Laurie Colwin wrote: ‘No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.’ It is one of my favourite quotes about cooking, mainly because it feels true: everything you cook is informed by other dishes, those that you’ve cooked, those that you’ve tasted or read about, the successes and the failures. In quiet moments of kitchen solitude, it is reassuring to know that there is an army of cooks behind me, each offering their experience, their recipes and books, a hand to hold when I feel uncertain.
I never feel the truth of Colwin’s words more than when I’m making a chicken pie. My chicken pie is an amalgamation of every chicken dish I’ve ever made. Inside that one pie is a debt of gratitude owed to all my favourite cooks and writers: a recipe by Anna Hedworth, proprietor of Newcastle’s Cook House, was my go-to chicken pie for years.
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