So I bought it. If nothing else, Heston Blumenthal at Home is another one of those hardback books that looks great on the book shelf.  This book doesn’t contain many quick recipes. Even the recipes that I would consider for a week night dinner, are recipes that take a lot of preparation and cooking time. Take the chilli con carne for example. It is recommended that you brine the beans for 12 hours and cook the tomatoes in a pressure cooker then infuse them with the flavours from the vine. I don’t think I like chilli con carne enough to go to all the effort.

The first recipe I tried were the tea infused cookies.  I adapted it slightly, but the main aspect of the recipe from Heston’s point of view was to make your own chocolate chip cookies.  I wouldn’t do it again.  It was time consuming, and once you have baked the cookies you cannot distinguish between the homemade and shop bought version.

Graham likes to cook, but doesn’t do it very often. When he does cook, he likes to push the boat out, so the likes of Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal always seem to take his fancy.  So it was Graham that instigated the garden salad.  This is a dish based on the edible garden that Heston made for one of his feasts.  This was definitely a recipe that takes time and patience.  The dish comprises of a mayonnaise type sauce, with olive ‘soil’ on top, into which you ‘plant’ the baby veg.  There was nothing particularly difficult about it, but the olives took four hours to dry out to make the soil.  We also couldn’t get hold of the cereal required to give the soil a bit of extra colour, so we added toasted pinenuts instead.

We managed to recreate this dish quite well I think, but I have to say the pictures in the book are a little misleading.  In order to fill my relatively small terrine dish we had to double the recipe.  The picture in the book is highly misleading.  The number of vegetables that we could fit in the terrine dish were not enough to satisfy two people for an entree, so we ended up serving extra on the side.  With a double quantity of sauce and olives we ended up with loads left over. We used some of the leftovers as a topping for grilled fish, and served some as a tartare type sauce with another dish, but the rest of it went off before we had time to eat it.

I would try this dish again for a dinner party as it does look impressive in the centre of the table, but I would have to make sure there are plenty of crudites on the side to fill up the guests.

Many of the dishes in this book also require equipment I don’t have, like a pressure cooker.  There is however a whole chapter dedicated to cooking sous vide, or boil in a bag as I affectionately like to call it.  This does require a vacuum sealer and a thermometer, so not accessible to most home cooks, but I am lucky enough to have one as it is also a great way of keeping meat and cheese fresh for longer.

As I don’t have a proper water bath I can only cook sous vide recipes that require a relatively short cooking time.  This allows me to monitor the temperature of the water on the stove top.  The rack of lamb recipe seemed perfect.  Unfortunately there isn’t a great deal of explanation in the book about the best cut of meat for this.  I chose an Australian rack of lamb, but in hindsight a Frenched rack of lamb would have been better.  The meat was delicious but when you’re cooking at low temperatures in a bag the fat doesn’t render out so it was a little off putting.

The lamb was served with some yellow heirloom carrots that I found at the farmers market. Heston suggested glazing in butter, which was highly unhealthy but highly tasty.

There are still plenty of recipes that I’d like to try in this book, including the cauliflower macaroni cheese and the roast leg of lamb. There are also plenty of recipes that I’ll leave for Heston, including the egg and bacon ice cream and lentils cooked in smoke water.   Definitely a book for the keen home cook with all the fancy gadgets, or someone who likes to read about the technicalities of cooking without necessarily making any of the recipes.  And in answer to my original question, is it really possible to cook like Heston at home? I think it is, with a little confidence, time and patience.

I may be a little bias (on two counts) but I really do think the latest offering from Jamie is a good one. I was uninspired by some of his recent work, but Jamie is back on fine form with Jamie’s Great Britain. So not only do I love Jamie, but I am also passionate about British cooking; this meant I was eagerly anticipating the recipes in this book. I was imagining roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, fish and chips, stews and pies, but Jamie has delved deeper than that. Jamie has realised there is more to British cooking than the old traditions. If you have been following Jamie’s adventures on channel ten then you will know he is wending his way around the country in his converted army van (The Cock in Cider), in search of modern British food, which when you look back through the history of Britain is largely influenced by the countries of the Empire and new migrant populations.

Having said all that the book does cover some classic British dishes, with a Jamie twist. There are Yorkshire puddings (served with smoked trout or as the classic toad-in-the-hole); roast chicken (with Indian spices); fish pie (making use of underused fish varieties) and a re-invention of the retro dish prawn cocktail to name but a few.

So what caught my eye? In the ‘pub grub’ section, the first dish I had to try is what I know as the classic scampi dish. No, not those beautiful, small, lobster type creatures (also known as langoustine) that I buy at the fish markets, but the English pub dish that involves breaded fish, often served in a basket with chips and tartare sauce.  I know the term ‘breaded fish’ is a bit vague, but vague is what you get in some lesser quality establishments, but if it is good quality scampi it will contain scampi.  Jamie suggests using scampi, but the price per kilo I couldn’t quite justify it, so I went for good, large king prawns. And, oh my word, it was sensational. Even better than the best pub food I remember, and served with Jamie’s home made tartare sauce I can see this becoming a regular fixture on our menu. Thank you Jamie for confirming my love of scampi.

What else did I try? The Sunday roast steak of course. Well, actually, not of course because this roast beef challenges my definition of roast beef in so many ways, and for those of you that know me well, you’ll know I like to do things my way and I’m not that good with change. I did however follow the roast beef recipe to the letter, instead of changing the recipe to how I would normally do it, and it pains me to admit it, but I liked it… I like the different cuts of beef, presented in an unusual way, and I like the roast potatoes and roast turnips, cooked in butter of all things. If you’d asked me prior to this whether butter would work, I’d have said don’t be ridiculous it has to be duck fat, or in the very least lard, but you can also roast in butter it just gives a slightly different taste and texture.

In the Sunday lunch section Jamie offers a range of options for the Sunday roast, which is an absolute institution in all good British homes, but instead of regurgitating the same old options Jamie offers some great new ideas, and apparently they don’t all have to be eaten with roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings…

I feel I have to try and give a balanced view of this book to prove that I am not as biased as you think.  My only uncertainty is the way the book is arranged.  The chapters are a bit of a confusion between mealtimes (breakfast, afternoon tea, Sunday lunch, pudding); food categories (soups, salads, pies and puddings, vegetables, wild food, condiments); and a couple of other categories thrown in for good measure (pub grub, new British classics, seaside). Having said that, if you can’t find what you’re looking for, use the index, it’s not that hard!

With my new unending supply of eggs from my backyard chooks I jumped straight into the breakfast section an enjoyed the Glasgow potato scones with scrambled egg. I substituted the smoked salmon with some home cured gravlax. This is another dish that will become a regular fixture as it was pretty quick to make, much easier than Graham’s favourite potato rostis and I think they are probably tastier.

I think I may well end up cooking all the recipes in this book as I did with The Naked Chef last year, so if you are in any doubt about British cuisine I challenge you to give this book a go and I defy you not to love the end result.

You can see a full list of the recipes in this book here. And in case you are wondering I bought this book with my own money and I am in no way, shape or form, sponsored by Jamie Oliver!

South East Asian Food by Rosemary Brissenden has been re-released this month and updated for 2011.  The book was first released in 1970. The original book covered recipes from Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and Indonesia, but Rosemary has updated this version to include Laos and Vietnam, which were inaccessible to tourists in the 1960′s.

The first thing you see when you look at this book, apart from the gorgeous mat olive green cover is the original review from Elizabeth David “A book that every serious cook should possess.” I’m a serious home cook, but what did I make of the book…I wanted to get cooking Asian cuisine the minute I got the book, but I underestimated what a ‘book for a serious cook’ would look like.  I was overwhelmed by the number of recipes and didn’t know where to start.  I like the way the book is organised, by country and then by cooking style, so if you are unsure what to cook, I would suggest you first decide which country you would like to cook from and then how you’d like to cook: will it be curry? Or stir fry? Or maybe something grilled or roasted?

I have been craving Indian curry recently. Not a country covered by this book, however, the section dedicated to Malaysia and Singapore is further divided into the cuisines that define these countries: Malay, Chinese, Nyonya, Eurasian and Indian. So there I had it, the first dish I tried was an Indian Keema curry.  Not something I have made at home before, but the recipe seemed fairly straightforward.  This was one of the better curry recipes I read, as it actually gave fairly specific cooking times. Some of the other recipes I looked at and discounted had instructions that read “simmer until meat is tender”. This is fine if you are an experienced cook, and have a few hours to spare,  but I fear someone who hasn’t cooked a curry before would fall at the first hurdle with these recipes and either end up with tough, inedible curry or find themselves eating dinner three hours after they intended to.

The next dish I tried was a Thai dish.  I have to say, as I was looking for dishes to cook, I was looking for dishes I was familiar with, but the Thai section does not contain a recipe for Pad Thai, nor does it contain a recipe for Massaman curry (the dish my Australian Thai friend raves about) so I settled for the Tom Yam Kung – a hot and spicy (unless Nic Cooks makes it) prawn soup. I have to confess I love the flavours of Asian cooking but I’m not very good with chilli, despite my best efforts to train myself to eat it.  This means when we go out for an Asian meal I am confined to the realms of Korma and Pad Thai, but if I cook Asian dishes at home I can cook whatever I like and moderate the chilli to suit my taste. This is exactly what I did when I made the Tom Yam Kung and it was truly sensational. It had the classic sweet and sour taste but just enough ‘hot’ that I could taste but still eat.  I added additional chilli into Graham’s dish to suit his more usual palate.

So I’m often drawn to recipes that are quite specific. I like to know exactly how a recipe should be the first time I cook it; then I can work out how to alter it to my taste the next time.  The recipes in South East Asian Food were not exact enough for me on the first reading, but as I started to cook, I realised for an experienced cook it was actually quite liberating.  I wasn’t bound to anything, and I could make the dish my own from the get go, and still end up with something that felt pretty authentic.

Bring on the next dishes.  I was feeling a little more confident now, having tried familiar dishes, with some idea of how they should turn out, I decided to jump head first into the deep end.  I have never eaten, let alone cooked a Cambodian dish, so why not give it a try?  Again, this book is for the serious cook, it has no photographs, but the descriptions paint a pretty good picture and the Nheam Sakh Ko Salat, or beef and lettuce salad painted a very real picture in my head.  Although this is a Cambodian salad it painted a very real image of a 1970′s salad in my head. I was not old enough to be eating salad in the 1970′s but my parents were not the trend setters I like to think they were, and they were still serving that classic 1970′s salad well into the 80′s, so I have clear memories of this at family gatherings.  As the recipe outlines, I carefully lined my serving bowl with cos lettuce and having arranged the stir fried beef in the centre of the dish, I carefully arranged the tomatoes, hard boiled egg and sliced onion around the edge. On first sighting, there is absolutely nothing typically Asian about this dish, it has walked straight out of the 1970′s, but the sweet and sour dressing saved the day. If I did this again I would re-vamp the presentation for today and it would probably  be as popular as a Thai beef salad, only easier and just as tasty.

The other dish I have tried from this book is the Nasi Kebuli or the Indonesian ‘Indian Rice’.  I went for this dish as it is a dish I would never normally dream of cooking.  Rice is an accompaniment so I usually spend all my time on the curry, or the stir fry then simply boil the rice and serve. But just this once, as I had a new, shiny cookbook, I decided to try something I wouldn’t normally bother with.  This involved poaching some chicken, then cooking the rice in the poaching liquor, then steaming the rice and serving with the fried chicken.  A little more effort than I would normally go to for rice, especially as I have a love hate relationship with the small, white grain.  Rice was the focus of the first real argument for me and my now husband, (but then fresh faced boyfriend.) We were traveling around South East Asia in 1998, on a very tight budget, so pretty much every meal contained rice.  After 8 weeks I was over it.   I hadn’t traveled further than the North of France prior to this. So one night, just before dinner, I stamped my feet and declared I wanted “bangers and mash like my dad makes.” This wasn’t possible in the Cameron Highlands, so I had to settle for roti and rice. Needles to say, when we made it to Western shores, I didn’t eat rice for many, many years.

Back to the book.  What is the verdict?  It most definitely is a book for the serious cook, you have to know what you are aiming for, as the cooking instructions are not specific enough for a novice. The lack of photos also means you have to be pretty confident with where you are going, but having said that, for a book with no photos the illustrations are quite pleasing.

Has the book been updated for the modern cook? I’m not convinced. I was a little concerned by the inconsistency of measurements. Some parts of the recipes have been updated into grams and other parts are still cups.  The recipes have apparently been added to, particularly to include ingredients that were not readily available in the 1970′s, however, I cannot confirm this as I do not have the original.  Personally if I were updating the recipe I would also have removed the shark fin recipes. Shark fin may have been acceptable in the 1970′s but in 2011, this is not an ingredient the responsible, sustainable cook would be working with.

Would I buy this book? Not if I had seen it on the shelf a few months ago.  Twelve months ago, I would never had admitted it, but I think I was highly swayed by pictures when it came to recipes; but doing the Jamie challenge has forced me to cook the recipes without pictures, which has actually lead to some amazing discoveries and this book definitely has a few gems if you take the time time to read it.  It is also a book that you can, and should read.  There is information at the beginning of each chapter about each region and a lengthy introduction about the updates.  So now I have started, I can’t wait to cook more and extend my Asian cooking repertoire.

So the moral to this tale? Even if a book doesn’t have enticing photos of the recipes, give it a go. And for this book, I agree with Elizabeth David, you probably do have to be a serious cook to execute these recipes, well, certainly one with  little Asian experience. But don’t let that put you off, practice makes perfect (and I of all people should know that…)