Keep It Simple: A Fresh Look at Classic Cooking

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In fact he did not give up restaurants entirely. In 2017 the Littles moved to Sydney, where they opened a pop-up restaurant inside the city’s CBD Hotel. In 2019, the couple started a home delivery service in London called By Alastair Little. Add another splash of olive oil to the pan, turn up the heat to medium and saute the peppers. They need to be cooked until slightly brown, not collapsing but with some residual bite. When done, transfer to the colander. Repeat with the aubergines, then finally the courgettes.

When nearing the end of the churning, drain the peaches. As the custard starts to freeze, add them and continue to churn until set. This book won the Glenfiddich Award in 1994 and I still sometimes hear it referred to reverentially as the godfather of modern British cooking. It is, and it isn't: it clearly marks a break from the French dominated nouvelle cuisine & cuisine classique that had lorded British gastronomy in the 1970s and 1980s; it equally clearly has influenced developments in British dining culture since then as well as in food writing and home cooking. What some people might have forgotten is that British cuisine, as it is today, did not emerge miraculously in its present form from under the tyranny of heavy sauces - there was the rebellious phase of fusion food marking the journey. Preparation: First, the crumble topping: sift the flour into a bowl with the brown sugar and almonds and combine them using your fingers. Add the butter and continue to work for several minutes until the ingredients are thoroughly blended in and the mixture is very crumbly. Leave to rest for about 20 minutes. Fusion food does make its mark in this book but it would be unfair to characterise the whole work as that; some dishes may be fusion inspired but others owe clear allegiance to a particular national culinary tradition. The vast array of those national culinary traditions does point in the same direction though: British, Italian, French, Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Morrocan flavours are all here in this publication.

Alastair Little, keep it simple

A classic taste of late summer, this is one of the few dishes that uses sliced white bread to advantage. It is also one of the few English desserts admired by French and Italians alike. You should only make it when berries are both abundant and cheap (a proper summer pudding should never include strawberries). It has to be made at least the day before it is needed and is better for two or three days in the fridge. As soon as this is mixed, transfer the custard to a jug and return the tart to the oven on the baking tray. Only then (when the tart is in place in the oven), carefully pour the custard over the apples and prunes, making sure none runs down the sides of the pastry. (It is easier to avoid slopping by doing this only when the tart is in the oven.) At this point shout triumphantly as the caramel-glossed Tarte Tatin smiles at you in rustic perfection or, as may well be the case, burst into tears as overcooked apples cling tenaciously to the toffee in the pan and you contemplate an unattractive mess.

Everybody has a variation on the dauphinois theme. This version was first shown to me by Rowley Leigh who was taught how to cook this dish by the Roux brothers, so the pedigree is faultless. It is unfashionably rich, expensive and unhealthy, so very small portions please. Cooking: Scatter the garlic in the prepared gratin dish. Then arrange the drained potatoes on top, cut sides upwards. Pour over the olive oil and dot with the butter. Season with salt and pepper.Cooking: Over a medium heat, saute the apples in a heavy pan with the butter and sugar, tossing to coat and cooking until just tender (which will take between 10 and 15 minutes). They should be golden brown. A Provencal vegetable stew best served at room temperature, ratatouille should be a very basic preparation and not over-refined. Bad variations (vegetables diced too small, too much tomato, using dried herbs and so on) often debase one of the finest possible combinations of Mediterranean flavours. He was educated at Kirkham Grammar School, where he found himself longing for “something more than school food, which I couldn’t stomach. By the age of 12, I was obsessed with what we were having for dinner.” Preparation: Measure out all the ingredients and sift the flour into a bowl. Grate 1/2 teaspoon of zest each from the lemon and the orange, using the second-finest grating surface. Cooking: Put immediately into the centre of the oven and bake for 25 minutes. Do not open the door for at least 15 minutes. After 20 minutes, insert a small clean knife into the centre of the cake (I stress clean because I have on occasion tested with a garlic-tainted knife, which does nothing to improve the flavour). If it comes out clean the cake is done, so remove it; if the mixture clings to the knife, cook for a further 5 minutes, by which time it should be cooked - but there is no harm in testing again.

After graduation, he flirted briefly with a career in film editing, but his much more lucrative evening job as a waiter at Small’s, a Knightsbridge cafe, took over. By 2002, however, he had left the restaurant partnership. For most of the previous decade he had spent his summers running a cookery school near Orvieto in Umbria where, in 1995, he met Sharon Jacob, an Australian marketing manager whom he married in 2000. At the time, most of the best restaurants were run by chefs, generally French and steeped in tradition, who had been to catering school and learnt the classic French system. The top restaurants in London were Michelin-starred establishments such as Le Gavroche or La Tante Claire. English chefs at the time generally had a low status: as one food writer put it, cooking as a career was regarded as “a default option for those who couldn’t think of anything better to do”. Preparation: Prepare the vegetables, keeping each vegetable separate: only peel the onion and garlic, but top and tail the aubergines and courgettes. Destalk and deseed the peppers. Scald the tomatoes in a bowl of boiling water for 60 seconds, then refresh, peel and deseed. Cut all the vegetables into bite-sized chunks. (If using baby courgettes, leave them whole.) I don't worry about what sort of potato, though they should be slightly waxy. No cheese is necessary, for the amalgamation of the potatoes and cream produces a cheesy effect. It is vital not to have the oven too hot or the cream will curdle.

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He read archaeology and anthropology at Downing College, Cambridge, where the food was “horrible” but the wines “revelatory”. He spent much of his time there, Elizabeth David to hand, making lavish dinners for student friends – including Rowley Leigh. I believe the original recipe for Tarte Tatin uses sweet shortcrust pastry, but I like puff pastry and find the bought, frozen variety good enough for domestic interpretations. Anyway, since it will be drenched with sugary juices, the quality of the pastry is by no means the most significant part of the finished dish. To make the zabaglione: in a large bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar until the mixture is stiff. Then, continuing to beat, pour in the hot melted butter in a thin stream, followed by the vanilla essence and Calvados. Remove the mixer bowl and, with the spatula, stir gently, starting from the centre at the bottom and working outwards and upwards while rotating the bowl one quarter-turn. Repeat 3 more times (which means the bowl will have been turned full circle). This is called 'folding' and is the best way of ensuring all the elements are thoroughly mixed without losing lightness by being heavy-handed. Prepare the broccoli: first put a large pan of lightly salted water on to heat - you need very little salt in the cooking water, as the florets retain salt and intensify the seasoning. I once had a review that said everything was lovely except the broccoli, which tasted as if it had been cooked in sea water. Point taken] Split the broccoli into florets and cut out the woody stems and discard. You can find caterpillar infestation, so watch out. Wash and leave to soak in a bowl of cold water. This will freshen the vegetable.

Thin and bearded, with a faint Lancashire accent and a high-pitched giggle, Little was not the most glamorous of chefs, but in his heyday in the 1980s and 1990s he was one of the country’s most recognisable. He appeared on the cover of Elle magazine and on television in shows such as Ready Steady Cook and Masterchef. Cooking: Put about 3 tablespoons of olive oil into a large heavy pan, set over a medium heat and cook the onions, stirring. They must not colour. As they soften and go translucent, add the garlic and cook for another 2 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the contents of the pan to a colander placed over a bowl. Simply printing recipes different in tone to those that had characterised food for a generation however would not, in all likelihood, have garnered Alastair Little the critical acclaim that he received though. This book is self-consciously polemical. Beginning by telling you what you should have in a kitchen (an unusual move for a chef not known from TV appearances) he preaches simplicity and seasonality in cooking. It is these points that people most probably mean when referring to the book's influence. The last of them was developed to a greater degree by another Glenfiddich Award winner: the thoroughly British The River Cottage Year. many people the word zabaglione conjures up images of the kind of trattoria where the host greets you with overpowering bonhomie. You sit at 'your' table (inevitably 'the best in the house', just next to the kitchen service doors) and grimly contemplate the cold antipasto - with its obligatory leaden aubergine - with growing foreboding. Forget all that. Here the zabaglione is cooked into a tart of apple and prunes held in a sweet crisp crust. I got the recipe from Rowley Leigh. He, in turn, had it from Yves Thuries, the French patissier.Now the moment of truth: cover the top of the pan with your serving plate. Holding the pan by the handle (wearing an oven glove because it will still be hot), invert so that the pastry base is now against the surface of the plate, with the rim outside the circumference of the pan. Sit the plate on the table, rap the bottom of the pan smartly with a suitable implement and lift away from the tart. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Peel and core the apples, turning them in the lemon juice in a bowl to prevent discolouration. Cut them in half, squaring off the ends.