Carluccio’s Simple Cooking

With the festive season upon us, we are once again bombarded with an array of Christmas gifts to buy, to the point where it becomes so overwhelming that all you can see is tinsel; and I don’t think any of my relatives would be pleased if I gifted them with a roll of sparkling decorative plastic this Christmas.

Even in our humble bookstores, the front covers leap out at you like orphaned puppies, begging and whining for you to take them home for Christmas. One such puppy you might want to consider is Antionio Carluccio’s Simple Cooking. It does what it says on the tin, or rather, cover. This is straightforward Italian cooking based on the premise that all you need to create fantastic food is the best quality ingredients, cooked simply with a little care and attention to detail. This is the secret behind some of the most successful chefs and restaurants our planet has ever seen, and it is true for the home cook too.

The book takes the reader from starters all the way to desserts, with a wide range of easy to cook recipes. While some cookery books feature very few recipes that one would actually cook on a regular basis, this is quite the opposite, with something for everyone and certainly contains dishes that one could knock up for a midweek meal. This book would make a perfect gift for those people starting out on their journeys of home cookery, but would be equally at home on the shelf of the experienced gourmet who might want something a tad more down to earth but no less robust in flavour.

As an example of the recipes on offer, we have selected Carluccio’s chicken liver pâté that we will share with you – the perfect starter, table accompaniment or snack for the lazy festive period.

Antonio Carluccio’s Simple Cooking. RRP £20, hardcover, 176 pages, Quadrille Publishing. ISBN-10: 1844007340 / ISBN-13: 978-1844007349.