Choice Books – Food: Elizabeth David French Provincial Cooking

Not ALL of my book shares will be food – I swear. This one is just too good to hold off on. I read Elizabeth David’s cookbooks and connected immediately with the woman behind the recipes – it was only once I read more into her life and how rebellious, outspoken and challenging to conventionality she was that I really thought: YES.

Although Ms. David’s first book was all everything Mediterranean (and also brilliant), this one I read cover to cover on holiday in Kent years ago and have re-read it since whenever the mood takes. Similar to Nigella’s books in that you can read them as a book, rather than individually picking out recipes, this walks a brilliantly fine line between someone talking to you as if you are a complete moron (in a totally enjoyable way) and your favourite auntie talking you through her treasure trove of recipes collected over the years.

If you are older or into cooking you will no doubt have digested (see what I did there) all of her works, if you haven’t, I can’t recommend them – all of them – enough.

As The Telegraph says:

‘We’re awash now with cookbooks, sated with television cookery programmes. Elizabeth David was the forerunner of them all. A hundred years after her birth, she’s still worth reading and learning from.’

Elizabeth David French Provincial Cooking is available from Amazon. For a few quid more you can buy ‘The Classics’ which contains Mediterranean Food, Summer Cooking and French Provincial Cooking – here.