Welcome back to Marigold, this month Josie and a couple of culinary pals pick recipes from the pages of their most cherished cookbooks.
As we welcome the month of March we mark a year since we first moved into this state of pandemic induced hibernation and in this culturally fallow time many have turned to recipes to fill furloughed hours. In my house we have adopted some ‘techniques’ to delineate the weekends and evenings from the bleak headlines and working week. Most of this comprises following a series of lists pinned to the fridge. One for D.I.Y- (I’ll be able to cross off ‘make lampshade inspired by oyster shells’ next week, thanks), one entitled ‘Dream Girl items’ a compilation of rare objects which we are haggling for on a manner of social platforms, (trying to acquire a Lil Kim shower curtain for less than fifty quid is an arduous task), the longest is the ‘BBC’s top 100 films of the 21st Century’ we are roughly ten watches away from completing this, recent picks are The Assassin, Ida, The New World and The Act of Killing if you’re bored of trawling through Netflix these come highly recommended. The fourth and final is simply names of countries and serves as a record to the task we have set to cook something from every country in the world. Last week in honour of St David we took in Wales, cockles and laverbread eaten outside with the first warm sunshine of the year, today for Sunday lunch we will attempt spicing in a Bangladeshi style.
We have made a pact to sample countries with colder climates before the season completely turns, as discovering our local Asian supermarket has led to us pounding the countries with noodles at the centre of their cuisine. My favourite of these being our trip to Cambodia, watching my housemate (housemate being an impersonal turn of a phrase for the figure who has been my hype man, therapist and living room dance floor queen in the last four months) trawl through the Youtube channel of two sisters to figure out the most authentic way to make a vibrant green curry paste was truly inspiring.
So whilst Josie asked me to write something about my favourite cookbook I’m instead recommending the Youtube channel Natural Life TV.
I don’t speak Cambodian so I can’t give you these ladies names but big love to them. Watching them cook over fire, machete tropical fruit fresh from trees and cook collectively with their family has been most educational. With the nationwide lack of travel watching them in such lush surroundings is almost, almost like being on holiday.
Happy watching,
Rebecca and the Marigolds
Single Boy’s Breakfast
Recipe: E.Boyfield’s recipe choice from ‘White Trash Cooking’ by Ernest Matthew Mickler
A favourite ‘pub game’ The Marigolds love to play is called ‘Dreamland’. The premise is simple - just create your friend’s dystopian parallel universe realm - so; what are they wearing, where do they live, who do they kick it with? Somehow mine has ended up being set somewhere in the Deep South of America, on the bayou. I live in a wooden shack filled with kitsch paraphernalia. My mode of transportation is a hovercraft, I spend my days wearing a ragged David Byrne-esque suit, croc skin cowboy boots and wrestle with my pet alligators at night. So you can see why White Trash Cooking really fits my personal brand.
Aside from the anarchic and folkloric nature of the book, and the fact that it’s spiral bound (mon bonheur!), I adore the stories and recipes. Mickler speaks to relatives and members of his community to compile these recipes, which have fantastic names such as “Oleta Brown’s Turnip Greens'' and “Mama Leila’s Hand Me Down Oven-Baked Possum”, as well as endearing tidbits about the cooks themselves, i.e. “Mammy’s cakes are so heavy the post office won’t take them”. The book has a tender and sweet quality, and manages to be extremely camp but in the most earnest and respectful way. Mickler was an incredibly interesting character - a huge personality, who became somewhat of a star; he once cooked chicken feet and rice on Late Night with David Letterman and the idea of this alone gives me chills. He was maybe my first queer cooking icon - before I was even aware of the world of queer cooking, and this is yet another reason the book fills me with happiness.
Recipe wise I love the use of rendered bacon fat use as the base in a huge amount of the recipes, the direct link to the everyday, and the no nonsense delivery. Not once have I made a recipe from this book, despite having read it cover to cover hundreds of times, but perhaps in a dystopic future coming soon, I will be found in the depths of Florida cooking up these delights.
Below I give you a recipe from the book, which I imagine my Dreamworld character eating every morning whilst smoking a Marlboro Red:
Good Bookkeeping - Josie McLean
There are 3 cookbooks that defined my childhood eating. An Anton Mossiman book that had him on the cover in a very tall chefs hat and an enormous dish of what I remember as beans, but as the book has long been mislaid I couldn’t promise this wasn’t just how the figment of a 6 year olds imagination. The first River Café book, in that deep sea blue with big thick white letters on and close-ups of cavolo nero, heavy stews whisking my Dad away to the life of an Italian I think he has always secretly longed for. And lastly an enormous Good Housekeeping tome that my Mum inherited from her Mum, long missing it’s cloth spine and with no photos but in depth illustrations on how to roll a pork joint. The Mossiman book was predominantly used for a red wine and kidney bean risotto that came heavy on the plate, and heavier in the stomach. I still make it to this day and cook it as my parents did, stickily, despite now knowing that risotto should be able to be shaken around a plate, each individual grain visible. My family still all make the cavolo nero soup from that first River Café book, our loyalties lie with that blue volume, despite all the others that have come since and subsequently been gifted to a parent on a significant date. The soup has changed to fit us, I like adding coriander seeds and more oil than my Mum would deem healthy. My dad will go beanless if he’s not got any in the cupboard. We have all made it so many times we no longer need the recipe, the page open as we cook more tokenistic than guide. The Good Housekeeping is one of the few things I have requested to inherit when they tire of it. Despite it falling apart and most of the recipes being for meat heavy, carb heavy dishes I no longer want to eat that much. It represents as close to a handwritten cookbook from my grandma I could come.
I name these 3 to represent the touchstones cookbooks can represent. A recipe for a dish that though cooked “incorrectly” transports you to the kitchen table of your youth. A snapshot into another world, glossy with olive oil and Italian bitter greens that were impossible to get in Tesco in the 90’s. And lastly an insight into how people we have loved have eaten.
Cookbooks have long been a love of mine, my boyfriend (thankfully also a lover of cookbooks) always laughs at the way I read them from cover to cover. Not just as sources of dinner inspiration but glimpses into other kitchens, countries and ways of cooking a courgette. I have lugged boxes of them across London, sorry Dad, and up and down stairs into the numerous flats I’ve lived in. Some have well used splatters and a light film of grease from being on top of shelves in poorly ventilated, shared kitchens. Some have been kept on my bedroom bookshelf, pride of place, less about the recipes they contain but the life they shine a light on. There are 3 notebooks full of handwritten recipes that I’ve collated over my 15 years of cooking independently, starting with a weird recipe for iced jumbles and an ill advised university number for muesli hotcakes by Bill Granger I thankfully don’t remember making. The recipes within them all remind me of the stuffed courgettes and pilafs Poppy and I perfected in tiny, dark, slightly cockroach-y Barcelona kitchens, where the only windows were onto the staircase. They document the sweetcorn fritters, Rebecca and I made in a sticky floored, overly full kitchen in New Cross to accompany Sunday Bloody Marys and Soho hangovers. There is a recipe for crispy pig heads terrine for when Emily comes to stay, inspired by the time she turned up at my house to marie-kondo my bedroom with a bag of pigs ears and cider. Simon’s Mapo Tofu, the the first thing he ever made me. A Chicken Rice recipe that came from Emily via Rick Stein (the fact I ignore who it’s by, is a testament to how great the dipping sauce is). These books are insights into my life, by way of cooking.
In her recipe introduction earlier, Emily mentioned Dreamlands, one of the many games we play over a dinner table, we have already told you about our desert island meals. I personally love the tradition of discussing, in intimate detail under a peppering of questions, the best things we’ve eaten, drunk, read, listened to in the past month or year. In my round up of the year, several cookbooks are amongst my most enjoyed reads. In this year of no travel and few social interactions, cookbooks have been ways not only to escape but also a way to cook alongside someone.
In homage to this I have asked a few people, whose taste I infinitely trust and whose book shelves I covet, to tell me about their favourite cookbook and a significant memory from it. I hope it encourages you to dip into those books and cook alongside someone new however briefly.
The River Cafe Cook Book Two, Rose Gray & Ruth Rogers - Jack Williams
Cookbooks are a bit of an obsession of mine and I’ve been collecting them for over 10 years now. Anyone who has helped me move house will testify to that. Sorry.
I think they’re important not only as learning tools but as a reflection of the cooking and eating habits of any given time or place (see Pierre Koffmans Memories of Gascony), they are a document of the great chefs and restaurants (Fernand Points Ma Gastronomie) or can introduce a generation to new ingredients and cuisines (Thanks, Yotam Ottolenghi).
Given this, picking a favourite cookbook is next to impossible so I’ve decided to pick the first book that came to mind when Josie asked me.
The River Cafe Cook Book Two was given to me 18 years ago by my Nan. I’d just started showing serious interest in food and cooking and I’ve had it with me since then. I've cooked from it alot and read it alot more. The photography is beautiful and there is a simplicity about the design and the recipes. It felt more grown up than Jamie Oliver of whom I was a keen disciple.
It taught me how to make fresh pasta, cook a risotto and make a panna cotta. There were a lot of recipes I couldn't cook as the availability of fresh ceps, baby artichokes or treviso was pretty limited in our local Tesco in Devon. That's probably why this recipe had an impact. It's for a simple tuscan soup called aqua cotta. There are few ingredients, all easily available and it represents all that is good about rustic italian cooking. I remember eating aqua cotta in Florence the first time I visited Italy, it was the first thing I cooked for the love of my life and it's something I cook often when I'm Ill or sad. It has a restorative quality and like many dishes of this ilk is much more than the sum of its parts.
If you don't own this book I urge you to buy it. If nothing else it looks good on a shelf.
Jack will be gracing the kitchens of Westerns Laundry, in the hallowed shadow of The Arsenal, with amongst other things, a fish soup from the gods in April. He has a truly reverential amount of cooks books and knows how to show an anchovy the respect it deserves.
Jamie Oliver - Simon Winters
Jamie Oliver is often derided, unfairly I would add, in favour of more 'serious' authors and cooks.
I'd be lying if I said my deep love and appreciation for Italian Food and all things pasta came from a well used handed down copy of Marcella Hazan's 'Essentials of Italian Cooking'
No, it was the 'Naked Chef.'
I’ve always found cook books as much about inspiration and aspiration, as they were about recipes. The first few Jamie Oliver books inspired a love and interest in food , and the role of food in bringing people together. My own affection for Jamie Oliver stems from a fortuitous timing in his rise and exposure, with my own growing awareness and interest in food.
His cooking was approachable, accessible and comfortably aspirational. Growing up in a small northern Irish town, he was aspirational in the same way as your cool older cousin that moves to the big city and comes back at christmas wearing Stussy and Stone Island. He lived in London, had a different set of friends on every episode, slid down the banister of his spiral stairs and played the drums. And I always wondered what that woman who was talking to him looked like.
I’ve cooked many an Oliver recipe over the years, though for me his standout recipe will always be a turkey pie recipe.
It is a firm favourite in the Winters household, and holds found memories of cooking with my Mum and Christmas time. It also symbolises the two people that really got me into food and cooking, Winnie Winters and Jamie Oliver.
Simon makes more mess in the kitchen than anyone I know (a tall feat when you know Rebecca), he claims creativity and I would dispute this if his food wasn’t so delicious. He approaches cooking with a focus and commitment to improvement most people are far too lazy to achieve. He is currently perfecting the Zuni Chicken Salad and makes a cup of coffee that could raise the dead.
Prawn Cocktail Years, Simon Hopkinson - Will Stewie
I didn’t grow up cooking. I grew up greedy. I didn’t have a massive urge to learn how the food was made. I just wanted to eat it. But as I got older I quickly learned the easiest way to eat delicious food was to make it yourself. So I got a job in a kitchen. Over the years I ingested a lot of food media, read a few cookbooks and really made an effort to eat my way through London. Not until about a year ago, when my somewhat bad habit of spending too much money in restaurants had to stop because of COVID, did I find a book that made everything click.
Prawn Cocktail Years, by Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham (their second book after the much lauded Roast Chicken and other stories) is about the ‘Cinderellas of the kitchen’ that were falling out of favour. The dishes that had “all been slung out like old lovers, but made with good, fresh ingredients, and prepared with care and a genuine love of good eating… these favourites should grace the most discerning table.”
Hopkinson writes about ‘The Great British Meal Out’ where one eats, of course, Prawn Cocktail, Steak Garni and Chips and to finish a Black Forest Gateau. Or ‘The Gentlemens Club’ where old men couldn’t escape the familiarity and comfort of childhood. So they dined upon Toad-in-the-hole, Cauliflower Cheese, Spotted Dick and Rice Pudding.
In ‘The Sixties Bistro’ a lot of French Onion Soup, Salad Niçoise, Boeuf à la Bourguignon and Coq au Vin was served. ‘The Tratt-era’ introduces the ubiquitous, and rightfully so, Spaghetti Bolognese. The delicious recipes in the book are endless: Quiche Lorraine, Goulash, Gratin Dauphinois, Brown Bread Ice Cream, Crepe Suzette, and Pears in Red Wine. Prawn Cocktail Years is an account of the food one could eat across Britain and an explanation of the DNA of restaurants today. Suddenly St. John makes sense.
The book was published in 1997, the year I was born, and the amount it has changed greatly surpasses my entire life. But reading it in 2021 still proves that the most important thing about food is; food has history, food has meaning. It’s both unbelievably personal, but also founded in community and sharing.
I work in kitchens because I like to eat. Not because I’m a particularly skilled cook. My experience of food and eating is unique to me, and whether it’s my Mum’s Lasagna or St John’s Bone Marrow on toast. In today’s world we could take some lessons from Prawn Cocktail Years. Everyone should learn how to cook, learn how to cook well, cook what they want to eat, and eat what they love. Food shouldn’t / doesn’t have to be boring, inconvenient or uninspired. It shouldn’t be lazy… Otherwise, what’s the fucking point.
Will and I used to work together before he made the transition from serving to cooking. His delight and enjoyment in food and cooking have always been infectious. He has just started a podcast call A Cooks Library, which I urge you all to listen to the minute you’ve finished reading this. It’s a glorious listen. The first episode with Alex Jackson, formerly of Sardine and now Noble Rot.
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Thanks for reading this month’s edition of Marigold. An extra special thank you to Will, Jack and Simon for the insight into their bookshelves. As always please send any pictures, thoughts or book recommendations to our Instagram. Below are our links for the month. Happy cooking!
Will’s podcast, “A Cook’s Library” can be found via iTunes or Spotify. The instagram is also a joy, everyone needs to start swinging to keep fit a la Lulu Peyraud.
Martha Stewart is the original influencer - Martha Stewart is a conundrum to me. She is almost indisputably a horrific human but then she tells you that if you’re going to drink, make it vodka and make that a martini. The fact that this is in Harpers Bazaar makes this even more gruesome reading but still compelling.
Atlanta have just created the world’s largest free food forest. In a sea of constant reminders that 1 in 4 people in the USA live in a “food desert”, that we are further cutting free school meals at any opportunity and that food poverty is at its highest in a long time, this cuts through and reminds you that good stuff is happening too.
Not food related but this week has been an exhausting reminder of how unequal and unsafe our society is and feels. Leslie Kern’s Feminist City published by Verso Books is equal parts sobering and illuminating but manages to offer a solution if we choose to listen. Also Verso Books were doing this as a free e-book so if you can’t get a physical copy I recommend that.
More about Ernest Matthew Mickler, eulogised by Emily above, in this article. Further insight into Dreamland can be acquired via questioning on our Instagram.
Lastly, the Latin Village in Seven Sisters has been under threat of development for the last year. We three Marigolds hold a special place for it in our hearts for it’s pisco sours, Saturday karaoke and octopus but it is also a vital hub for London’s Latin American community and a key community resource. Please pledge here to show support before London Mayoral funding is announced next week.