"The Physiology of Taste" by Jean Antheleme Brillat-Savarin

The book "The Physiology of Taste" by Jean Antheleme Brillat-Savarin is available from Amazon for £8.44 which is a 35% discount on the RRP.

Click on the link below to go directly to the correct page at Amazon where you can read more and where you can buy the book if you wish.



Please note that the information above is correct at the time of writing but price and availability do sometimes change at Amazon.

Marco Pierre White's Great British Feast

The book "Marco Pierre White's Great British Feast" is available from Amazon for £12.99 which is a 35% discount on the RRP.

Click on the link below to go directly to the correct page at Amazon where you can read more and where you can buy the book if you want to.



Please note that the information above is correct at the time of writing but that price and availability do sometimes change at Amazon.

"The Food Doctor Ultimate Diet" by Ian Marber

The book "The Food Doctor Ultimate Diet" by Ian Marber is available from Amazon for £9 which is a 40% discount on the RRP. The book is only really of value if you don't own any of the author's previous books as it is a sort of "Best Of" type book.

Click on the link below to go directly to the correct page at Amazon where you can read more and where you can buy the book if you want.



Please note that the information above is correct at the time of writing but that price and availability do sometimes change at Amazon.

"Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking" by Kate Colquhoun

The book "Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking" by Kate Colquhoun is available from Amazon for £14 which is a 30% discount on the RRP.

The paperback edition is published on 7th July and is £6.29.

Click on the link below to go directly to the correct page at Amazon where you can read more or order the book if you want to (or pre-order in the case of the paperback, which is the second link).



Please note that the information above is correct at the time of writing but that price and availability do sometimes change at Amazon.

"The Man Who Ate the World" by Jay Rayner

The book "The Man Who Ate the World: In Search of the Perfect Dinner" by Jay Rayner is available from Amazon for £10.19 which is a 40% discount on the RRP.

Click on the link below to go directly to the correct page at Amazon where you can read more and where you can buy the book if you want to.



Please note that the information above is correct at the time of writing but that price and availability do sometimes change at Amazon.

"Eat Your Heart Out" by Felicity Lawrence

The book "Eat Your Heart Out: Why the Food Business Is Bad for the Planet and Your Health" by Felicity Lawrence is available from Amazon for £4.49 which is a 50% discount on the RRP.

Click on the link below to go directly to the correct page at Amazon where you can read more and where you can buy the book if you want to.



Please note that the information above is correct at the time of writing but that price and availability do sometimes change at Amazon.

"Eating For England" by Nigel Slater

The book "Eating For England" by Nigel Slater has been released in paperback and is currently on sale at Amazon for £3.99 which is a 50% discount.

Click on the link below and you will go directly to the correct page at Amazon where you can read more and where you can buy the book if you want to.



Please note that the information above is correct at the time of writing but that Amazon do sometimes change price and availability.

And here is a random unrelated fact - Joe Elliot, lead singer of Heavy Rock band Def Leppard lives in Leopardstown on the outskirts of Dublin.

"Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy" by Hannah Glasse

The book "Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy" by Hannah Glasse is available from Amazon for £9.01.

Click on the link below to go directly to the correct page at Amazon where you can buy the book if that's what you want to do.



Please note that the information above is correct at the time of writing but that price and availability may change at Amazon.

"The Compassionate Carnivore" by Catherine Friend

The book "The Compassionate Carnivore" by Catherine Friend is published on the 5th June and it is available to order from Amazon for the price of £9.23 (which is a 34% discount on the RRP of £13.99)

Click on the link below to go directly to the correct page at Amazon where you can read more about the book and order it if that's what you want to do.




Please note that whilst the information above is correct at the time of writing Amazon do sometimes change price and availability.

"The Hamburger" by Josh Ozersky

The book "The Hamburger" by Josh Ozersky is currently available from Amazon for £14.24 which is a 5% discount.

Click on the link below to go to the correct page at Amazon where you can read more and buy the book if that's what you want to do.



Please note that the information above is correct at the time of writing but Amazon do sometimes change price and availability.

"Breakfast at the Wolseley" by AA Gill

The book "Breakfast at the Wolseley" by AA Gill is available from Amazon at £6.49 which is a discount of 50%.

Click on the link below to go directly to the correct page at Amazon where you can read more and buy the book if you want to.



Please note that all the information above was correct at the time of writing but that Amazon may change both price and availability.

"1080 Recipes" by Simone Ortega and Ines Ortega

The cookbook "1080 Recipes" by Simone Ortega and Ines Ortega is available from Amazon for £16.22 which is a 35% discount.

Click on the link below to go to the right page at Amazon where you can read more about the book, including some very positive reviews of this very popular cookbook of Spanish Recipes. If you do choose to buy the book note that it is available for free delivery with Amazon's Super Saver Delivery option.



(Please note that the information here is correct at the time that I wrote it - but price and availability do sometimes change at Amazon).

Building A Brick Oven

I imagine that I was not alone in coveting Jamie Oliver's Brick Oven that featured so heavily in his series Jamie At Home. So I did a bit of research to see what you might need to do to go about having one.

The best place to start is "Your Brick Oven: Building It and Baking in It" which is available from Amazon. The book's author Russell Jeavons has his own restaurant in South Australia which uses brick ovens. The book is divided into two sections. The first section is how to build an oven and the second section is recipes for dishes that you can make in your oven. These include bread, a variety of pizzas, roast chicken and Turkish lamb as well as a surprisingly wide range of desserts. (And who could resist a wood fired strudel?)

The recipes are straight forward enough - but after reading this book I think it's fair to say that building your own oven is not. You will need to be determined and you will need to have some fairly decent skills as a builder (or at least the ability to pick up the skills as you go along). But if you do want to have a go then this book's detailed and systematic approach seems to pretty much cover everything and offers loads of little tips and ideas that the author has gained though experience.

My approach would be to hire a local builder who I would work with as I followed the plans in this book. It's also important that you make sure sure that you don't live in a smokeless zone and that you check out any other local by-laws.

As an alternative you could build yourself a mud oven -Build Your Own Earth Oven: A Low-Cost, Wood-Fired Mud Oven, Simple Sourdough Bread, Perfect Loaves I have not got a clue what this book is like - but I thought the product description at Amazon by the author was brilliantly bonkers.

Finally - you can buy wood stoves for cooking outdoors. Amazon has this PIZZA OVEN for example.

How to be the Perfect Housewife by Anthea Turner.

"How to be the Perfect Housewife": Entertain in Style (Perfect Housewife) is the new book by Anthea Turner and it's available from Amazon at half price.



Obviously Mrs Turner can hardly be described as a telly chef - but this book does have some useful advice on taking the stress out of organising a dinner party and the like.

The new book is a follow up to this one which proved popular and has had good reviews:

Tefal ActiFry

Channel 5's Gadget Show tested the Tefal ActiFry on their show and I think they quite liked it. It is currently on offer at at Amazon with a £28 reduction.



Most of the reviews at Amazon aren't too bad either which is not surprising because it's healthier and safer than the traditional way of frying chips.

Gordon Ramsay's Healthy Appetite

Gordon Ramsay's new book Healthy Appetite is available from Amazon for £9.99 which is a 50% discount. Click on the link below to read more and buy it if that's what you want to do.

The Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi

The Cookbook by Yotam Ottolengnhi and Sami Tamimi is released next month (On the 1st May according to Amazon.)

You can pre-order the book from Amazon for the price of £16.50 which is cheaper than anywhere else I've seen.



Ottolenghi's culinary mini empire is based in the posher parts of London. There are three delis in Belgravia, Kensington and Notting Hill (two of which offer a limited service as a cafe) and there is a restaurant in Islington which the Observer rated as being one of the best places in London to get breakfast. The food seems to be mostly drawn from east Mediterranean cuisine (both authors are from Jerusalem) but is also open to drawing on other region's cuisines. Finally, and I'm never really sure how important this is in cookbooks, the design looks really lovely. (You can see some of the page layouts at Amazon)

Delia Smith's How To Cheat At Cooking. A Review.

Something I want to do with this blog is to try and review some of the telly chef's cookbooks and the best way to do that is by trying the recipes. So I'll start with "Delia's How To Cheat At Cooking," which you can get from Amazon with a 55% reduction.




This review will be an on-going process as I try different recipes but the first thing to say about the book is how well it is designed. The copy I have has a plastic cover which is brilliant idea - as most of my cookery book's covers are creased and stained and ripped.

As for the recipes - well, for a book that is about cheating at cooking I did not find the ones I have tried that straight forward. For example the recipe for Greek lamb baked with garlic and lemon is described as simple, which it is, but there was garlic to sliver and fat to remove and parsley and lemon to grate and blend and chop. It was lovely to eat - and enjoyable to cook - but at no point did I feel like I was cheating.

The book does have a lot of cheats - jarred sauces and the like and a lot of these do seem to be good idea. However I don't think that the cheats take anything away from any enjoyment you might get from cooking a meal. So tomorrow I'm going to try the sizzling scallops with garlic butter crumbs. The scallops are frozen and the breadcrumbs are prepared - but the recipe is not super straightforward and I'm looking forward to trying not to cock it up almost as much as I am to eating the end result.

George Foreman 11480 Big Classic Metallic Grill

This is not really anything to do with celebrity chefs - but George Foreman is a celebrity and the grill is for cooking so I'll happily point out that this grill comes highly recommended - (I don't think it got one bad review at Amazon) and Amazon are currently selling it at a £40 reduction and it can come with free delivery.








For some reason the George Foreman brand of grills has provided a rich seam of humour for stand up comedians. Not sure why- but I've got a story about George Foreman that is not incredibly funny but I'll write it anyway.

A friend of mine is a boxing journalist and he was sent to a hotel in Heathrow to interview Foreman who was over here to promote his grills. The deal was that my friend could talk to him about boxing - as long as somewhere in the article the grills were mentioned. But Foreman did not want to talk about boxing, and ignoring questions about his career and Ali and Frazier and so on he unwaveringly stuck to the subject of his grills. So my friend did not get what he wanted, but despite being crest-fallen he asked Foreman if he could have an autograph for his friend (me). Foreman agreed and pulled out a promotional post card for his grill and asked my friend who to make it out to.
"Ian" said my friend
"I-And" said Foreman
"No-Ian" said my friend
"Ellen" said Foreman
"No- Ian. I. A. N." - said my friend
"Oh Ok" said Foreman
...and I received a promotional postcard which read "Lenny - enjoy the grill. George."

Maybe not the funniest story in the world- the fact that Foreman named his six sons George is much funnier, and I've lost the postcard.

Spanish Cuisine and A Cook's Tour Of Spain

Strangely - there is no book tie in with this series - so if you were inspired by what you saw then you'll have to look elsewhere and some of these books might work for you.

From Amazon - The Spanish cookbook that has has the best reviews is 1080 Recipes It's recipes are modern and are simple. The Moro Cookbook also has great reviews. It's recipes are not exclusively Spanish - it includes North African dishes - but I guess that is one of the points of Spanish cooking. The Real Taste of Spain: Recipes Inspired by the Markets of Spain does not have any Amazon reviews - but it is more in the spirit of the TV show.

If you were taken by the idea of the quite posh presenter who does not mind getting a bit grubby then she has published these two books. Cook: Smart, Seasonal Recipes for Hungry People, which has good reviews and The Wild Gourmets: Adventures in Food and Freedom which one reviewer really hated, mainly because he felt that it was little more than a urban middle class fantasy about rural life. Surely that's the point - I really doubt that the good people of Hampsted and Highgate really want to be peasants and foragers.

Much of this show was set in Spain but it also had Tommi Miers making Spanish dishes in her kitchen in the UK and as she was frying her onions and crushing her garlic, in the background, we could see her washing machine. I liked that. I can't remember many cookery shows that show the other things we use the kitchen for. Maybe next week we will get to see her pedal bin. Hope so.

Away from Tommi's kitchen the show's attention was self consciously visceral. We saw dogs killing rabbits, pigs having their throats cut, old Spanish women squeezing the faeces from the dead pigs intestines and sausage meat kneeded by the grubby hands of elderly Spanish peasants (though I don't think the show called them that - it was just went out of its way to make it clear that that's what they were). They even had old blokes and goats.


I guess it's starting to sound like I'm sneering at the show - but I'm not really. (The Guardian does though). I thought that, like all good cookery shows it has a spine of eccentricity running through it, a posh girl getting grubby in the muddy and bloody world of Spanish peasants is as a good a premise for a TV show as any.


And some of the food looked great.

My favourite Spanish restaurant is in North London where I used to live. It is
El Molino - a Tapas bar on the Holloway Road. It was popular with a lot of North London's Spanish community and I would happily recommend it.

So I have.

Finally - the part of the programme that got me most excited were the bits about the ham and I found this company which sells Spanish hams. Though in warning, a whole leg of Jamon de Recebo was very very expensive, though the mejillones and the chorizos were slightly more reasonable.

Jamie Oliver Spit Roast

On last night's Jamie At Home - Jamie Oliver indulged in some full on barbecue food fetishism.

He got particularly animated by an antique spit roaster he had bought - but as he said on the show - you can get modern rotisseries easily enough on the internet.

Here are some that are available from Amazon:




And here is a very odd - but quite funny interview with Jamie Oliver that I think was on Dutch TV:

Polish Cook Books

The BBC 2 series "Recipe For Success" is mildly distracting as far as cookery programmes go - in each episode want to be restauranters are given a chance to run a restaurant and their success or failure is decided by the customers. This sort of stuff has been done elsewhere and like a lot of stuff in this genre there is always the risk of the triumph of the concept over the content.

Which I thought was a shame - in today's episode the hopeful restauranters wanted to open a Polish restaurant. Some of the food looked really fantastic and I would have liked to have seen more about Polish cuisine but the programme, like these shows tend to do, focused on the chaotically run kitchen and the personality clashes.

If you want to find out more about Polish cooking then this is a nice little website.

And Amazon has these books:

Delia Smith's Hand Blender and Mini Chopper

In her new television series Delia recommended two gadgets, a food chopper and a stick blender and according to the Guardian the two models she used were the:

Kenwood CH180 Mini Chopper 300w and the Braun Hand Blender


(I've also included a link to the book of the series)

Unfortunately, and probably because of the popularity of the TV show, it seems that the food chopper is sold out at Amazon and they keep changing their information about if and when it will become available again. The hand blender is also out of stock. So I'll list some of Amazon's alternatives based on those that have had the best reviews.

The three hand blenders below are all currently available at Amazon. The Braun MR400 is, I believe, a very similar model to the one that Delia uses. The Morphy Richards blender is the one I use, and for blending food for my baby daughter when she went onto solids it was perfect (and cheap). The Bamix is right at the top end of the scale, both in quality and price and has had great reviews (and is recommended by Gordon Ramsay no less.)



I've linked to the Haden food chopper because it is cheap and has had a couple of decent reviews at Amazon. The Russell Hobbs is more expensive - but it has had a couple of good reviews (and I'm a sucker for a celebrity chef endorsement). The Cuisinart is not a chopper- it is a food processor - though of course you can use it as a chopper as well as doing so much more besides. It looks really nice as well - but it is rather expensive.



Hope this was useful.

Because this is about Delia's programme I'm going to post these two YouTube retro Delia clips:

The first is Delia interviewing Kate Bush which I found really odd:



and the second is Delia making deep fried mars bars - which would be funnier only if it were true