ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Last time we had friends over for dinner, I made a dessert of home-made avocado ice-cream, with brownies. I should have taken a photo because it was scrumptious, despite the recipe‘s claim that the brownies had only 91 kcal per serve because they were made with yoghurt instead of butter. I don’t care about calories, but I do try to offer desserts that are healthy-ish.  OTOH if I’m only going to make brownies once or twice a year, I want them to taste decadent.

So I am pleased to add River Cottage Good Comfort, to our recipe book collection.  (That’s the British River Cottage TV series with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (HFW), not the Australian adaptation with Paul West.)

With recipe books, which are usually expensive, it’s important to identify the target audience before you choose.  The obvious decider is whether the book is for experienced or inexperienced cooks; but also keen v unenthusiastic cooks who can’t cope with more than four or five ingredients; and cooks who take shortcuts with packets, jars and tins v those who would starve rather than buy carrot or cheese that’s already grated or use a packet to make a ‘home-made’ cake.  There are also cookbooks pitched at those for whom nutrition or ideological principles take priority i.e. vegan, vegetarian, organic, non-allergenic, heart-healthy etc etc. With River Cottage Good Comfort there’s another audience I’d never thought much about before: it’s pitched at people with a habit of eating unhealthy so-called ‘family favourites’, who need or want to take a healthier approach to food and cooking, with or without the support of the rest of the household.

You can see this pitch in parts of the blurb:

The perception that the food we love can’t also be good for us is swept away by this stunning collection of delicious, heart-warming recipes that also happen to be packed with good things that help keep us healthy.

And Good Comfort is in every way generous, as Hugh makes our favourite foods healthier, not by taking stuff out of them, but by putting more in: the best whole ingredients, celebrated in all their colourful and seasonal diversity.

The book begins with an Introduction.  It’s the usual cook’s philosophy section, which in this case is HFW’s mission to recreate comfort foods that are not heavy, cloying, too rich or too sweet.  His key principle is ‘Go Whole: The more whole, unrefined ingredients we can get on to our plates, the better.  But he doesn’t just mean the grains and pulses we typically associate with the term ‘wholefoods’.  He means foods that are whole, or very close to it, when we take them into our kitchens.  (I heard these described the other day as ‘foods your granny would recognise’.) Minimally processed is ok, so he includes dairy foods such as yoghurt and cheese, and some tinned vegetables (such as low-salt tomatoes canned with just water and a little salt.) He stresses that it’s important to get the balance right: overdo the pulses and you’re in the danger zone of ‘padding’. Likewise, full-on wholemeal flour can take you a little far from textures you know and love, so ‘half-wholemeal’ is a better choice.

I’m already onboard with reducing sugar: I find most modern recipes and storebought cakes have far too much sugar for my taste.  My cakes, biscuits and puddings mostly come from battered recipe books from decades ago.  HFW’s other mission is to encourage cooks to use a variety of good ingredients, which is my culinary mission too.

#Digression: Just out of idle curiosity, I just counted how many different vegetables we have on hand today.  Fourteen: potatoes, sweet potato, pumpkin, onions, lettuce, fennel, snow peas, beans, tomatoes, spinach, cucumber and spring onions, leeks and kale in the garden. Carrots are on the shopping list. (We’re only just starting to plant again after the fallow season, the celery went in two days ago).

So, on with the recipes!

There are ten chapters:

• Breakfast and Brunch:
  • I like his Bruschetta ideas: beetroot and fennel; beany mash; mushrooms and greens; or sardines on tomato toast.
• Soups:  I wish I’d had this book at the start of winter because I love homemade soup for lunch in cold weather.  (We had cream of asparagus yesterday which was scrumptious.)
  • Cream of roasted tomato soup looks divine, the roasting is obviously key to its deliciousness (and though HFW doesn’t mention air fryers, we now have one and can use it for jobs like this);
  • Cream of roasted mushroom soup, thickened with cashew nuts, again roasted and then zapped in the blender.
  • English Onion Soup! The method is the same as French Onion Soup, long slow cooking to caramelise the onions, but made not with beef stock but with red wine, strong black coffee, soy sauce and vegetable stock.
  • Smoky fish chowder looks very enticing, with potatoes, sweetcorn or peas, spinach, kale or spring greens, and of course you can make it with other seafood e.g. mussels if you like.
• Pasta and Rice: this chapter is a bit ordinary for an experienced cook because the sauces look pretty much like the ones we make anyway. But that is, of course, what this cookbook is about, and it’s not pretending to be anything else.  It’s basically all the old familiars, supplemented with extra vegetables and/or pulses. What’s different (for us, that is) is the wholemeal pasta and brown rice. Or, hmm… homemade nettle pasta. I do make my own pasta sometimes, but adding nettles (or spinach) makes an easy task into a performance IMO.
• Stews, Hotpots and curries: This chapter OTOH is about shifting the balance of protein and veg, and adding to the diversity in vegetarian favourites.
  • Chunky chilli con carne reduces the protein to 100g per serve of beef plus 25g pork belly per person, topped up with sweet potato, kidney beans and other veg;
  • Cauli curry with spuds and cashews, looks very appealing indeed.
  • Vegged-up dhal has extras like carrot, celery and tomatoes.
  • Fish stew looks a lot like a bouillabaisse, but our usual French recipe doesn’t have chick peas in it. (Or preserved lemon which I associate with Middle Eastern food, especially Moroccan.) The point about this chapter is that once you’ve mastered the idea, you can adapt your own recipes.

My version of Beef and Pepperberry Pie, serves a generous four

• Pies and Tarts: My favourite pie of all time is Beef and Pepperberry Pie, which derives from Matthew Hopcraft’s season on Masterchef and Food to Feed the Family, the cookbook that he subsequently published see my review (here). You can see from my (not professionally styled) photo that it has a lovely golden pastry crust, but from the photos in HFW’s recipe book, it looks as if that can also be achieved with a half white/half fine wholemeal mix of flour. This variation to the usual pastry recipe is the focus of this chapter.
  • Prune, chestnut and apple sausage rolls (similar in taste to the chestnut and apple pie I make for vegetarian friends?);
  • Onion tart with greens is basically a spinach quiche, but with reduced dairy for the custard);
  • Chicken and leek pie is made with a rough puff pastry with step-by-step photos to show you how to make it.  (I have never even tried making puff pastry, but now I’m going to.)
  • Crispy Kale-topped pizza looks bright and colourful and enticing (and if you’re not in the mood to make his wholemeal pizza dough you can always use a wholemeal wrap a.k.a. flatbread for the base instead.)
• Pan and Griddle: This is the chapter for people who like hamburgers, steaks, chops and sausages.  There’s a recipe for Cauliflower pakora with radish raita that I like the look of, but it involves shallow frying in oil which defeats the purpose IMO.
  • Mussels with leeks and fennel OTOH is cooked in cider and I like the sound of that!
• Bakes and Roasts: like the previous chapter this one is pitched squarely at the cook who’s trying to dial down the unhealthy qualities of ‘family favourites’.  Most of them are things that are never on our menu anyway (macaroni cheese, toad-in-the-hole, moussaka, pork ribs) but there are some which appeal as substitutes for our favourites.
  • Kale and mushroom lasagne: this is nearly the same as my Mushroom Lasagne with Roasted Peppers from The 90s Vegetarian but I would make it with ricotta instead of Béchamel sauce so it’s less fatty.  (But if you were trying to train a recalcitrant to eat an adaptation of a family favourite, you’d use the Béchamel, of course.)
  • Creamy potato gratin. I confess I am a glutton for a real French potato gratin, made to the recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. But HFW’s version, made with stock and cream instead of milk and cream, and no butter and no cheese, does look delicious too.
• Leftovers: I skipped this chapter. Leftovers are not a problem in our house!
• Puddings: these feature the half-plain and half-wholemeal pastry from the pies and tarts chapter, so apple pie, and a pear and almond tart, but there are also fibre-rich fruit crumbles, a lighter, less sweet custard, and a choc mousse which looks pretty decadent to me. I’m also keen to try the Basque-style cheesecake made with creme-fraiche and labneh and the Pannacotta made with yoghurt as well as cream.
• Teatime Treats.
  • Wholemeal chocolate cake or Sesame banana bread with a tahini topping?  Maybe. Definitely the Carrot Cake with a labneh topping that halves the sugar content. Oaty dunking cookies are Anzac biscuits made with wholemeal flour and no golden syrup.  I’m going to try the Fruit scones sweetened with minimal sugar, dried fruit and a grated apple.

I’ve already tried one of his ideas, albeit in a slightly oblique way.  For this week’s batch of muffins, (using up the whey after I made some yoghurt), I replaced 1/5 of the flour with chickpea flour (which we had left over from some recipe that involved me grinding it myself from chickpeas.) I also reduced the sugar by 10%. They tasted just fine but the muffins didn’t rise quite as much as usual so maybe chickpea flour needs a bit more baking powder.

The layout of Ingredients and Method is clear, the font is big enough, and the instructions are easy to follow.

There’s also an appendix of ingredients, and a comprehensive Index. Every recipe is photographed in full colour. What’s missing — and this is a serious omission considering the purpose of this cookbook — is the nutrition panel for each recipe, listing fats, sugars, fibre and proteins, plus the kcals for each serve.  I also like my recipe books to indicate how long for prep and cooking time, whether or not some or all of it can be done ahead of time, plus storage times, including whether the food can be frozen or not.

I shall update this post with photos of the recipes as I try them.

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Notes on our trials:

22/9/22 Pasta ‘Pestomega’, green beans and spuds. The pesto is made with walnuts and seeds (we used pumpkin).

24/9/22 Sardine bruschetta: we added more garlic and it needs a squeeze of lemon in the sardines.

24/9/22 Chicken and leek pie: the flavour and texture are great, but the liquid proportions are wrong.  100ml wine plus 300ml of chicken stock makes the filling too runny.  The instructions say to reduce and thicken the wine, but adding 300ml of stick after that and simmering it for 5 minutes isn’t long enough for it to thicken properly.  Either the recipe needs more flour, or less liquid or much longer to simmer.  We used Dijon mustard instead of English because we prefer it.

Photo credit: Brownies: https://thebigmansworld.com/greek-yogurt-chocolate-brownies/

Author: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Photographer and illustrator: Simon Wheeler and Lucinda Rogers, respectively
Title: River Cottage Good Comfort, best-loved favourites made better for you
Cover design by Peter MoffatPublisher: Bloomsbury, 2022
ISBN: 9781526638953, hbk. 350 pages
Review copy courtesy of Bloomsbury AU.