h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

some "celebrity" chefs get on my nerves. I suppose it depends why they are famous. Michel Roux Jr, Rick Stein and the biteable Gordon Ramsay are very very good chefs. Really excellent. They are good at showing people what to do on the TV because they are all old school proper part of whose job is to train the next ones.

It's easy to forget also just how good a chef James Martin is and that he is trained in the old way in Classical French cookery.

Heston is too much about the whistles and bells, but he really really understands flavour and texture.

and my is the best of the lot

As for tea: Earl Grey (from Aldi) or Yorkshire Tea (sometimes from Yorkshire sometimes from the English shop in Cologne) all the way

I'm a bit partial to small leaf Assan Or, at least I was, when we could still buy it, lose, from the coffee bean and tea shop in town (now closed )

Its quite funny how some people can make such a fuss about catering for 'large groups' of people... When William was in his previous job, he'd just get on... do it... make the tea for the dozens and dozens who'd all turn up at the same time, and deliver their tea, or coffee, hot, plus the cakes as was the situation we happened to be at the same place, one time, when the 'manager' of the place (a sort of bar, come social club, come, sort of weird place), and he took so* long, and managed to get it all so otterly wrong well, made us giggle if nothing else Some of the celib chefs... really, really, get on my and luckily I don't get too much explosure to them, not owning a TV myself they can seem to so easily over-complicate the simplist of things; and often the best food is the simplist; use decent ingredients, and don't* over complicate added flavours or cooking methods, or accompany something, like, say a great bit of meat or fish, etc., with something so otterly over the top that it'll overshadow the 'main event' as it were Mind, it is sometimes hard to remember that; I'm just about to make bread, second go at a new recipie, and I must* try not* to add in the extra herbs, seeds etc... as I'm pretty sure last time, yeh, its nice adding all the extra 'stuff', but that was detracting away from the texture and flavour actually... I must drink more tea... I've gotten so damn addicted to strong coffee thesedays, I've just about distroyed my sense of taste for anything a bit more subtle than the strongest beans I can find

You're turning into a celebrity chef yourself now - complicating things unnecessarily by adding extra ingredients to your bread I've lost track of the number of times I've gone to the BBC food website looking for a recipe for something and rejected most (sometimes all) of the recipes because of all the extra stuff that doesn't need to be there.

That's why I like programmes like Hairy Bikers Mums Know Best, and also their Best of British series, mostly. I wish I'd picked up more old cookbooks from junk shops and second hand bookshops. The sort of cookbooks that might have come with a cooker that someone bought in the 1960s. I have but one and it's falling to bits, but it has so many good - and simple - recipes. Even a section for invalid dishes. Things like beef tea, barley water, raw liver sandwiches, gruel and, er, peptonised liquids

I rarely do 'complicated' cooking... always seems a lot of messing about, for little gain if any, over the doing it simple version... Tonight will be last of the salad, just as is... fresh grilled halibut steak/fillet, I think, and... definatly needs something else with it... maybe just rice, wild rice, or... dunno.... sod it, if I cna't think of anything I've a fresh made loaf of bread sitting there... I'm sure bread plus butter, plus salad plus fish would work really rahter well Well today loaf was very simple; mainly white flour, plus multigrain plus wholemeal, salt, water, yeast... I even managed not to put any pepper in it smells gorgeous, and even my lodger noticed it on the worktop, on the cooling rack, and said how my loafs seem to be looking a lot more profesional now (I probably never spend enough time worrying over how 'good' its gona look as uch... but my scoring is better now, so the top comes up real nice, useually.... ) OH, I put some honey in the bread, rather than sugar seeing as how hafl of this bread will be eaten with bacon, or black pudding... just didn't seem worth doing soemthign with lots of herbs, or seeds and stuff...

And yet the celebrity chefs always seem to make the everything look so simple. I've tried a handful of their recipes, just to see how simple and easy it really is.

It really isn't.

yes, I really did mean 'the everything'. That's everything, but even more so

ahh.. but they get paid, I guess a fortune, to cook such things..... hence they cook em a lot... plus they've I guess, in most cases, actually had a clasic chef training type thing.... Whilst the rest of us, just kinda invent our own ways of doing things Hmmm... nearly dinner time... I'm gona cook up some wild rice, either just plain, or with a little cumin and fennel... nah, no cumin... maybe* some fennel seed... romaine lettuce, cucumber, probably sort of half mixed into the rice, when its done, and cooled a little... black pepper.... then just a grilled halibut flaked on top of that... and the last bit of coleslaw I have, chucked on the side I'd have done some mushrooms with the wild rice, but I dinny have any Try as I might, I can't think of an option that'd justify having bread to go with it tonight but... supper is never far away If I want dessert I'll make..... hmm, there's icecream in the freezer, and some choc things in the fridge, that'd do nicely

I have a Galloping Gourmet cookbook from the early 70s...

and my can cook the everything...

He was given a cookery book, years before we married, which is the kind of thing a 1940s housewife would have been given on marriage. the Cookery Year. It shows how to pluck, bone and dress a pheasant.

And my mum has the Good Housekeeing Cookery Book from the late 70s. She has put my name on it for inhertance puposes.

I had a paperback copy of The Times Cookbook which I got rid of, along with too many other things I should have kept, before I left Blighty. Also Elizabeth David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery, which I bought years before I actually made my first loaf, never made a single recipe from and then got rid of along with the other stuff.

We don't really have a suitable smiley that fits my feeling about this. It's sort of a pound of , a pound of , half a pound of and a few ounces of , garnished with some grated , a jus of drizzled over the top, and a foam.

Isn't EBay full of those kinda old books being sold for tuppence? Or not... I must admit I've never looked really... One of the best older cooking books I saw, was on err,,, public online free library thing... starts with a 'G'.... err... yeh, that one whatever its called; it was an early settlers cook book, for the USA; all no use recipies of course, for us 'today'.... but gave such an insight; such massive amounts of food being made at a time

Ebay... Ebay... I think I went there once. Isn't on the east coast somewhere in the vicinity of Scarborough? I think so - we were sitting on the beach enjoying the sea breezes when a couple of Yorkshire folk who were walking along the strand stopped, and once said to the other "Eee, bay!".

OI!

Goodreads, 2legs?

I buy books from Abe Books and Amazon. I loathe eBay so try not to use it.

anyway Mr Gosho what I wanted to say is that we do have a smiley for that only you won't let anyone use it here...

Actually, think I was thinking of project gutenburg... however its smelt... There were (may still be), some interesting 1800's (maybe even earlier ones), cookery/home books on there... fasinating even if not to use teh recipies, but to give a glimpse into how life was in the way back when...

I thought Sho might have summat to say about that I could just as easily have gone for the Lancashire coast y'know And that smiley, if I cared for it, wouldn't come close what I was trying to convey.

Project Gutenberg and Google Books are good for a lot of things, but the sort of books I'm thinking of - from the 50s, 60s and 70s - would still be under copyright, if either of the two organisations had even copied/scanned them, and Gutenberg is for cultural works, so mostly fiction I'd guess. I've found some fascinating beer- and brewing-related books on Google Books though, some going back to the 1600s, and downloadable as a PDF. Did you know, for instance, that when fermenting your beer in the barrel you should "...let it ftand three weeks or a month before you bung it up, only put fomething over the bung hole to keep rats and mice from piffing or dunging in it, which they are very apt to do, and would invariably fpoil your drink."

So now you know

But cookbooks that are out of copyright, ie before about 80 - 100 years ago, aren't what I'm thinking of. They had very different ways of doing things in the kitchen, different ways of setting out recipes (they usually didn't separate the ingredients and method the way we do now), they were often vague about amounts (or didn't specify them at all), and you can't get some of the ingredients (or utensils) any more because the local apothecary doesn't keep those things these days. Those cookbooks are too removed from the way we do things today to be of much use unless you're a food historian or have a huge kitchen and a lot of money, because cookbooks back then were usually written for big houses and involve large quantities. Ordinary folk back then didn't have or need cookbooks, if they could even read.

Even Mrs Beeton, who I think has been held partly responsible by dear departed Clarissa Dickson Wright for turning British food into the joke it was for most of the 20th century, isn't much use because it was for the Victorian middle class woman with plenty of time and maybe a servant or two.

How about Julia Childs?

I miss Julia One of the things I remember from when I first arrived in Texas was watching Julia Childs and Jacques Pepin on a Saturday lunchtime.

Project Gutenberg isn't just for fiction, it has pretty much anything that's out of copyright. One interesting one I downloaded is "A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes", from 1852.

There is a *serious* amount of work involved in many of the recipes - I've never actually used it to cook from.

By Jove, you're right. I'm currently reading an old sugar-boiling book http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30293/30293-h/30293-h.htm

Plenty of scope for wiling away an afternoon there

I find it intriguing that recipes used to be called receipts. I noticed this last year when I was browsing those old brewing books.

Eider that, otter they had the sane problem I do with my spelling... recipets, recipieites recpicieted recipies reciepts... pah... its all the same weally...