loved it for its non-preachy style and have cooked from it often. But suddenly along comes another, and it couldn’t be more indulgent.
For a poultryvore, that is, because it’s all about one subject: chicken. If, like me, you could eat wings, wafer thin slices, drumsticks, or just good old roasts every day, this is an utter delight. It is, as Henry shrewdly points out in her introduction, “the meat most people – even those who aren’t keen on meat – will eat”. Chicken is almost infinite in its variety (although mercifully there isn’t a preparation for chicken sashimi, which I’ve heard one or two people mention recently, in this book).
Henry sets out her instructions – before we get on to the 120 recipes within – with advice about choosing a good bird, worth spending money on, one which will reward you with tender flesh, useful scraps, and bones for making stock. One would hope by now that the era of cheap, fish-whiffy chicken is over, and certainly anyone who buys this book is probably already very interested in the provenance of their bird. There’s a terrific section on what to do with leftovers, incidentally.
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Her tone is a welcoming mix of efficient and chummy (of fried chicken wings Henry warns of the health hazards of deep-frying, before adding in the next breath, “I bloody love it”). You’ll be taken from wham-bam quick snacks and suppers, like those Korean wings and Bourbon and marmalade glazed drumsticks, through unexpected, exotic preparations, including Brazilian chicken and prawn xinxim and “Roopa’s lemon grass and turmeric chicken with potato salad and date and tamarind chutney” to classic roasts.
I had planned to cook my way through the book in order to put the subtitle “chicken recipes for every day and every mood” to the test, but I ran out of time. Not before I got waylaid by the side sections, such as “chicken loves booze”, which has become a rapid favourite and a method – at last – for sensible use of those bottles gathering dust in the kitchen (Marsala, Calvados, vermouth).
Not every recipe has an accompanying photograph, but those that do make you want to snatch up your purse and run to the butchers for a Bresse chicken. It should be pointed out, though, that less lovely cuts like boneless thighs get plenty of love too – although a royal chicken korma was a bit time consuming and the resulting dish was a tad “quiet” compared to my local, very good, takeaway.
If you and your family and friends love nothing more than fighting over crisp chicken skin or picking away at a juicy carcass, there’s so much to enjoy. And when I say I have put it on my bookcase next to Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken and Other Stories, there is no higher praise.
Simple by Diana Henry
Posted by Nigella on the 8th September 2016
Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavours by Diana Henry – Cookbook Review
Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavours is Diana Henry’s tenth book and in it she revisits many of the themes that were first set out in an earlier book – Cook Simple, which she wrote as a harried new mother with little spare time to cook the elaborate meals she had favoured before her baby son was born. Despite the demands of motherhood, Diana wanted food that was still delicious to eat but easier to prepare. Her son Ted is now 18 but the no-nonsense approach that she developed when he was an infant is something that has underpinned her recipes ever since.
Born and raised in Northern Ireland, Diana Henry grew up in a family where home-cooked meals were standard. An exchange trip to France in her teens introduced her up to new flavours and her love affair with food began in earnest. On leaving school, she studied English Literature at Oxford before moving to London to pursue post-graduate studies in Journalism. In London, with its melting pot of cultures, she further extended her culinary horizons trying out Greek, Turkish and Middle Eastern food for the first time.
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diana-henry
Diana is a busy woman. In addition to her weekly food column in The Sunday Telegraph, she regularly contributes to other publications and when she can, she hosts radio programs. However, her cookbooks are central to the work that she does. Although her previous books have covered topics as diverse as gastropub food and winter-inspired recipes from North America and Northern Europe, they all have one thing in common; they are written with passion. Moreover, she has a real understanding of the requirements of home cooks and this comes through in all her writing. It is easy to see why her books have won numerous awards. Her last book ‘A Bird in the Hand’, a collection of creative chicken recipes, won the prestigious James Beard award in 2016.
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The title of Diana’s latest book explains exactly what it is all about; flavoursome, fuss-free recipes. In many ways, food is a barometer of society’s changing tastes and fashions and the recipes in Simple reflect this. Many of them incorporate ingredients that seemed exotic a few years ago but are becoming increasingly commonplace in our kitchens. These ingredients are used in the recipes in a way that makes sense and without being contrived or pretentious.
Simple contains more than 150 recipes with chapters covering Salads and Toast as well as Pulses, Pasta & Grains. However meat-lovers need not worry because there are also chapters on Fish, Chops & Sausages, Roasts and Chicken. The book finishes with a brace of chapters entitled Fruit Puddings and Other Sweet Things. The opening chapter on Eggs includes some interesting new recipe ideas using this most humble of ingredients. I was particularly drawn to the Persian-Inspired Eggs with Chillies – a dish full of Eastern promise – which involved pan-frying the eggs with spinach, Medjool dates and spices. An equally intriguing dish of Eggs with Peppers and ‘Nduja (a spicy pork paste from Calabria) also managed to get my gastric juices flowing.
Diana Henry Simple
I couldn’t wait to get stuck in and try out some of the recipes. In truth, I can see myself trying most of them out at some point but for the purposes of this review decided to pick a representative cross-section beginning with the Carrot Houmous, Roast Tomatoes & Harissa Yogurt – an interesting alternative to a classic houmous.
The houmous was incredibly easy to make and used ingredients that I already had in my pantry. Carrots were peeled and chopped before being simmered in a pan of water until tender. They were then blended in a food processor together with canned chickpeas, tahini, olive oil and lemon juice. Gently spiced with cumin, the houmous was absolutely delicious and I thought the suggested accompaniments of roasted tomatoes and harissa yogurt were just perfect with it.
Diana Henry Simple
The beautiful images in the book by photographer Laura Edwards further tempt the taste buds. I was irresistibly drawn to the look of the Pork Chops with Mustard & Capers so decided to try it out for myself. Most people think of capers as a garnish – something strewn like confetti on top of smoked salmon or as part of an antipasti platter but here they were an integral part of the dish imparting saline pops of flavour to the rich and creamy sauce that accompanied the pork chops. I’m struggling to find words to describe this dish because it was just heavenly; deeply savoury, quick-to-make and… oh… SO tasty! I have made it on numerous occasions since getting my hands on Simple. A recipe for Coffee-Brined Pork Chops with Hot Sweet Potatoes also sounds fascinating so I plan to make it soon.
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Next, I made the Smoked Sausage with Spilt Pea Purée & Caraway Butter. It’s probably something to do with my memories of the caraway cake that my grandmother used to make, but I have always been a huge fan of anything flavoured with this fragrant, slightly bitter spice. Again, I had most of the ingredients to hand but had to buy the smoked Morteau sausage. This was poached whilst the yellow split peas simmered on the hob and everything was brought together with a sauce simply made from toasted caraway seeds and butter. This dish was, without a doubt, one of the most delicious things that I have eaten this year and I can see it becoming a new family favourite.
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To finish my recipe road-test, I made the Roast Apricot & Orange Blossom Fool. Here halved apricots were roasted in a dish with a splash of wine and seeds scraped from a vanilla pod before being puréed and folded through some double cream and Greek yoghurt. Served in bowls and topped with roasted apricot halves this was a wonderfully elegant dessert. What I like so much about this recipe is the fact that it can be easily adapted to include other fruits that are in season.
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Without exaggeration, I truly believe that Simple is a seminal cookery book. The recipes in it are contemporary but the ideas behind them are timeless. It is a book that sits comfortably with the realities of modern living and contains recipes that are straightforward but never compromise on taste. This is a book that truly stands out from the tens of thousands of cookery books that are published every year and I believe every kitchen should have a copy. Put it on your Christmas lists!
Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavours by Diana Henry is published by Orion and is available to buy here.
REVIEW BY NIAMH MANNION
niamh mannion bio pic
Niamh believes Ireland produces some of the best food in the world, and travels around the country; seeking out the best food producers, and places to eat.
An accomplished cook and baker, Niamh is also a previous MasterChef Ireland finalist. During the competition she had the opportunity to cook in some of Ireland’s top restaurants and experience life on the other side of the kitchen pass.
Working with TheTaste allows Niamh to write about her experiences and to share her passion for food and cooking with a wide audience.
Visit Niamh’s blog The Game Bird Food Chronicles.
Tags: Best Cookbook
lenty
by Diana Henry
Description
In these uncertain economic times, we're all cutting back, nesting, and making do with less. Now Diana Henry, award- winning author who shared the joy of winter comfort food in Roast Figs, Sugar Snow and the road to effortless every day meals in Pure Simple Cooking, shows us how to spend less, waste less, eat plenty and even better than before. With her deft hand at creating truly flavorful, accessible recipes, she assures us that adapting to the times doesn't mean compromising flavor, quality, or quantity. It comes down to matter of planning, shopping well, and making the most out of leftovers. PLENTY presents 300 truly satisfying, easy-to-make recipes your family will enjoy, proving without a doubt that less can be more; it can be the most; it can be great!
PLENTY'S recipes, inspired from around the globe, show the variety of great food you can make without spending a fortune. With what is left from a simple Roast Chicken, you can make a fabulous Greek Chicken, Pumpkin, Feta & Filo Pie. Turn a bumper crop of tomatoes and basil into a luscious Tomato and Basil Tart. And thanks to a special section on less expensive cuts of meat, you'll soon be creating new family favorites from lamb shoulder, pork belly, and skirt steak, among others.
The book also advocates protecting our planet's resources. You'll learn to cook with respect, using readily available, abundant ingredients, such as cooking with Mackerel, the most sustainable fish, or using ingredients found in the wild, such as raspberries and elderberries.
With PLENTY, you will see that less is more.
About the Author
Award-winning writer Diana Henry is the food columnist for The Sunday Telegraph Magazine and author of several acclaimed cookbooks, including Roast Figs, Sugar Snow and Pure Simple Cooking. She lives with her family in London.