My Favorite Ingredients: An Enticing Collection of Recipes [A Cookbook]

by Skye Gyngell

At London's acclaimed Petersham Nurseries Cafe, head chef Skye Gyngell creates dishes that follow the ebb and flow of nature. The restaurant composes its menus daily, after the fresh fruits and vegetables arrive and the kitchen staff chooses the most tempting of the bunch. This produce-driven ethos is the basis for My Favorite Ingredients, which highlights sixteen of Skye's most-loved foods.

Each chapter stars one delicious ingredient--from asparagus to fish to cheese to honey--and offers diverse recipes based on a wide range of natural pairings, such as Crab Cakes with Corn Puree and Chili Oil, Goat Cheese Souffle with Lemon Thyme, and Chicken with Figs and Honey. In this very personal collection of more than one hundred recipes, Skye shares her simple ways of combining foods to coax out their purest flavors. These dishes draw on Skye's long-standing relationships with local suppliers and farmers (the restaurant works with forty-seven different providers) to highlight unusual varieties of familiar staples like tomatoes, leafy greens, and vinegar that are well worth discovering.

This charming cookbook showcases the beauty and bounty that we find in nature--and helps us incorporate a bit of that natural abundance in our own kitchens.

Genres: Cookbooks, Food, Nonfiction, Cooking

256 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2008

About the author

Skye Gyngell is head chef at Petersham Nurseries Café in Richmond, Surrey, and an established food writer, contributing regularly to the Independent on Sunday, Vogue and delicious. Born in Australia, Skye has worked as a chef in Sydney, Paris and London. Since 2004, she has been pivotal in establishing Petersham’s reputation for excellent food and an impressive number of awards. A Year in my Kitchen was named the Guild of Food Writers ‘Cookery Book of the Year’ in 2007 and ‘Best Food Book’ at Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards. The sequel, My Favourite Ingredients, was published in 2008.

Reviews

[Janie · Rating 4 out of 5]

accompaniment ~
• "Turn! Turn! Turn!", The Byrds

--

yay
+ I have affinity for some of her approaches. (viz., "Lemon juice is the ingredient, along with salt, that I depend on more than anything in the kitchen.")
+ Color pictures in a paperback. Yum.
+ I have made the sour savory pickled cherries (thanks to Em&En and their tree) which should be ready in a couple of weeks. I plan to try the pickled pumpkin.

nay
- While she bases her concoctions on what is local and seasonal, nothing about this book informs or inspires the reader to the same.

[False · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is her second book that I've read. I guess I'm not a fan. She works at a popular nursery with café setting. Her platings are lovely. It's the....food. An entire cookbook with a chapter devoted to "gaming birds." For your average reader? NOT a concern. Chapters on garlic, olive oil and chocolate? Many recipes using fresh cranberry beans. Good luck finding "those." I suppose she has her following. I won't be one of them.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

if you can access fresh cranberries
and lots of quality rabbit and game

then this book might not frustrate you in London

but if you like the really interesting stuff like Rabbit with Saffron
this book will do it for ya

but just be warned about just how many zillions of fresh cranberry recipes there are.

And for a free pizza, i might do a special list of every cranberry recipe!

[Clare · Rating 1 out of 5]

For me, most full-color cookbooks are like food porn for the eyes and stomach. (Ina Garten, anyone?) But this one felt like food porn with midgets and circus props. I have a fairly creative kitchen, but could not make a single recipe listed here: Carpaccio of smoked haddock with chile and winter purslane; rabbit with saffron, cucumber, tomatoes and basil;lobster salad with fennel and blood oranges.

Maybe my friend Vanessa is up to the challenge of tackling these obscure ingredients and laborious prep, but not me.

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides · Rating 3 out of 5]

I checked this out from the library to see if it had a recipe for salt and vinegar peanuts. (Nope.) Some of the things I might try, like the tomato and bread soup, or the chickpea and chard soup. But there are a lot of recipes in here that most people aren't going to want to mess with, or won't be able to conveniently get the ingredients for, or both.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an okay cookbook. It had interesting anecdotes and a few easy recipes that I would try, but most of those included are recipes that I would never even attempt to try.

[Beka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nice pictures, but not really my style. Not entirely sure why.

[Sophie James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely receipts, simple and seasonal.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked leafing through this book, but it had very few recipes I would try.