Six Degrees of Separation: from Kitchen Confidential to The Christmas Chronicles

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate: Six Degrees of Separation

I read Anthony Bourdain‘s Kitchen Confidential quite a long time ago, and seem to remember not liking it – or indeed him – very much. But it’s given me my chain for the month. You’re not getting a single novel from me this time, not one. Simply a run-down of a few cookery books.

To ease you in gently, I will start with a book that – though full of recipes – is also meant to be read from cover to cover; the 1950s classic by Patience Gray: Honey from a Weed. I’ve only just got it out of the library, so I can’t really comment on it. The inside cover says that it’s a ‘passionate autobiographical cookery book; Mediterranean through and through, and as compelling as a first class novel.‘

Which leads me to one of the first cookery books I owned, one which was my cookery bible when I was a student in the late 60s and early 70s: Elizabeth David‘s A book of Mediterranean food. She wrote very readably and enticingly about ingredients which I was able to source on a student budget in multi-cultural Manchester, and cemented the love of cooking fostered by my mother when I was growing up. All the same, my only memory from that time of using one of her recipes was when I cooked an indifferent moussaka for a lecturer whom my then boyfriend and I were trying to impress. I’ve never really liked moussaka since.

Now I have different cooking bibles. Unsurprisingly, some are written by the cooks who contribute to the Guardian’s food supplement on Saturdays. I went through a phase of perpetually using Meera Sodha‘s East: ‘vegan and vegetarian recipes from Bangalore to Beijing‘. Try this one: Leek and Chard Martabak.

I like to keep cooking straightfoward these days. So Yotam Ottolenghi‘s Simple hits the spot. Recipes like his Puy lentils with aubergine tomatoes and yoghourt.

Yotam Ottolenghi came my way via the Guardian: Rick Stein via his television series. I recently found his India in a charity shop, and it seduced me because of its glorious pictures of food and street life . The recipes are pretty good too. How about Aloo dum: potato and pea curry with tomato and coriander?

But for my last book, I’ll choose another cookery book which can be read from cover to cover. And I’ll make it seasonal: Nigel Slater‘s The Christmas Chronicles. Nigel Slater is my sort of cook, in that he doesn’t go in for careful measuring. If you haven’t got this, use that. He’s keen to tell you what he doesn’t bother with. And licking the bowl out is part of the joy. Recipes here are interspersed with stories of his Christmases, and his greedily-anticipated preparations for them. I hope you made your Christmas cake at the end of October. But if you didn’t, here’s his.

So that’s my chain. one in which most of the books I’ve chosen are capable of being linked with each other. It’ll be business as usual next month, with books where you can start at the beginning, and read until the end. Our starter book will be Gabrielle Zevin‘s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. I happen to know our daughter’s read this, and I shall be able to snaffle it from her bookshelves when we go to visit the Spanish branch of the family early next month. Not in time for the next Six Degrees, but still …

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Author: margaret21

I'm retired and live in North Yorkshire, where I walk , write, volunteer and travel as often as I can.

54 thoughts on “Six Degrees of Separation: from Kitchen Confidential to The Christmas Chronicles”

    1. If you can get your head round these, the actual making of the dishes isn’t difficult. I went through a stage of using Simple every day until I had a clutch of Will Make Often recipes.

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      2. I made a resolution a few years back to cook a new dish once a week. Some are duds, some take their place in the regular repertoire. It was a resolution well worth making.

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  3. Love your chain this time; I enjoy exploring cookbooks though rarely write about them on the blog. I’m seeing some here including Rick Stein that Meera Sodha that I’d like to check out. I’ve seen Stein’s India programme but never got to the book.

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  6. I have recently binned some old cookery books that I have probably had since the 1970s! Prawn Cocktail anyone? I also have a large collection of recipes, some handwritten and passed down from my mother (and in a pile waiting to be typed up – the best of which stained by one ingredient or another!). I also try a new recipe fairly often, though not weekly. After 50 odd years of making dinner it does all get rather repetitious.

    Never heard of Anthony Bourdain and given your comment I won’t bother with him, but I do enjoy a good book with recipes. One I have that you might enjoy is ‘Hot Sun, Cool Shadows’ by Angela Murrills all about food and history of the Languedoc. Another is ‘American Pie’ by Pascale le Draoulec which is about one woman’s search across the back roads of America in search of pies! And finally I am currently reading ‘Recipes for Love and Murder’ by Sally Andrew which is a about a South African woman living in the Karoo who is a recipe writer and gets involved in crime mysteries which is fun and includes some SA recipes (mainly from Afrikaans) – if you liked the No 1 Detective Agency you’d probably like this.

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      3. Not heard of that one, but really I don’t need any more books! I promised myself no more when we moved (after giving loads away) but still they keep arriving.

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      4. They pledge to giv to various literacy schemes abroad for every book bought. I now use the library a great deal. Our service is great and still buys plenty, so I tottered home yesterday with nine books.

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    2. Binned books!!! Leave them on a bench, put them on eBay but binning them? That said, do try the Anthony Bourdain – he charts his progress from spoiled bad boy to competent restauranteur most readably…

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      1. They weren’t the sort of books anyone would want, more like supplements, and they have gone into the recycle bin. Having said that I might retrieve them and take them to the NT bookshop.

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  7. Well done for ending with a Christmas book this month! I don’t tend to buy or use a lot of cookery books, but some of these sound very tempting and I do like the ones that include stories and anecdotes along with the recipes.

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    1. Yes, in that respect, Nigel Slater’s always a good ‘un. I tend to use the internet a lot, but I do enjoy my cookery collection for browsing and ideas.

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  8. Ah, my first serious cookery book was Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking, which was used a LOT over the years. Slater is good for dipping into

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  10. What a wonderfully delicious six degrees. These past weeks I have been on a decluttering project! How did I collect so many things!! Anyway, I found two old cookbooks that belonged to my grandmother. What I love about cookbooks is that they are reminders of home and belonging. Thank you for a most excellent post to begin my day.

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    1. I think you have to put the book in front of you and pledge to yourself to choose several recipes then just DO it. After that, the habit’s formed (ish).

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      1. I did that with the last cookbook I bought (recommended by Becky!) and have 3 or 4 that I make occasionally. I’ve copied them and I think the book might go to Oxfam soon. It was a Hugh F-W, entirely vegan surprisingly, though it never directly states that.

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  13. We have a lot in common – I live in West Yorkshire – Silsden and our lists have much in common too – if I had to choose a date from history, I think it might well be Elisabeth David. I buy the Guardian on Saturdays and so get Yotto Ottolenghi each week…

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  14. Sumptuous chain. I adore cookery books, especially those which can be read as well as providing recipes. Nigel Slater is my favourite and The Christmas Chronicles is in sight as I write. Partly to read (again) and partly because – ahem – I’m about to make the cake. Yes I’m late. I’m always late and it’s always fine.

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    1. Of course it’s always fine. I just got the habit as a child of thinking half term was the time to make the Christmas cake, and it’s a thing that has continued, even though most of the time I don’t know when half term is any more.

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  16. In the UK I had an upstairs cupboard wherein the cookery books dwelled. Seldom did they venture out. I’m not great at following recipes and I’m extremely good at stabbing myself with a knife. I do love cookery books in theory, though. Especially if travel based.

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    1. I’ve just had a Major Sort Out and junked the ones that didn’t earn their keep. I pore over a good cookery book and faithfully choose new things from it for weeks until the enthusiasm dies down and I put it aside … till the next time.

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