Pure and mostly simple

A long and messy business is how the chef Rowley Leigh explains his preferred way of eating. Picking at a crab, for example, or eating raw young broad beans straight from the pod. He applies the same phrase to cooking. That too is messy, but not all the recipes in his new book take ages to make. Long, I thought as I gratefully lapped up Leigh’s wisdom, applies more to the time needed to become not just a fount of knowledge but also a man of very good tastes. You could include grumpy in the title of A Long and Messy Business (Unbound, £25); but I trust the advice and judgment of grumpy (not angry, mind) cooks.

It is a great cookbook, as much for what irritates Rowley as what doesn’t. He loves too many ingredients to list, but it is what he does with them, and the experience he offers, that puts this book in the if-you-buy-one-make-it-this-one category.