Very Simple Food by Jill Dupleix

Whoever coined the phrase on the back of Jill Dupleix's brilliant new book is absolutely right. This is indeed ‘a book for everyone who loves good food but doesn't want to grow old cooking it.' If you follow Jill's mantra, ‘I don't make my own pastry, refuse to deep fry, won't stone olives and will never be found peeling grapes. I also believe it's perfectly acceptable to cheat at cooking as long as you don't kill anyone,' this book has your name written on it.

It is just full of really good ideas and you will be wondering why you didn't think of them yourself. Your starter for ten could be salami tarts. If you've got some left over puff pastry, roll it out thinly and then cut into circles, a little bit larger than the size of your salami. Brush with beaten egg. Remove the skin from the salami and place a slice on each disk of pastry. Cook for ten minutes in a medium oven until golden. Finish it off with a small heap of wilted Swiss chard on each pastry. These are perfect to hand round with drinks.

For breakfast, salmon egg tarts will make a refreshing change. These are baked in muffin moulds and are just a mixture of beaten eggs, raw or cooked salmon fillet, some cream, curry powder and herbs. As a guideline, Jill uses twelve eggs for twelve muffins so you can play around with the ingredients. Smoked haddock would work well too.
And if good recipes aren't enough, what about some useful advice? To test if boiled potatoes are cooked, try Jill's neat trick of spearing a potato with a thin bamboo stick in the pan so that the stick pokes out of the water. After boiling for a while, pick up the stick. If the potato clings to the stick, it is not yet done. If it slips off, they are ready.

We raved about Jill's crash hot potatoes from her last book, Simple Food. She has devised another recipe, roasting potatoes in wine. Thinly slice peeled potatoes, toss in olive oil, salt and pepper and put in a sided baking tray. Pour over some white wine and throw some thyme over it. Cook for about thirty minutes in a medium oven, watching out that they don't over crisp at the end.

The next big thing has got to be cooking in bags, not boil in the bag cod and parsley sauce but delicious vegetables or fish cooked with cherry tomatoes and spinach, the variations are endless and washing up is kept to a minimum.

This will have given you a rough idea of what to expect in Very Simple Food but we have only scratched the surface. What with Jill's superb photography and her easy recipes, cooking has never looked so appealing.

Publication details:
192 pp. Photography by Jill Dupleix. £20
Published by Quadrille.
ISBN 184400032X
2003

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