In which I contemplate buying a new cookery book

I’ve got a theory about cookery books. Those three inch thick celebrity tomes costing upwards of £20 when first published. We’ve got a shelf full – Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall and Rick Stein are our favourites. The food looks so tempting when you’re watching the series on TV, but when you get the book there is always some elusive key ingredient that discourages you from having a go. So, I reckon I only ever cook about four recipes from any one of these hardback cookery books. Some recipes have been so successful that they have been absorbed into my everyday repertoire, but others have been tried once and then discarded – too complicated or too much washing up.

I’m still a bit of a collector, so whilst Project 333 and minimalism discourage me from accumulating too much unnecessary ‘stuff’, I can feed my collecting habit with my new hobby of assembling my own recipe collections on the computer. I enjoyed building the Campervan Collection so much that I’m now simultaneously working on two more: a complete collection with a target of 100 recipes and a vegan version. It’s great fun and it’s enhancing our diet, in particular the move towards plant-based eating.

Having written-up (or rather typed) all our favourite recipes, both for the campervan and the house, and trawled through my collection of recipes from the Vegetarian Cookery School course, I decided it was time to check through all our existing recipe books for some new inspiration. I found only one new recipe – one! Most of the new recipes I have tried recently have come from the BBC Good Food website (apparently they have an archive of over 11,000 recipes), or other blogs.

Was it time to buy a new cookery book? It certainly seems that vegetarian and vegan eating is on the increase. The current vogue seems to be ‘plant-based eating’, a term I quite like. The beauty of a Kindle is that not only can you buy a book and it is instantly available, but also you can download free samples. So, I decided to download samples of four books I’ve seen mentioned recently and see if any of them tempted me to a purchase.

1. Deliciously Ella: Every Day Simple

I immediately identified with Ella’s admission that before her plant-based epiphany she lived on pesto pasta [Hmm…my favourite dish, would this be out of bounds?]. I liked the philosophy – eat the Ella way at home, when you are in control, but don’t spoil the party when you’re out. The regime is plant-based, lactose-free, refined sugar free, gluten-free. I wondered what you could actually eat, but the list of recipes did not look too daunting and I saw many familiar ingredients we already eat, quinoa and chia seeds, for example. The sample chapters only explained the philosophy, including lists of ingredients to stock (I love lists) and ideas like ordering bulk stuff online. I particularly liked the fact that Ella uses the same basic ingredients to form staples and tries to avoid unusual, one-off ingredients, something I find really annoying. The sample didn’t contain any recipes (I later found that few of them do) but I was tempted. This is the recipe book that I would like to write!

2. Anna Jones: A Modern Way to Cook

I’d seen a lot about Anna Jones on social media. She seemed to be the female Jamie Oliver, so I wasn’t surprised that Jamie Oliver had written the foreword or that she had been trained at his first Fifteen restaurant. My first impression of the sample was that here was a vegetarian Jamie. The opening blurb wasn’t as inspiring as Ella and I was a bit concerned about the comment ‘ingredients from afar now line the aisles’. Not in the Limousin! The index was in the usual JO layout – breakfasts, soups (renamed broths), lunches, salads, you know the formula. At least this sample did have two recipes, it was the only one that did, but the first recipe contained an ingredient I’d struggle to source here and used two saucepans at breakfast time. That told me all I needed to know.

Time to find another chef to sample. I turned on the Kindle shop to see what was topping the best-seller list. The Aldi Lover’s Guide to Cooking looked intriguing (all recipes based on Aldi-only ingredients), but I was really looking for the latest in vegetarian cooking. Jamie Oliver was, of course, in the top five, and there were a plethora of diet and celebrity cookbooks. Clean and green is certainly the current trend, and there is a definite move away from sugar. However, another popular name I’d seen recently looked interesting: Hemsley + Hemsley, although I was concerned it was some type of TV spin-off.

3. Hemsley + Hemsley: The Art of Eating Well

A quick glance at the table of contents reminded me of the Anna Jones book. The ethos is the same: fresh, natural, unprocessed food, but it’s not vegetarian. I nearly gave up at the ‘bone broth’ recipe and the list of Ten Things To Do Today (lifestyle, not food-related). The eating regime outlined seemed to be quite complicated with lists and charts, and reference to pseudo-cereals – oats are off the menu with this philosophy. There were no recipes in this sample, however, in the list of suggested breakfasts I spotted the two-saucepan porridge again and more unobtainable ingredients. I came to the conclusion that it was more celebrity diet than cookbook, and certainly not on my list.

4. Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall: Love Your Leftovers

Finally, I went back to one of my old favourites – Hugh. This latest offering is an interesting book, essentially explaining how to put together a range of meals from left-overs, or gluts from the potager. Again, it was not vegetarian and many of Hugh’s recipes I’ve seen before and already make, he’s just tweaked them a bit. Left-overs isn’t really a problem to me. For one thing I always meal plan and shop with a list, so we rarely have any left-overs, and what’s more, I’ve been cooking this way for since forever. So, much as I like Hugh’s books, and the Everyday Vegetable Book is one of my top ten cookery books, this is not for me.

My final decision was to download Deliciously Ella Awesome Ingredients. This isn’t the sample I read, but it’s her first book and I do like to start at the beginning. It’s a new experience having a cookery book on the Kindle and one that I am not too sure about. I’ll report back about that, and my success or otherwise with Ella’s recipes soon. Will I succeed in adopting more than four recipes?