Recipe for the new book launch–Dinner with Robin
We’ve had two Zoom online book launches of Robin Ellis’ Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking recently. The first with family and friends, was altogether a wonder of chaotic joyfulness. The second no less joyful, but a little less chaotic (practice makes almost perfect)-turned out to be more family and friends and alumni from my healthy cooking workshops.
Their faces started popping up in little rectangles on the screen from around the world: From a bear preserve on an Alaskan island; a vegetarian restaurant in Belgrade, Serbia; from a kitchen in Kent; a brownstone back garden in Manhattan; an indoor terrace garden in beautiful San Miguel de Allende in Mexico and dining tables around the UK, the USA and France.
We were forced to hold the celebration online due to the coronavirus–plans for the book tour were scuppered–but as it turned out it afforded an opportunity to bring together a larger group than we could ever otherwise have assembled.
We popped the champagne– and waved at friends and family near and far.
It was a BYO (Bring your own) dinner party (or brunch or lunch for those in North America). Some guests were invited to make a dish from the new cookbook and do a kind of “show and tell”.
Cooking workshop alumni in Minnesota actually made a video of their efforts:
Special thanks to Shelly and Lisa!
Meredith’s sister Holly was at the controls in Silicon Valley–valiantly marshaling the throng, politely asking people to use their MUTE button. (It seems actors, journalists and writers do not like to be muted!) But it all contributed to the “chaotic joyfulness”.
If you speak on Zoom, you automatically become the face in the centre of peoples’ screens.
“If you want to make a comment pop it in the chat box,” Holly pleads…
“I never quite found the chat box,” says a friend plaintively in Rhode Island.
“Where’s that extraneous music coming from?” says a grumpy voice in London.
After a bit of investigation, Holly confirms: “From your own computer actually…!”
“Oh sorry!”
It didn’t matter.
Everyone was charmed by Meredith’s opening montage of food photos from the book, backed by Lionel Bart’s incomparable Food, Glorious Food number from Oliver! followed by a short tour of the church which gives our rectory its name.
Our dear friend, John Willis, “interviewed” me about the new book–and NO, we are not fully vegetarian ourselves, though we lean that way.
Getting to know the cattle who calmly graze in pasture behind our house–beautiful Blonde d’Aquitaine, raised for beef, put us off meat.
My dish for this special booklaunch supper was a colourful early summer recipe dubbed My Ratatouille (p. 90 in the new book) which omits aubergines and courgettes.
I chose it for both its colours and its deliciousness (but then all the recipes are delicious–that is the sine qua non to get into the book!)
This new cookbook–my fourth–is available now in the UK.
The official publication date in the USA is Aug 18th–but if you order from The Book Depository, they will deliver it free around the world.
Thanks to my editor at Little, Brown, Tom Asker, Copy editor Amanda Keats, Duncan Proudfoot who has seen all my books into print and Andrew Baron, the designer of the last two. And finally, thanks to my wife, Meredith, who has taken all the photographs while the food got cold….
