‘Cooking is about quiet moments of joy,’ says the Observer’s food writer in this exclusive extract from A Cook’s Book
You could measure my life in recipes. Each one a letter to a friend, a story of something I have made for dinner, the tale of how it came to be on my table. A salad tossed together with broad beans, salted ricotta and the first white tipped radishes of spring; a roast chicken, its crisp skin served with a fat jug of its roasting juices on an autumn day; or a gloriously messy platter of grilled aubergines, hummus and torn flatbread shared with the best of friends.
That letter might accurately chronicle the details of a cake with which I am quietly pleased, tell the reader of a quince that has simmered peacefully in lemon juice and orange-blossom honey on my hob on a winter’s afternoon, or mention a pillowy dumpling I have just lifted from a steaming bamboo basket. Sharing food with those at your table – passing round a bowl of late autumn raspberries or a slice of sugar-encrusted blackberry and apple pie – is heartwarming enough, but a recipe posted in a newspaper, ephemerally on social media or in more lasting form in the pages of a book has the chance to be shared even more widely. It is just a recipe, a suggestion for something you might like to make for others, but it is what I do.