My Favourite Ingredients by Skye Gyngell
Garlic, olive oil, beans and cheese…. these are a few of my favourite things. By happy coincidence, they also happen to be up there for restaurateur and food writer Skye Gyngell, which means more fabulous recipes in which to explore their taste sensations. Chicken with garlic and fennel? Yes, please. Carpaccio of beef with red pepper relish (and lashings of extra virgin olive oil)? Absolutely. Borlotti with garlic, sage and olive oil? Yum. As for the bruschetta of sheep’s milk ricotta, lemon oil and bresaola, the dish is for four, but I confess I could gobble the lot.
Like all good cookbooks, Skye’s recipes make you hungry and eager to head to the kitchen. Among her other favourite ingredients – 16 in total – are cherries, chocolate, leaves, tomatoes and vinegar. In keeping with this Australian-born, UK-based chef’s philosophies, all recipes hinge on what is fresh, local and, importantly, in season. Her award-winning restaurant, Petersham Nurseries Cafe, is driven by fresh produce, so much so that her menus are composed daily and are determined by what arrives in the kitchen at its best each morning. “I believe that food eaten in its right season and grown as close to home as possible tastes far better than food flown in from afar,” she writes in the introduction.
It’s a mantra Skye returns to time and again as she explores the merits of the short-lived but delightfully sweet asparagus; the evocative smell of tomatores ripening on the vine; and the powerful flavours of an array of citrus fruit. Even nuts, something many of us keep in our cupboard for months (ahem, if not years), deserve respect. “They are fragile and perishable, soon losing their freshness and turning rancid,” Skye tells us. “So, wherever possible, nuts should be bought in their shell, in small quantities and kept in a sealed container in a cook dark place. They really need to be eaten within a couple of weeks of purchase, at the most.”
This is a delightful cookbook, packed with valuable information about each ingredient as well as enticing recipes. Work you way through them and by the time you get to the final entry – a mouthwatering chocolate and hazelnut cake – there will be one more convert to the wisdom of eating by the seasons. (And, if you love this, make sure you pick up her previous book, A Year in My Kitchen, which has picked up numerous awards, including Best Food Book at Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards.)
