Roast Chicken And Other Stories

I happened to stumble on a description of this book somewhere and read it was recently reprinted and was rated the most popular cook book in England. I can see why it's so popular. A pleasure to read, not just for the recipes, which are a mixture of western European classics, English 'comfort foods' and a few more contemporary recipes from the 70's era. It's the stories in this book that make it so endearing. This book is an obvious labor of love. I like that the author chose to share his favorite foods with us. In my opinion the best part of this cook book is the stories he tells about each recipe, how he discovered it and his experiences in the pleasures of enjoying a well made meal. This is not a book meant to impress, it's a sharing of the joys of cooking and eating from the author's heart. A few of his recipes will seem very foreign to the American palate and some of his cooking directions may take a bit of getting used to for the less experienced American cook. In some cases he gives very clear directions and in other cases he assumes you know what you're doing and the directions are more sparse. Still, don't be intimidated by my description here. This is worth having in your kitchen. All in all, a pure delight.

(My 5-star reviews are few and far between.) I got this book three years ago; read it cover-to-cover in one sitting, loving every page, but for some reason never cooked from it until last week, when I made the roast chicken. It's no doubt best to start with a chicken that actually had a life, rather than the factory-raised and infinitely-parsed "free-range organic" bird that I had to resort to, but the result was brilliant, anyway. (See Michael Pollan if you need help understanding "free-range organic", "naturally-nested", "cage-free", or any other of the all-but-meaningless terms the American Food Machine has lobbied and muscled its way into ownership of.) But the roast chicken is just excellent roast chicken. The parsley soup is beyond imagining. Here's the ingredient list: butter, parsley, leek, chicken stock, potato, cream. But the parsley is actually three ingredients prepared in different ways, each designed to play up a different chord of the full parsley sound. The result is ... parsley, as imagined by God. My two guests (rather sniffy food-snobs, much like myself to be candid) were struck dumb, and declared it the best thing I'd ever made... ...until this afternoon, when one, feeling peckish, reached for the leftovers, which I'd serendipitously saved in an Old-Fashioned glass. It was by then parsley mousse, and even better. (Recipe note: It can be improved by exactly one tablespoon of fish sauce, believe it or not. It rounds and fills it out without giving a hint to its own presence. My usual "invisible body-builder" is trace amounts of peanut butter, but that's too coarse for this delicate recipe.) My mind is now in overdrive, utterly inspired by that one recipe. What would similar treatment do for cilantro ... sorrel ... watercress? I plan to serve it again in a few days' time, this time also infusing some parsley oil to add green globules of garnish, but am also dreaming of inventing potato ice cream and serving "cold parsley soup with potato dumplings", all covered with a drizzle of beetroot oil instead of raspberry syrup. That's the sort of way this book might get you thinking. If you pulled it off, you might then start to dream of castles in Spain, or at least famous restaurateurs... Ahem! Back to the cookbook review. Some of his ingredients seem strangely ... amateurish, for one so insistent on pure, simple ingredients. Sure you can get "Tom Yum cubes" in any Asian store here, but in the same store you could also get fresh lemongrass and galangal and shrimp paste, and blow Mr. Hopkinson's recipe for cilantro and coconut soup away with actual tom yum paste, made fresh with a blender and five minutes work. This IS a cookbook review. I'm trying to accurately describe the effect this marvellous book has had on me, and might well have on you, if you let it. I probably won't try any of the brain recipes, either (been there; done that: brains taste rather chemically-unpleasant-acidy), but I WILL steel myself and reapproach tripe, at least. It'll no doubt taste of cow's stomach, as imagined by God, but hey: we only live once...

some great cooking hints . The recipes are rich in flavor and high in calories for the most part

I bought this book for my Kindle and loved it so much, I'm getting the print version so I can more easily carry all the glorious recipes into the kitchen. Simon Hopkinson's writing is breathtakingly brilliant. I have read many passages over and over again, marveling at his skill. Sometimes people ask who would you like to invite for dinner. I just wish I could invite Simon Hopkinson to share my table as I feel so happy to have shared his.

This should become a classic! A lovely account of life using simple recipes which transformed my appreciation of good ingredients and basic techniques.

I had read about this book when it came out, but never followed up. I saw it on Amazon on sale and bought it for me and one for my sister. It is good reading, even if you never make the recipes. Hopkinson has a definite viewpoint on food. He makes you look at ingredients differently. Try it, you'll like it or at least think about some foods in a new way.

I enjoyed the writing style of the vignettes and the cookbook itself, but it still is mostly a cookbook. The stories element is not really there, it's more like anectdotes realted to the recepies. As a cookbook it is friendly and fun. As a book with stories... Not so much.

good read, great recipes

The book is a damaged library book. Not good enough.

Great stories and recipes. Recommended in Jay Rayner’s book and thoroughly enjoyed. If you’re a foodie it’s a must have.

yummy, elegant, unfussy recipes. Nicely written, enjoyable to read. Great illustrations and short, pleasant anecdotes.

As promised this is an excellent cookbook and very well produced. But there is one problem, the version that you can look at on the Amazon web site is the European edition; however, the one that you buy is the American edition with all the delights of the American weights and measures like “cups” of butter and no conversion table. So you have to edit all the recipes before they can be used.

Simon Hopkinson schreibt auf liebevolle Art und Weise. Kochen mit seinem Buch macht Spaß, ist informativ und es schmeckt einfach herrlich.