There was a time a few years back, when the cult of the super-chef was at its zenith, when books of chef's recipes made little or no compromises for the domestic cook. The books, instead, were objects of glory for Marco or Raymond or Joel or whoever, and they were slick and handsome, and ultimately rather useless, packed with mind-numbing text such as "This will surely impress your friends and family!" Ugh!
Whereas we might pick a Jane Grigson book or a Paula Wolfert book off the shelf every couple of days, what tends to happen with the chef books is that we cook a couple of ideas from them, swoon at the photography, and then pack them back up on the shelf, where they remain largely untouched, and largely irrelevant to our everyday cooking.
But then, a few years back, some publishers realised that a chef's book which had the culinary ideas interpreted through the skill of a food journalist was actually a better proposition than a chef spouting platitudes and restaurant dishes. Joel Robuchon collaborated with the food writer Patricia Wells. Simon Hopkinson worked with Lindsey Bareham to produce the superb Roast Chicken and Other Stories. Gordon Ramsay collaborated with Roz Denny, and A.A. Gill wrote the entire text of the stylish The Ivy - The Restaurant and Its Recipes.
Two new books extend the collaborative theme between chefs and food writers. Charles Campion, food writer for the ES magazine of the London Evening Standard, has written the text for The Livebait Cookbook, which features the wild and whacky cooking of Theodore Kyriakou, while Matthew Fort, food editor of the Guardian, has worked with the celebrated Lancashire chef, Paul Heathcote, to produce Rhubard and Black Pudding. Heathcote has the stars and a pair of brasseries as well as his restaurant. Kyriakou has recently sold the Livebait restaurant to the Chez Gerrard group, and there are now two further Livebait restaurants, so both chefs are responsible for three places apiece. Where Campion works in snapshots, with punchy, arpeggiated sentences, Fort takes us on a more leisurely stroll with a series of essays about Heathcote himself and the entire network of suppliers which service and create the restaurant. Where Theodore Kyriakou's cooking is wildly improvised - tuna with honey-roast chicken wings and lentil stew; seared scallops with red wine pears; risotto cake with smoked trout, sauce gribiche and roast radicchio - Paul Heathcote's cooking is a fusion of Lancashire ingredients refined by a purist sophistication - breast of Goosnargh duckling with fondant potatoes, dumpling made from the leg and mead sauce; roast local suckling pig with cider potatoes, baked apple, braised cabbage, smoked bacon and herb juices; pig's trotter filled with ham hock and sage, tartlet of pea puree and shallot sauce. You might cook one of Kypriakou's exotic concoctions at the drop of a hat, but Heathcote's menu dishes will require some degree of planning, and some degree of execution.
Both books are to be commended for pushing back the idea of what a chef's book should be about. Matthew Fort pieces together the jigsaw of influences and people which are vital to any leading restaurant, and whose work is frequently disregarded by megalomaniacal chefs who believe that they alone create the food in the restaurant. I feel, however, that many domestic cooks might find the recipes a little too cheffy: this is a cook's book for serious cooks.
The Livebait Cookbook is the third in a series published by Hodder & Stoughton, following on from Peter Gordon's Sugar Club Cookbook and The Ivy Book, which have taken a radical and very logical rethink on what a restaurateur's book should be like and what it should try to achieve. Beautifully designed, and very imaginative, they are exceptional books, simply because their aim is to give the domestic cook ideas and achieveable recipes which arise from the imagination of the chef.
The different styles of the books can be gauged from this pair of recipes. The first is typical Livebait food: in-your-face flavours, surreal pairings, relative simplicity and utter success. Heathcote's recipe for cutlet of pork reveals the intense work behind the food on the plate which is typical of top-flight restaurateuring.
Roast cod with couscous crust, chickpea, red wine and black pudding stew
125 g couscous
juice of 1 orange
25 ml good olive oil
4 x 200 g cod fillets, cut from the thick end For the stew:
500 g dried chickpeas
1 litre chicken stock
200 g carrots
3 stalks celery
4 cloves garlic
1 bay leaf
350 ml red wine - not your best!
400 g black pudding
salt and pepper
25 ml light olive oil
To make the stew:
Soak the chickpeas in water for 24 hours. Strain, rinse them in fresh water and put them in a pot with the chicken stock. Bring to the boil, turn down the heat, cover the pan and simmer for 45 minutes.
Dice the vegetables, peel and slice the garlic, and add to the pot with the wine and bay leaf. Simmer for 30 minutes more.
Take 100 g of the black pudding, skin it, chop it up, and stir into the stew to thicken the juices; adjust the seasoning to taste.
Cut the remaining black pudding into slices on the bias (ie diagonally across) and cook quickly in a hot frying pan with a little oil to crisp up the outside.
For the cod: Half-cook the couscous in boiling water - this will take about 10 minutes - and drain. Preheat your oven to 200,/400 F/gas 6.
Warm the orange juice in a nonreactive saucepan, add the couscous and the oil, stir, cover the pot with clingfilm and put to one side in a warm place for an hour or more.
Place the cod pieces, skin side down, on a greased baking sheet, brush with a little oil and season well with salt and pepper. Add a thick - 1.5cm - crust of couscous. Cook in the oven for 810 minutes. If you like a particularly crispy crust, finish under a hot grill until browned.
Note: thick cod is best for this dish, which benefits from simple presentation.
Fill four soup bowls with the stew, the sauted pudding and top each with a piece of fish.
Cutlet of pork with cider potatoes, gateau of black pudding, onions and cabbage, and juices scented with sage
1 rib-end loin of pork, weighing
about 2 kg/4 and a half pounds
salt and freshly ground black pepper For the juices :
5 shallots, finely chopped
a little olive oil
5 sprigs of thyme
5 sprigs of sage
500 ml (18 fl oz) apple juice
1 litre (1 and three quarter pints) chicken stock
1 litre (1 and three quarter pints) veal stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the Cider Potatoes:
6 large baking potatoes
1 Litre (1 and three quarter pints) sweet cider or apple juice
50 g (2oz) butter
pinch of salt For the Gateau of Black Pudding:
A little oil
1 onion, thinly sliced
Leaves picked from 1 sprig of sage, chopped
8 leaves from a Savoy cabbage
25 g (1 oz) butter
60 g (2 1/4 oz) smoked bacon, thinly sliced
1 shallot, diced
4 slices of black pudding
To make the Sage Juices:
In a large pan sweat the shallots in a little oil with the thyme and half the sage until softened but not coloured. Add the apple juice and reduce down until the liquid has a syrupy consistency. Add the chicken stock and reduce by two thirds. Add the veal stock and reduce until it has a good pouring consistency. Chop the remaining sage finely, add to the sauce and adjust the seasoning. Make the Cider Potatoes:
Peel the potatoes and cut them into 2.5 cm (1 inch) thick slices. Using a 5 cm (2 inch) circular cutter, cut the potato slices into rounds. If you like, peel around the edges of the potato for a neater appearance.
Put the potato slices in a large pan and cover with cider or apple juice. Add the butter and salt. Place the pan over a high heat and bring to the boil. Gently reduce the liquid, until it is syrupy and caramelization has begun. Turn the potatoes and gently colour them until nicely golden on both sides. If the potatoes are coloured but not cooked, add a little water and repeat the process. Remove and keep warm.
While the potatoes are cooking, prepare the pork: preheat the oven to 220 /425F/gas 7. Chine the pork, remove the skin from the loin and reserve to one side. Use a sharp knife to remove the silver skin from the pork flesh. Clean down the rib bones and portion the pork. Remove the excess fat, cut it into strips the size of each pork cutlet and warp these around the pork. Tie up so that they will hold their shape.
In a hot ovenproof frying pan, seal the seasoned meat on both the sides which are not covered by the fat.
Put the pan in the oven, with the pork skin on the bottom of the pan (to protect the meat and keep it moist). Cook for about 15 minutes.
While the pork is roasting, make the Gateau of Black Pudding, Onions and Cabbage; put a little oil in a hot pan, add the onions and sweat them until all the moisture has gone. Season, add the chopped sage leaves and set aside. Remove the large vein from the cabbage leaves and discard. Blanch the leaves in boiling salted water, then refresh in iced water. Meanwhile, sweat the bacon in the butter until cooked, then add the shallot and cook until softened but not coloured. Add the blanched cabbage leaves, season with pepper and stir to warm through.
Put the slices of black pudding inside a metal cutter about 7.5 cm (3 inches) across and 10 cm (4 inches) high. Add a layer of onion and heat through in the oven for about 10 minutes. Put the cabbage on top of the onion.
Turn the gateaux out on to one side of the centre of (preferably oval) serving plates, with the cabbage on the bottom. Put the pork in the middle of the plates and the potatoes on the other side, in a line. Spoon the sauce over all three.
The Livebait Cookbook, by Theodore Kypriakou and Charles Campion (Hodder & Stoughton, £20 in UK)
Paul Heathcote's Rhubarb and Black Pudding, by Matthew Fort (4th Estate, £20 in UK)