Loving and Cooking with Reckless Abandon by Kevin Gould

From the man who brought us the deliciously retro Dishy, with the ground breaking use of flow chart recipes, comes Loving and Cooking with Reckless Abandon. It was a simple email that set Kevin Gould off on a new trail to find the key to health, harmony and happiness. An anonymous well-wisher sent him some ‘Instructions for Life stating that one should ‘approach love and cooking with reckless abandon'. And here is his interpretation.

This is not just another cookbook. Follow his philosophy and your life will be all the richer for it. These are recipes for sharing with family and friends. They are sensuous and good looking and explore the pleasures of cooking. But don't think that the highly principled Gould is going to let you off the hook that easily. He is a man on a mission, decrying our mass agricultural practices. Did you know that nitrogen based fertilizers encourage crops to take up more dirty water, which in turn make the crop more profitable as they are sold by weight. He even gives organic farming a run for its money. You could be buying Soil Association certified organic milk produced from cows that have never grazed on a blade of grass, even though they are free to roam on 200 acre feed lots.

To overcome this profanation, Kevin is promoting a movement called Beyond Organic, where the customer is using his intelligence. Let's cut down on miles and buy locally and seasonally. He believes that ‘Beyond Organic is about connection, where the consumer is only satisfied with the very best.

This leads us neatly to the ability of cooking with reckless abandon, which is easy when you are using quality ingredients. It all falls into place. You have your ingredients but you the cook, inject a certain something into the dish you are creating. As Kevin sees it, ‘a recipe simply distils experience and, like an alchemist's formula, cannot itself include the special sensitivities required of the cook - it takes love to transform subtle energies into truly nourishing food.'

The recipes are global, encompassing Kevin's travels around the world. You will want to sample them all. But first, try out kitchen yoga with no-salt massaged shoulder of lamb, making the meat ready for you. Eating with a lover might see you trying tagliata with peppery rocket leaves, rump steak griddled and then cut into long strips and then thrown together with rocket. The icing on the cake (or evening) would be to finish it off with milk of almonds with attar of roses.

Who could resist tomatoes with a love injection? Spice up your parties by serving Cherry Marys, which have been carefully injected with a mixture of lemon juice, vodka, Worcestershire Sauce and Tabasco. Syringes are available at chemists and if you follow Kevin's advice, ‘Ask nicely and explain that you're addicted to good living, as opposed to heroin', you will be able to make this ‘mouth-exploding canapé'.

Try Bülent's 40-day olives. Buy some of the best unstoned olives you can find, then pile them into a jar. Fill with boiling water until they begin to swell and drain off the water. Fill the jar with bits of lemon, fresh mint and then top up with olive oil. Fasten the lid and leave for forty days and forty nights.

This is a book about passion in the kitchen, loving life and you too will fall for Kevin's spell. What a lucky man but fortunately there is enough to share around. And he does his own photography. Well, what more can we say?

Publication Details:
176 pages. Photography by Kevin Gould. £16.99
ISBN 190384553X. Published by Quadrille.
2002

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To read the GWG review of Kevin's first book, click here'); ?>.