River Cottage Good Comfort: Best-Loved Favourites Made Better for You

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He has just finished filming his most recent series, which accompanies his most recent book, River Cottage Every Day. I used to make coffee and peppermint creams and dip them in chocolate - and truffles, things like that," Fearnley-Whittingstall remembers. 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.

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. Put the chocolate and butter into a saucepan and melt gently over a very low heat, watching all the time and stirring often so that the chocolate doesn't get too hot. Set aside to cool a little. Preheat the oven to 190C/170C Fan/Gas 5 and butter a small oven dish. In River Cottage Great Roasts, all you will need are good ingredients, an oven and some simple bakeware to create easy weeknight dinners, showstopping Sunday roasts, fuss-free breakfasts, tea-time treats and indulgent puds.

Whether you need to cut gluten out of your diet or you're cooking for friends & family with gluten intolerance, River Cottage Gluten Free will provide the tools you need to gain inspiration and navigate mealtimes. Serve hot, topped with a fried egg if you like. Mustard or chilli sauce are also very good on the side.

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.) This is all part of the 57-year-old chef and food writer's mission to get us eating a bit more healthily - and that doesn't mean you have to miss out on your favourite, stodgy comfort foods.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. About 150-200g cooked potatoes or cold mash (you can also use a mixture of roots such as spuds and celeriac or parsnips), ideally still skin-on 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. Dialling down the sugar and the refined ingredients is part of it, but dialling up the whole ingredients is what the book's more about," Fearnley-Whittingstall adds. Gelf Alderson has spent years serving up original, veg-centric meals to delight the guests at River Cottage. His recipes redefine the idea of salad, as playful flavour pairings, clever techniques and vibrant dressings bring out the very best in seasonal produce.

When the cake is nicely browned underneath, flip it over with a spatula and cook the other side. (If you are scaling up quantities, and making a larger cake – one that pretty much fills the pan – you can cut it into halves or quarters when the first side is crisped, and flip over each half or quarter, one at a time.) Start to finish, your S and B might take 20 minutes or more. The success of the show and the books allowed Hugh to establish River Cottage HQ near Bridport in 2004. Even as I say that, I'm aware that is a notion that's under challenge at the moment from the really tough times we're having. We've been conned into eating more sugar than we even have a genuine appetite for," he says, good-natured outrage bubbling from his words. 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.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). To enjoy a taste of River Cottage at home you can choose from the collection of River Cottage cookbooks and handbooks... 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. For millennia, that was the human race's relationship with food, and it was pretty much all you thought about all day.