Books I love: Scrumptious

One of the cookery books I stock in my shop is Scrumptious by Jane-Anne Hobbs. She started a food blog about five years ago, and along the way her hobby turned into a new career as a recipe developer and now a published author. What I find interesting is that although she thinks TV reality shows encourage people to cook good food at home, they do not show the finer details of the cooking process. For example, they don’t show the patience needed and the time consuming attention to details. For her, cooking and entertaining is about following your heart, planning ahead and being careful about measurements, all the while staying calm, paying attention to every part of the process.

My own little Junior Masterchef (see here) is a perfect example of what the author describes – he thinks everything in the kitchen must be done in a huge rush because you have only “15 minutes to go”. But the two of us attempted the truly scrumptious Linguine with a Chilled Sauce of Chicken, Tomato and Herbs. Lots (and lots!) of chopping and very time consuming, but what a great dish! The five year old’s very blunt knife did not make life easy for him and I smiled every time he licked the tomato seeds off his forearms when it sprayed all over, but we had a great time in the kitchen!

 

 

You can follow her blog here.