Classic Cooks from the World's Best Chefs

The concept of Classic Cooks is an excellent one. Get twenty-five of the world's best known chefs and writers and ask them each to contribute twelve recipes. Hey presto! Classic Cooks is borne but for some reason, it managed to pass a lot of us by last year when it was first published. A chance encounter in a local bookshop recently has given hours of enjoyment reading through and cooking some of the recipes from Classic Cooks. It is definitely worth a detour.

Classic Cooks contains a superb collection of 250 recipes from chefs such as Messrs. Edelmann, Turner, Ramsay and Nairn to writers, Rose Elliot and Anne Willan of the Readers Digest Complete Guide to Cookery. Many others have contributed, all worthy of a mention but for the lack of space.

The book is divided into easy to use chapters. Instructions on cooking are kept to the minimum. There is no page turning here. Writers appear to have submitted as many recipes on one subject as they wish. Elisabeth Luard seems particularly hot on soups; she has contributed twelve out of the twenty-five. Bulgarian monastery soup is a delicious combination of creamy rice with chilli, green pepper, leek and lettuce.

The recipes are wide-ranging and hop from one continent to the next. They are all simple and represent a good cross section of world cuisine. Chicken, mango and avocadostir fried lightly will tempt even the shyest of shrinking violets to come to the table. The message is healthy eating and some of the recipes, although not new, have been given a medical check up with forbidden ingredients (double cream) being replaced with healthy ones (crème fraîche). The wonderfully named Delhi sag mirchi murg, a dish of chilli chicken with spinach is simple to put together and has enough punch to bowl over a rugby team, the Under 11s anyway.

Photographs of the highest quality back up all this excellent food and accompany each recipe. It is always useful to know what you are aiming for and that you may even reach similar perfection.

Jane Asher has given some frighteningly complicated looking cakes for us to try our hands at but, having made most of her birthday creations for children, she explains things well and even the clumsiest of people will be pleased with the results. Her white chocolate wedding cake with caraque of white chocolate is simply breathtaking. It has to be seen, so simple but beautiful. Whilst on tea, consider Mary Berry's lemon shortbread or apricot and sunflower flapjacks and no, we don't all have to own an Aga to make these.

The new paperback edition printed in April this year represents fantastic value at £14.99. Use the book frequently, find out what you like and then, Classic Cooks will become a firm favourite over the next few years.

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Publication Details:
384 pages. Photography by Simon Wheeler and Philip Wilkins
ISBN 1841885666. Published by Seven Dials.

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