Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Get in Touch with truly `Seasonal Produce`, 26 May 2006
Voted `a corker' by Jamie Oliver, this is a book which challenges that `all-year' round availability of `fresh' ingredients, with a primary aim of re-educating the reader to think about how fresh, not to mention how tasty, e.g. the fine green beans are ,that have just flown in from Kenya?
`Shopping seasonally is not a high-minded duty, or a restrictive choice, but a liberating pleasure.
The downside of the modern food culture of infinite year-round choice is a kind of options paralysis - there is so much on offer that you don't know where to start.
Understanding the seasons frees you from this ball and chain.
In a world where the production and marketing of food has gone mad, seasonality is sanity.'
It implies freshness, good taste and even good health. And it offers the best and quickest solution to the never-ending question, `What shall I cook today?'
As seen on Channel Four, `The River Cottage Year' book has 255 high quality matt pages, split over the twelve months of the year along with a section entitled `Why Cook Seasonally?' and an alphabetical guide to `Seasonal British Produce`, showing, monthly, both `in season' and `at it best' for vegetables/fruit/fish, shellfish & game and popular edible wild plants inc fungi, herbs, `greens`, fruit and nuts.
Each chapter is headed up by information about the relevant month, followed by around 9 recipes.
Photography, by Simon Wheeler.
Even if you think you have no aspirations, or skill, as a gardener, this book could inspire you to literally sow your seeds and amble down that path called `Grow Your Own`.
And from Hugh's description of his Dorset life, even the more apprehensive of us might be persuaded that it is all within reach, whatever the size of your garden, or window box.
Still not convinced.......amble along to a local Farmers' Market, offering only the best at the best time.
The only minor criticisms which have been aired are that there are not pictures of each finished dish, plus the recipes themselves don't have the usual `list' of ingredients - just highlighted text detailing the requirements, but with everything else in this book, you don`t really notice!
Our favourite recipes:-
Mixed Wild Mushrooms on Toast
Raw Asparagus and Other Crudities with Anchovy and Caper Mayonnaise:-
`......In fact just cut asparagus is sweet enough to eat raw, and I urge anyone who grows their own to try it like this, dipped in a simple vinaigrette........, or as above.
The loss of sweetness in asparagus (as with many vegetables, including peas and sweet corn) is a simple function of time elapsed after harvest.
Sugar begins to revert to starch as soon as the plant has been cut. It can be fixed only by cooking or freezing - the latter is OK for peas and sweet corn but pretty detrimental to the fragile texture of asparagus..........'
Baby Broad Beans with Chorizo
`If I had to name my favourite first harvests of the year, I think it would be baby broad beans. Try as I might, I can't resist attacking the pods when the beans inside are scarcely bigger than my little fingernail. After a few portions of lightly cooked infants, adorned with only a little melted butter, I'll move on to some simple combination - and thin slivers of lightly fried chorizo is one of my favourites.'
Barbecued August Vegetables
Crushed Strawberries and Cream
French Beans with Tapenade and Chicken
Mackerel with Melted Onions and Black Olives
Autumn Bliss
` I worked this recipe out from scratch....... My plan was to celebrate the wonderful variety of autumn raspberry after which the dish is named. I wanted a dish that acknowledges the change in the weather, the creeping autumn chill and therefore takes the raspberry away from its usual summer association of chilled desserts and into the realms of hot puddings.'
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48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Getting back in touch with the seasons, 13 Sep 2005
If you were to judge this simply on the recipes then this is much the same as many of hugh's other books, lots of recipes but a fair chunk of text given over to the lifestyle and, lets be honest, that's where Hugh's books are pitched in the market they are selling a vision of a lifestyle and not a manual on how to run your kitchen. In fact based simply on the recipes I'd say that this is probably not the best of his books but it wins on one major point. By dividing it into months it answers that question that so many of us may have wondered - what is in season now? It is, after all, too easy to stand in the local supermarket and be so isolated from the natural world that you have no idea that this is the time of year when if you see aspargus on the shelves then its probably been air freighted half way around the planet.Buy this, read the recipes by month and go to the grocers and markets rather than supermarkets. Its one simple step to feeling better about consumption.
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57 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not sure if you need this if you bought River Cott Cookbook, 17 Jul 2003
Personally, although I think Hugh FW is a fantastic advocate of self sufficiency, I wondered whether it was worth buying this... And that's hard for me to admit.It's broken down into months and gives recipes utilising seasonal produce. Very good idea, I'd been searching for a book like this for ages. BUT the recipe's are not what i'd call "everyday". In fact the only one i've used since purchasing the book in May is deep fried elderflowers - and jolly yummy they were too! A random dip in the book: cock pheasant au vin (Jan), nettle risotto (Mch), radish leaf and mint soup (may), bacon with fresh pea puree (july). Hugh still persuades us to grow our own or purchase local seasonally produced over imported organic, and I do everything I can. So if you want an "after a busy day in the office" menu planner, look elsewhere. It's very good for "interesting" ideas and reinforcing a grow-your-own mentality, but forget it if you have a picky family or are on a diet. Maybe I'm being unfair, I wouldn't want to put anyone off even if they just grew a lettuce in a window box.
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by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
