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River Cottage Good Comfort: Best-Loved Favourites Made Better for You
A stunning collection of 100+ heart-warming recipes that also happen to be packed with things that are good for you
The perception that the food we love can't also be good for us is swept away by this stunning collection of delicious, heart-warming recipes that also happen to be packed with good things that help keep us healthy.
And Good Comfort is in every way generous, as Hugh makes our favourite foods healthier not by taking stuff out of them, but by putting more the best whole ingredients, celebrated in all their colourful and seasonal diversity.
We can relish a hearty winter stew that is deeply beefy, but also heaving with healthy veg. We can tuck into a pie knowing that the pastry is awesome and the filling wholesome. Much maligned greens come out to play in moreish gratins and leafy curries. And we can put tea time treats on the table knowing they will bring our family and friends – and kids in particular – goodness as well as happiness.
Indulge your taste buds and boost your health at the same time with these delicious new recipes,
- Multigrainola
- Spicy squash and lentil soup
- Chick-chouka
- Squeak and bubble
- Oaty dunking cookies
Ultimately, Hugh leads us on a journey to tweak our taste buds and pamper our palates so that we can take as much pleasure – and ultimately more – from dishes that we know will do us good.
The perception that the food we love can't also be good for us is swept away by this stunning collection of delicious, heart-warming recipes that also happen to be packed with good things that help keep us healthy.
And Good Comfort is in every way generous, as Hugh makes our favourite foods healthier not by taking stuff out of them, but by putting more the best whole ingredients, celebrated in all their colourful and seasonal diversity.
We can relish a hearty winter stew that is deeply beefy, but also heaving with healthy veg. We can tuck into a pie knowing that the pastry is awesome and the filling wholesome. Much maligned greens come out to play in moreish gratins and leafy curries. And we can put tea time treats on the table knowing they will bring our family and friends – and kids in particular – goodness as well as happiness.
Indulge your taste buds and boost your health at the same time with these delicious new recipes,
- Multigrainola
- Spicy squash and lentil soup
- Chick-chouka
- Squeak and bubble
- Oaty dunking cookies
Ultimately, Hugh leads us on a journey to tweak our taste buds and pamper our palates so that we can take as much pleasure – and ultimately more – from dishes that we know will do us good.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published November 15, 2022
17 people are currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
81 books186 followersHugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a British celebrity chef, smallholder, television presenter, journalist, food writer and "real food" campaigner, known for his back-to-basics philosophy.
A talented writer, broadcaster and campaigner, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is widely known for his uncompromising commitment to seasonal, ethically produced food and has earned a huge following through his River Cottage TV series and books.
His early smallholding experiences were shown in the Channel 4 River Cottage series and led to the publication of The River Cottage Cookbook (2001), which won the Glenfiddich Trophy and the André Simon Food Book of the Year awards.
The success of the show and the books allowed Hugh to establish River Cottage HQ near Bridport in 2004.
In the same year, Hugh published The River Cottage Meat Book to wide acclaim and won a second André Simon Food Book of the Year Award.
He has just finished filming his most recent series, which accompanies his most recent book, River Cottage Every Day.
He continues to write as a journalist, including a weekly column in The Guardian and is Patron of the National Farmers’ Retail and Markets Association (FARMA).
River Cottage HQ moved in 2006, to a farm near the Dorset/Devon border, where visitors can take a variety of courses. http://www.rivercottage.net
During River Cottage Spring (2008) Hugh helped a group of Bristol families start a smallholding on derelict council land.
The experience was so inspiring he decided to see if it would work nationwide, and Landshare was created to bring keen growers and landowners together. The movement now includes more than 50,000 people.
Son of https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
A talented writer, broadcaster and campaigner, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is widely known for his uncompromising commitment to seasonal, ethically produced food and has earned a huge following through his River Cottage TV series and books.
His early smallholding experiences were shown in the Channel 4 River Cottage series and led to the publication of The River Cottage Cookbook (2001), which won the Glenfiddich Trophy and the André Simon Food Book of the Year awards.
The success of the show and the books allowed Hugh to establish River Cottage HQ near Bridport in 2004.
In the same year, Hugh published The River Cottage Meat Book to wide acclaim and won a second André Simon Food Book of the Year Award.
He has just finished filming his most recent series, which accompanies his most recent book, River Cottage Every Day.
He continues to write as a journalist, including a weekly column in The Guardian and is Patron of the National Farmers’ Retail and Markets Association (FARMA).
River Cottage HQ moved in 2006, to a farm near the Dorset/Devon border, where visitors can take a variety of courses. http://www.rivercottage.net
During River Cottage Spring (2008) Hugh helped a group of Bristol families start a smallholding on derelict council land.
The experience was so inspiring he decided to see if it would work nationwide, and Landshare was created to bring keen growers and landowners together. The movement now includes more than 50,000 people.
Son of https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 27, 2023
Great for savoury, love the design - but should have more dairy-free and vegan baking options.
I asked the River Cottage people online which of their cookbooks they would recommend for a dairy-intolerant omni who enjoys their veg books and who likes cooking soups and stews. The first of their recommendations was this. I was sceptical as it was their most recent publication - maybe they just wanted to shift more copies - but I took a closer look.
It was actually spot-on. (As far as is possible, given they don't have a dairy-free book - although there is a gluten-free baking one.)
Where the savoury dishes are concerned, it's a distillation of the sort of recipes I earmark in other books, while mostly ignoring the fancier things and side dishes. And quite a few dishes have "Vegan Option" with a symbol on the outer edge of the page. Awesome. A clear favourite I look forward to cooking from more. (Although I still CBA cooking bony fish.)
The Spicy Noodle Soup was a breakthrough moment for me, and is a recipe I return to. Although I've made a few other East Asian style broths from other Western cookbooks, and liked every one - I had those to thank for already having a pack of dried wakame seaweed - it was this one that really clicked. For a couple of years, phos and similar soups, especially with tofu, have been among my favourite takeaway foods. After trying this recipe I felt I could make something similar enough at home that I would no longer miss the takeaways - and using up what was in the fridge even became fun, like selecting options from the menu, rather than making do. There is an art to this type of soup of course, which I want to explore. More specialised ingredients like dashi and kombu are starting to make their way into my cupboards, though I've not yet tried daikon, aka mooli, one of the options in HFW's ingredients list here.
People used to making recipes dairy-free or vegan will already have their own preferred method of making standards like batter, but this book seems likely to interest omni households who cater for vegan guests from time-to-time, or who may have one (perhaps newly) vegan resident who isn't the main cook. (The recipes really suit a relaxed family dinner.) For these circumstances , it would be a good idea to consistently include advice for such things, as is done for the lasagna.
I also love the presentation and design; neo-70s you might call it. It has tones reminiscent of 1970s to early-80s books, but is glossier and more visually appealing, and with cleaner lines. Therefore more appetising, than, say, my mum's copy of Cookery in Colour by Marguerite Patten, which I used to look through as a kid. It's an early-autumn colour scheme, with lots of green and brown: the start of my favourite time of year, and also when keen cooks are gearing up to make exactly this kind of food.
But where this book does fall down is in not giving any general advice in the introduction about preferred dairy substitutes, and in which dishes they do and don't work - and in having very few cakes and puddings with vegan options. I don't bother to find fault with older omni cookbooks for being full of dairy with no substitution ideas; it was just the norm before the last few years. But as HFW and River Cottage have already produced a fully vegan book (Much More Veg), and even early Nigella books happen to contain a few more dairy free or even accidentally-vegan cakes than this one does, I definitely think they could do better in this area.
The concept of this book - healthy comfort food with plenty of vegan options - is a perfect fit for the sort of cakes and puddings I want to make: heavy on fruit, lower added sugar, but not full of niche American vegan ingredients. (The best approach I've found so far is to make the cakes in The Seasonal Vegan by Sarah Philpott and reduce the sugar by up to half as per this excellent and methodical advice; see under blended cakes.)
Vegan baking books themselves, for example Karolina Tegelaar's Vegan Baking Bible whose methodical scientific outlook I otherwise find admirable and relatable, are tiresomely insistent about making vegan food as "decadent" as possible. Tegelaar apparently doesn't agree with the experiments and advice on sugar reduction I linked above, and which have usually worked for me, though she does mention that high fruit content makes eggless baking easier. There's a similar problem in some UK cities: loads of cafés specialising in vegan junkfood, next to none focused on vegan wholefood. (Solo, in such areas, I'd usually end up going to an omni place and eating something like salade niçoise. Vegans, you could have sold me a meal if you were serving more than chocolate brownies and Impossible Burgers stacked with sheeze and relish.) Yet among people I know who are veggie and vegan, all 40+, there's one couple who love the junkfood, and everyone else is, to one degree of strictness or another, into the wholefood and healthy eating side and not keen on ultraprocessed and sugary.
There are people who actually prefer the taste of the healthier versions that are implicitly denigrated by entrepreneurial millennial vegans like Tegelaar and these café owners. The last time I made a cake with the full amount of suggested sugar, I found it pretty unpleasant, and sugar totally overwhelmed the other flavours. The introduction in Good Comfort, when mentioning reducing sugar in their café cakes, at least recognises people like us exist and are worth catering to: "the few guests who notice this change invariably comment positively: 'I really like that it isn't too sweet'".
Maybe they are planning a River Cottage Vegan Baking handbook, like they have the Gluten Free one and other food-group specific handbooks like Mushrooms. There is more and more great technical advice out there from the likes of the aforementioned Vegan Baking Bible, and Philip Khoury's upcoming A New Way to Bake, on restaurant-grade patisserie, with restaurant-grade ingredients you can also see listed under his YT videos. But so far as I can tell, there still isn't a high-quality, trustworthy book focused on vegan baking with the sort of fruit and veg grown in the UK and on vegan versions of traditional British sweet recipes.
Anyway, I'm off to make something omni, but which I think is in the spirit of this book: a version of Elizabeth David's Omelette au Boudin, with one omelette folded in half rather than two, and added spinach. A brunch that can keep hunger locked up till nearly bedtime.
(reviewed September 2023)
I asked the River Cottage people online which of their cookbooks they would recommend for a dairy-intolerant omni who enjoys their veg books and who likes cooking soups and stews. The first of their recommendations was this. I was sceptical as it was their most recent publication - maybe they just wanted to shift more copies - but I took a closer look.
It was actually spot-on. (As far as is possible, given they don't have a dairy-free book - although there is a gluten-free baking one.)
Where the savoury dishes are concerned, it's a distillation of the sort of recipes I earmark in other books, while mostly ignoring the fancier things and side dishes. And quite a few dishes have "Vegan Option" with a symbol on the outer edge of the page. Awesome. A clear favourite I look forward to cooking from more. (Although I still CBA cooking bony fish.)
The Spicy Noodle Soup was a breakthrough moment for me, and is a recipe I return to. Although I've made a few other East Asian style broths from other Western cookbooks, and liked every one - I had those to thank for already having a pack of dried wakame seaweed - it was this one that really clicked. For a couple of years, phos and similar soups, especially with tofu, have been among my favourite takeaway foods. After trying this recipe I felt I could make something similar enough at home that I would no longer miss the takeaways - and using up what was in the fridge even became fun, like selecting options from the menu, rather than making do. There is an art to this type of soup of course, which I want to explore. More specialised ingredients like dashi and kombu are starting to make their way into my cupboards, though I've not yet tried daikon, aka mooli, one of the options in HFW's ingredients list here.
People used to making recipes dairy-free or vegan will already have their own preferred method of making standards like batter, but this book seems likely to interest omni households who cater for vegan guests from time-to-time, or who may have one (perhaps newly) vegan resident who isn't the main cook. (The recipes really suit a relaxed family dinner.) For these circumstances , it would be a good idea to consistently include advice for such things, as is done for the lasagna.
I also love the presentation and design; neo-70s you might call it. It has tones reminiscent of 1970s to early-80s books, but is glossier and more visually appealing, and with cleaner lines. Therefore more appetising, than, say, my mum's copy of Cookery in Colour by Marguerite Patten, which I used to look through as a kid. It's an early-autumn colour scheme, with lots of green and brown: the start of my favourite time of year, and also when keen cooks are gearing up to make exactly this kind of food.
But where this book does fall down is in not giving any general advice in the introduction about preferred dairy substitutes, and in which dishes they do and don't work - and in having very few cakes and puddings with vegan options. I don't bother to find fault with older omni cookbooks for being full of dairy with no substitution ideas; it was just the norm before the last few years. But as HFW and River Cottage have already produced a fully vegan book (Much More Veg), and even early Nigella books happen to contain a few more dairy free or even accidentally-vegan cakes than this one does, I definitely think they could do better in this area.
The concept of this book - healthy comfort food with plenty of vegan options - is a perfect fit for the sort of cakes and puddings I want to make: heavy on fruit, lower added sugar, but not full of niche American vegan ingredients. (The best approach I've found so far is to make the cakes in The Seasonal Vegan by Sarah Philpott and reduce the sugar by up to half as per this excellent and methodical advice; see under blended cakes.)
Vegan baking books themselves, for example Karolina Tegelaar's Vegan Baking Bible whose methodical scientific outlook I otherwise find admirable and relatable, are tiresomely insistent about making vegan food as "decadent" as possible. Tegelaar apparently doesn't agree with the experiments and advice on sugar reduction I linked above, and which have usually worked for me, though she does mention that high fruit content makes eggless baking easier. There's a similar problem in some UK cities: loads of cafés specialising in vegan junkfood, next to none focused on vegan wholefood. (Solo, in such areas, I'd usually end up going to an omni place and eating something like salade niçoise. Vegans, you could have sold me a meal if you were serving more than chocolate brownies and Impossible Burgers stacked with sheeze and relish.) Yet among people I know who are veggie and vegan, all 40+, there's one couple who love the junkfood, and everyone else is, to one degree of strictness or another, into the wholefood and healthy eating side and not keen on ultraprocessed and sugary.
There are people who actually prefer the taste of the healthier versions that are implicitly denigrated by entrepreneurial millennial vegans like Tegelaar and these café owners. The last time I made a cake with the full amount of suggested sugar, I found it pretty unpleasant, and sugar totally overwhelmed the other flavours. The introduction in Good Comfort, when mentioning reducing sugar in their café cakes, at least recognises people like us exist and are worth catering to: "the few guests who notice this change invariably comment positively: 'I really like that it isn't too sweet'".
Maybe they are planning a River Cottage Vegan Baking handbook, like they have the Gluten Free one and other food-group specific handbooks like Mushrooms. There is more and more great technical advice out there from the likes of the aforementioned Vegan Baking Bible, and Philip Khoury's upcoming A New Way to Bake, on restaurant-grade patisserie, with restaurant-grade ingredients you can also see listed under his YT videos. But so far as I can tell, there still isn't a high-quality, trustworthy book focused on vegan baking with the sort of fruit and veg grown in the UK and on vegan versions of traditional British sweet recipes.
Anyway, I'm off to make something omni, but which I think is in the spirit of this book: a version of Elizabeth David's Omelette au Boudin, with one omelette folded in half rather than two, and added spinach. A brunch that can keep hunger locked up till nearly bedtime.
(reviewed September 2023)
September 21, 2022
Last time we had friends over for dinner, I made a dessert of home-made avocado ice-cream, with brownies. I should have taken a photo because it was scrumptious, despite the recipe's claim that the brownies had only 91 kcal per serve because they were made with yoghurt instead of butter. I don't care about calories, but I do try to offer desserts that are healthy-ish. OTOH if I'm only going to make brownies once or twice a year, I want them to taste decadent.
So I am pleased to add River Cottage Good Comfort, to our recipe book collection. (That's the British River Cottage TV series with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (HFW), not the Australian adaptation with Paul West.)
With recipe books, which are usually expensive, it's important to identify the target audience before you choose. The obvious decider is whether the book is for experienced or inexperienced cooks; but also keen v unenthusiastic cooks who can't cope with more than four or five ingredients; and cooks who take shortcuts with packets, jars and tins v those who would starve rather than buy carrot or cheese that's already grated or use a packet to make a 'home-made' cake. There are also cookbooks pitched at those for whom nutrition or ideological principles take priority i.e. vegan, vegetarian, organic, non-allergenic, heart-healthy etc etc. With River Cottage Good Comfort there's another audience I'd never thought much about before: it's pitched at people with a habit of eating unhealthy so-called 'family favourites', who need or want to take a healthier approach to food and cooking, with or without the support of the rest of the household.
You can see this pitch in parts of the blurb:
The book begins with an Introduction. It's the usual cook's philosophy section, which in this case is HFW's mission to recreate comfort foods that are not heavy, cloying, too rich or too sweet. His key principle is 'Go Whole: The more whole, unrefined ingredients we can get on to our plates, the better. But he doesn't just mean the grains and pulses we typically associate with the term 'wholefoods'. He means foods that are whole, or very close to it, when we take them into our kitchens. (I heard these described the other day as 'foods your granny would recognise'.) Minimally processed is ok, so he includes dairy foods such as yoghurt and cheese, and some tinned vegetables (such as low-salt tomatoes canned with just water and a little salt.) He stresses that it's important to get the balance right: overdo the pulses and you're in the danger zone of 'padding'. Likewise, full-on wholemeal flour can take you a little far from textures you know and love, so 'half-wholemeal' is a better choice.
I'm already onboard with reducing sugar: I find most modern recipes and storebought cakes have far too much sugar for my taste. My cakes, biscuits and puddings mostly come from battered recipe books from decades ago. HFW's other mission is to encourage cooks to use a variety of good ingredients, which is my culinary mission too.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/09/21/r...
So I am pleased to add River Cottage Good Comfort, to our recipe book collection. (That's the British River Cottage TV series with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (HFW), not the Australian adaptation with Paul West.)
With recipe books, which are usually expensive, it's important to identify the target audience before you choose. The obvious decider is whether the book is for experienced or inexperienced cooks; but also keen v unenthusiastic cooks who can't cope with more than four or five ingredients; and cooks who take shortcuts with packets, jars and tins v those who would starve rather than buy carrot or cheese that's already grated or use a packet to make a 'home-made' cake. There are also cookbooks pitched at those for whom nutrition or ideological principles take priority i.e. vegan, vegetarian, organic, non-allergenic, heart-healthy etc etc. With River Cottage Good Comfort there's another audience I'd never thought much about before: it's pitched at people with a habit of eating unhealthy so-called 'family favourites', who need or want to take a healthier approach to food and cooking, with or without the support of the rest of the household.
You can see this pitch in parts of the blurb:
The perception that the food we love can't also be good for us is swept away by this stunning collection of delicious, heart-warming recipes that also happen to be packed with good things that help keep us healthy.
And Good Comfort is in every way generous, as Hugh makes our favourite foods healthier, not by taking stuff out of them, but by putting more in: the best whole ingredients, celebrated in all their colourful and seasonal diversity.
The book begins with an Introduction. It's the usual cook's philosophy section, which in this case is HFW's mission to recreate comfort foods that are not heavy, cloying, too rich or too sweet. His key principle is 'Go Whole: The more whole, unrefined ingredients we can get on to our plates, the better. But he doesn't just mean the grains and pulses we typically associate with the term 'wholefoods'. He means foods that are whole, or very close to it, when we take them into our kitchens. (I heard these described the other day as 'foods your granny would recognise'.) Minimally processed is ok, so he includes dairy foods such as yoghurt and cheese, and some tinned vegetables (such as low-salt tomatoes canned with just water and a little salt.) He stresses that it's important to get the balance right: overdo the pulses and you're in the danger zone of 'padding'. Likewise, full-on wholemeal flour can take you a little far from textures you know and love, so 'half-wholemeal' is a better choice.
I'm already onboard with reducing sugar: I find most modern recipes and storebought cakes have far too much sugar for my taste. My cakes, biscuits and puddings mostly come from battered recipe books from decades ago. HFW's other mission is to encourage cooks to use a variety of good ingredients, which is my culinary mission too.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/09/21/r...
January 5, 2023
Looking forward to trying a couple of the recipes this weekend!
I'd have liked a few more recipes just for two - it's not always easy to scale down from a recipe for 6 and I don't always have room in the freezer for four extra portions.
I'd have liked a few more recipes just for two - it's not always easy to scale down from a recipe for 6 and I don't always have room in the freezer for four extra portions.
June 19, 2023
The photos are all a bit beige but good recipes that make me want to cook them.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews