The Aperitif Guy

We all have heroes, people we admire and want to emulate, perhaps to impress. Some of them will be distant figures who may have lived generations before us, others will be members of our own family. All of them make us who we are. They show us how to be, in certain circumstances of our life or work. A few years ago, I gave a series of dinners in celebration of some of my culinary heroes. The first of these dinners celebrated the food writer Elizabeth David. It is nigh-on impossible to write anything original about Mrs David. Even to say what she has meant to me personally, as a reader, cook, host and now writer, is to repeat what so many others have said before. Let me start at the end: quite simply, she is one of the most influential women ever to have lived in Britain. Her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ends: “David was the best writer on food and drink this country has ever produced. When she began writing in the 1950s, the British scarcely noticed what was on ...

This time of quarantine has put paid to entertaining, hospitality and social dining for now, so I've been looking back over my archive of menus and the letters I've written over the years about food. It's been a time to remember influential friends and family and to consider how my culinary heroes have changed me. I gave my first formal dinner in the last few weeks of my university career, in a flat overlooking the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool. I might cringe a little now at the menu (fish terrine, coq au vin, lime sorbet), but it was rather sophisticated for your average student! The sorbet recipe came from a book I’m still using to this day. A Taste of Excellence (E Lambert Ortiz, 1988) introduced a new wave of young British cooks (including Raymond Blanc) who were just starting to move on from the constraints of Nouvelle Cuisine. (By the way, let nobody mock Nouvelle Cuisine: it taught Brits that food should look good!) When I started work, it was at a large r...