roly poly fish heads

Most of the time i try not to think of Semilong Road. The basement flat with the everlasting smell of damp where we first got burgled and i almost bled to death. Where we first learnt that toilet paper does not magically appear and that life without mum can be be pretty damn strange.
It's also where i first started to cook, skittishly at first. A salmon steak, purchased at Sainsbury's and stared at for hours before being 'pan fried' and eaten with iceberg lettuce. Mild food poisoning became frequent and completely indistinguishable from the near permanet hangovers that come part and parcel of being in your early 20's in a small town with nothing to do but drink yourself into having fun.
Then i received 'Rick Stein's Seafood'. A seemingly huge hardback, that lost its slip cover to grease early on, it's become a staple in my kitchen even if i rarely cook fish anymore. It maintains it's lure with beautiful pictures and clear instructions on how to do anything with fish, i read this book while cooking, i may now be waiting for the 'wakame and vegatable stew' to cook but i'm making a mental note on how to prepare elongated fish for griddling.
Some of the recipes (which start on page 98, before that you get techiniques for anything you can think of) seem over long, the list of ingredients particularly seem enough to send people running to the nearest chip shop but they shouldn't. It's all stuff you've heard of or can get easily.
This book has survived 2 household moves, and i know i'll still be letting pots of god only knows what boil over several moves from now due to re reading the instructions on how to skin freshwater eel for stir frying long after Semilong Road has become a faded black and white memory.

Food and medical examiners...?

I like to use food related analogies, i tell people i 'devour' books.
Especially books like 'Scarpetta's Winter Table' by Patricia Cornwell.
For those of you not up on your female medical examiner with a sidekick dectective, a neice in the F.B.I, and a lover who's sometimes dead, i recommend the Kay Scarpetta books, the earlier ones in particular.
But back to the cookbook, it's unusual in that it's written as a standalone story about the main charaters from the series revolving around christmas with recipes woven into the story in such a way, you barely even notice you've just accquired a recipe for Thousand Island Dressing or a stew. It just flows. It happens in the actual books she writes as well, its how i finally figured out to make lasagne.
My copy which cost me, or more honestly my dad, £1.55 came complete with food stains which for some reason are on pages with no recipes on them making me think that someone cooked 'Marino's last minute Chili' and then sat down with a steaming bowl and proceded to read the rest of the book.
It's more of a reference work than something you'll cook from again and again, you'll pick it up to read her description of stew as a living entity or to remind yourself on how to make a pizza base. Most of all, i think, you'll pick this book up just to re read the beautiful writing surrounding the idea of food, the emotions that cooking for those closest to you bring to the fore. It perfectly brings to life the concept of cooking as love.

Savoury tarts and other delights..

I love the idea of cookbooks as social history, a snapshot of the hopes and dreams of previous generations, the window into a long ago kitchen brought to life by notes scribbled in the margins, the way the spine has broken so the book falls instantly open to a favoured recipe and the occaisonal splatter of what, even after 40 years, still smells faintly of mushroom soup.
However, my copy of ''Better Home Cookery Parties and Entertaing' by Myra Street, published in 1968, is still in almost entirely pristine condition, conjuring up images of a newly wed staring blankly at the pages as 'mothers little helper' plays in the background, a bottle of gin close to hand before bursting in to tears, cursing her in laws and consigning the whole idea to hell before running off with the hippy from the commune down the road.
And i wouldn't blame her in the slightest.
When you're faced with recipes for 'cottage cheese dip', 'pampered beef steaks' and the exotic 'pizza', which is a savoury tart with a bread base in case you were wondering, it is incredibly easy to subcome to an attack of the vapours even before you reach the 'snacks by the yard' on a baked bean 'base'. An idea so simple yet so strangely evil....
The pictures are amazing. Pretty much a perfect example of early food photography, they glisten!, they gleam!, the jacket potato picture is easily confused with the chocolate pudding picture!
They also weirdly look like paintings, especially the 'Noodle Pork Supper', which makes sense in a way since i refuse to believe it's a real dish.
You can also tell this book is 40 odd years old since the 'name cookies' for toddlers have 'Bob' and 'Sue' in swirly icing across the top of them, names now associated with, er, 40 year olds.... it's also suggested you serve them 'meat pie'. Meat pie for toddlers. Yes, they'll love that.
I've just realised i was overcharged for this, i paid £1.50 and it has 70p pencilled on the front page. Bastards.
I have never cooked for this book and unless i'm begged to produce something for a 60's theme party i never will.
I can't bring myself to.

Variations you say?

I got this book at the big charity shop in Nottingham, you know the one, halfway up the hill, near the pasta place and the joke shop? Yes you do. It's all glass and stairs and they always have that lovely display of ties near the counter. That one.
Anyway, having paid my 50p to the slightly strange lady behind the counter i emerged triumphant with 'Variations on a recipe' by Jean Conil & Hugh WIlliams. A slim little paperback, originally published in 1980, it provides simple but tasty recipes and then....and then..it provides variations! For each recipe! Genius.
Furthermore it freely tells you the calorie count for each portion but i suggest you follow my lead and ignore them because the Spaghetti Conil recipe has 700 calories per portion! Which is a lot even if it is a yummy but somewhat retro pasta dish.
It also, god bless it's little cookbooky socks, has the very handy, should be required in ALL cookbooks, metric> imperial> cups converversion chart at the front, dear lord, i love those things.
It rather wonderfully continues with a chemistry and physics section so i am now fully aware that a sauce 'should have no less than 40% of the total amount as wine'. The sort of cookery magic that no one ever thinks to bloody well tell you.
It's not overly heavy on vegetarian recipes but the ones that are included do look like they could provide a talking point next time The Vegan graces me with her fair presence, well two of them, everything else appears to have hard boiled egg yolks in it, begging the question..what the hell do i do with the whites? Feed them as a ever so odd starter and ensure everyone is talking about me and my weird choice of party foods, pop them straight in the bin or...what? I don't know. Other than that it's an ace book and full of win.

I didn't steal it, i found it...there's a difference.

There is something incredibly special about cookbooks you find. It's almost as good as finding money, possibly better since i'll just spend the money but i can treasure the book forever.
I aquired the gem that is 'Keep it Simple 30 minute meals from scratch' by Marian Burros because someone left it in the library. Left it! Whoever it was Is. An. Idiot, and you can tell them i said that too.
It's an american book as well, complete with the 'special price! $1.99' tag on it, this is seriously the sort of thing i live for. And i really, really mean that.
The book is seperated into menus with amazingly wonderful titles like ' old fashioned menu for 2 with new twist', 'menu for 2 or 3 for a more special dinner' and my favouritist ever, a 'moderately french menu for 3' which i plan to use the minute i need a quick but classily moderate meal for 3 people...
It's an amazingly easy to use book, even if some of the recipes, seem, well, a tad odd to put it politely, and there seems to be a slight over reliance on citrus but i'll forgive her that since there's a whole section of meatfree menus that are easily veganised. They are also, for an early 80's book incredibly healthy- lots of vegetables and most of the desserts are fruit with the occaisonal sprinkle of brown sugar.
In addition to the actual recipes, she also provides a very handy game plan so you know not to start the cauliflower at the same time as the meatloaf, theres also a shopping list for each menu, she really couldn't make it any easier.
This is really an almost perfect cookbook, easy to follow, a very wide range of recipes, even if they do seem a little strange 26 years after it was written, its as good a history of food as it is a cookbook.
Glorious in other words.