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. A few years ago, I gave a series of dinners in celebration of some of my culinary heroes, the final of which marked my admiration for Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, author of La Physiologie du Goût (the physiology of taste). Unlike the three previous heroes (Elizabeth David, Anton Mosimann and Auguste Escoffier), Brillat-Savarin never left us a single recipe. He produced instead a finely written collection of meditations on the value of good eating, which guide us through an approach to food that is at once careful and exploratory. Modern psychology might recognise in many of his meditations what we would call "mindful" enjoyment of the pleasures of the table. That his master-work has not been out of print in French since its first publication is t...

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. A few years ago, I gave a series of dinners in celebration of some of my culinary heroes. This series of posts explores the lives and influence of those people and recalls the atmosphere and style of each dinner. My edition of Escoffier’s Ma Cuisine is dated 1991. I must have bought it for one of the first dinner parties I gave. I was living and working at Loyola Hall at the time, a Jesuit-run retreat centre in Merseyside, now, very sadly, closed. With my every basic need provided for, I had begun to feel the need to entertain. I had found that a stall on the local market would get me lobsters at a reasonable price and decided they should be served à la termidor . I’d never eaten lobster thermidor, and didn’t know what was in it, but I knew it had cachet. I ...

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. A few years ago, I gave a series of dinners in celebration of some of my culinary heroes. This series of posts explores the lives and influence of those people and recalls the atmosphere and style of each dinner. In a dinner I called "Clean Air, Cold Water," I celebrated the great master of Nouvelle Cuisine and Godfather of Modern British cooking, Anton Mosimann. From its opening in 1931 until the 1970s, the kitchens of London’s Dorchester Hotel, and indeed every London hotel, had served mainly classic French cuisine. With its vast brigades and extensive kitchens, the hotel was well prepared for a style of cooking that can conjure an almost infinite variety of dishes out of five “mother” sauces and an array of pre-prepared flavouring ingredients. Th...

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 ...

Image: Swindon Advertiser To people of my generation, the name of Diana Dors conjures up images from 1970s comedies: a buxom, glamorous lady a little past her prime, camping it up as the dictator in a sketch serial from The Two Ronnies' TV programme, or as Adam Ant's fairy godmother in the Prince Charming video. For those a little older, she was the genuinely sexy star of British cinema of the 1950s and 60s, sold as Britain's answer to Marilyn Monroe and equally used and abused by those around her. Readers may remember salacious tales of sex parties and gangland connections, cheap, titillating films, drink and drugs. She was hardly the kind of person my Grandmother would emulate. Grandma was quiet, domesticated, deeply faithful to her religion and not keen on people drinking. She loved family and loved to bake for us. Every week, we would visit and be provided with scones, custard tart, lemon curd cake, apple pie. You name it, she baked it for us. She once told me I b...

I have written many times already about a tradition of food hospitality in my family. The Mothers' Day weekend has had me thinking about it again - this time about my grandmothers and the food I remember them cooking. The daffodils at the head of the page are a reminder of my maternal grandmother. She loved the spring, and Grandad planted large numbers of daffodil bulbs in the borders around their front garden. He would always cut a few for her when they came out, which she would place in a glass to brighten up the house when the dreariness of winter was past. I've inherited her love of them. They are so simple, bright and cheery. I always keep an eye out for the first ones to bloom: I see it as proof that spring has finally arrived. Once or twice, I've bought a bunch and absent-mindedly reached into the cupboard for a glass to put them in. Some habits die hard! This winter and spring have been particularly difficult for us all, so I offer the image of these lovely, si...

Mrs Aperitif with her pride & joy Jean-Anthèlme Brillat-Savarin wrote that to receive someone into your home is to assume responsibility for their well-being and happiness until they leave. I was in my 40s before I read that, but it was something I’d known since I was a child, and when I did read it, I recognised immediately an approach to hospitality that I’d inherited from my Mum. I felt like I'd discovered something that had always been there, written into my DNA. Food has always been an important element of my Mum’s mothering. When we were at home, she took great pleasure in providing for our needs. Food was always prepared from fresh meat, vegetables and fruit. It wasn’t particularly lavish, but she’s a good cook and made us food that was tasty, filling and healthy. She’s never been afraid to try new things, and I have realised in adulthood that we were introduced to curry, pizza, chilli and lasagne a good five years earlier than most families of similar so...