Keep it Simple: Fresh Look at Classic Cooking

Product Information

Alistair Little (British chef, author, and TV personality) puts together 100 effortless recipes that can be used in any kitchen.

This book won the Glenfiddich Award in 1994 and I still sometimes hear it referred to reverentially as the godfather of modern British cooking. Like Mrs David, he was a powerful force for good, a fine and evocative describer who put food in a wider cultural context. Like most people, I annotate my cookbooks - ticks, crosses, exclamation marks, emendations and suggestions for next time. I have a standard oven with gasmarks, and we were clearly talking gasmark 1 and below; the temperature-conversion charts that preface basic cookbooks didn't even start at the temperature - 65 - that Mr B was proposing for one particular recipe. Alastair Little two hours (you're joking), Fay Maschler three, Frances Bissell four (getting warmer).This much loved cookbook (and the eponymous restaurant) was part of my life for far too short a time, but it was a joy to revisit the book after almost thirty many years! The recipes are organised seasonally and reflect Little's interest in Italian, Japanese, Chinese and French cookery. The last of them was developed to a greater degree by another Glenfiddich Award winner: the thoroughly British The River Cottage Year. Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.During the mid-1980s in London the chef Alastair Little, the original university-graduate cook in England, changed the way restaurant menus looked. Unsuprisingly, I rediscovered timeless classic recipes that are still appropriate for cooking in the 2020's. Honestly, unless you are an enthusiastic and well-practiced cook, you simply wouldn’t believe how many puffed-up, information-light (some downright misleading) cookery books there are out there, or at least you wouldn’t realise that until you read and consciously applied your learning from Little’s “Keep It Simple”.

By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. I quite want to cook some of what Mr Blumenthal does: though when he tells me that the best way of cooking a steak is to flip it every 15 seconds, making 32 flips in all for its eight-minute cooking period, I am inclined to wonder who will be minding the chips and mushy peas while I flip four steaks 128 times, so I say Pass.What some people might have forgotten is that British cuisine, as it is today, did not emerge miraculously in its present form from under the tyranny of heavy sauces - there was the rebellious phase of fusion food marking the journey.

A restaurant critic told me the other day Mr B also believes that if you prick each chip individually with a fork, this makes for an even finer end-product; but that for some reason (like straining our credulity) he didn't put this in the recipe. Alastair Little is one of the unsung heroes of British cuisine One of the great classic cookbooks, the start of the British food revolution. Beginning by telling you what you should have in a kitchen (an unusual move for a chef not known from TV appearances) he preaches simplicity and seasonality in cooking.He is the rare mixture of a supreme gastrotechnologist who understands the twitch and flex of every muscle, and a cook who is rococo in his imaginings.