Megan offers her annual Christmas cooking recommendations. Kit here; manuals here. As usual, there’s lots of good stuff. But permit me to offer some supplementary ideas on the matter of cookbooks.
If, as Megan suggests you should, you own several of Julia Child’s books you may not think you need another set of classic volumes on French, Italian and Mediterranean food. You’d be wrong. No serious Anglophone cook should be without at least two (if not all three) of Elizabeth David’s masterpieces: Mediterranean Food, Italian Food and French Provincial Cooking. These three books alone provide enough inspiration to last a lifetime.
More than just recipe books, however, these old friends offer learned, but lightly-done, excursions into provincial and culinary history, plus achingly romantic (but never in a boastful sense) memories of where and when particular dishes were first encountered.
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