ILLUSTRATIONS: ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
We are living through a remarkable era of food writing, which continues to open up the world in the most mouth-watering way
Sometimes when I’m feeling exhausted, grumpy or sad, I grab the remote and spin through the channels until I find the Food Network and my dear Ina. Ina Garten, also known as the Barefoot Contessa after the posh deli she used to own in the Hamptons in New York, is my go-to televisual comfort watch. There’s nothing fancy or complicated about her food – think pot pies, gratins, big salads and slabs of brownies. Ina’s books and programmes are filled with friends and stories. Yes, of course, the scenes are set up for television. There she goes, taking curried chicken wraps to a freezing-looking beach-volleyball picnic, or making little sandwiches for the opening of her friend’s florist shop, or arranging the snacks for her bridge-night pals. But you get the impression that whether the cameras are rolling or not, Ina is living a big, wonderful life full of friends and fun. (If you know any different, please don’t tell me.) She also seems never to have met a cocktail she didn’t like, which is practically my number one requirement in a friend.
I’m writing this in my office, its deep blue shelves lined with thousands of cookbooks, and it strikes me that my favourites – the ones that are as likely to turn up on my bedside table as in my kitchen – are almost always those written by women, like Ina, who are essentially home cooks. In those pages there is companionship: a delicious sorority of imagination, creativity, skill and, of course, storytelling. These women’s recipes mark the milestones of my life – birthdays and Christmases, happy lunches and family dinners – rather than the flash-Harry foams and Michelin-starred jus of those cheffy recipes that belong more properly in the restaurants of their origin than at my own table.