Gary Rhodes' Cookery Year: Spring into Summer (Hardcover)

It must also be his professional background that inclines him to present his recipes as complete servings--main dish and accompaniments. Grilled beef comes with baby turnips, marinated mushrooms and a beetroot dressing. Soaked lemon semolina wedge (a cake) with warm blueberries. Baked cheese puffs with fresh beetroot sauce. This is generous, but at the same time oddly limiting: it's hard to imagine many cooks taking these recipes into their repertoires and playing freely with them.

One hesitantly comes to the conclusion that Gary Rhodes inhabits a dimension not altogether congruent with the one occupied by the rest of us. There is, on the one hand, the fluent strangeness of his prose, in which verbs slip effortlessly from transitive to intransitive (main dish A "eats well" with garnish B, we keep being told). And the recipes themselves, on the other, invariably well-constructed and thought-provoking as they are, seem often to have arrived fully-formed from some mysterious other universe free of gastronomic tradition and history. What general principles can a cook extract from Roast Gurnard with Beetroot, White Bean and Orange Salad or Braised Beef Brisket with Tarragon Carrots and Cauliflower Champ?

Readers will be able to judge for themselves how liberating these combinations are. At any rate, it's a relief to find Rhodes largely eschewing his baffling enthusiasm for school dinners (no Gypsy Tart recipes here). --Robin Davidson

Review
Best known for his TV cookery programmes, Gary Rhodes is also the owner and chef of two Michelin star restaurants and a proactive campaigner of British produce and cuisine. This is the first of two books where Gary takes the reader through the Spring and Summer seasons using the freshest of ingredients, those products which are at their peak of perfection. Freshly harvested fruit and vegetables, seasonal fish and meat are presented in novel, tasty recipes, gloriously illustrated with colourful photographs. Using fresh produce and highlighting their special taste, the recipes are easy to prepare involving few sauces, the freshness of the ingredients being paramount. Courgette tart, red pepper mousse and fresh herb gnocchi will whet vegetarian appetites while pot-roasted lamb, boiled ham hock and guinea fowl will get meat-lovers' taste buds flowing. Soft chocolate pudding, baked blue cheesecake and Cointreau champagne raspberries will sate those with a sweet tooth. Extra recipes for vegetable accompaniments complete the picture with to-die-for side dishes such as blood orange and chive sea kale, grilled honeyed aubergines and warm leeks with vegetable vinaigrette. Such is the standard of the food and recipes, Gary Rhodes ensures a superb dinner party or a tasty dejeuner a deux with the ease of preparation leaving the hostess plenty of time to enjoy herself with her guests.

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• Books > Food & Drink > Entertaining & Special Occasions > Festive & Seasonal Dishes
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