As previously mentioned in the grazer, Cook’s desk legs are ever-threatening to buckle under the weight of a heap of cookbooks. At the top of the pile this week is Food52’s debut: Genius Recipes (Ten Speed Press, 7 April). Granted, the word “genius” has been diluted beyond recognition, but when a website as reliably engaging as food52.com makes use of it, our ears prick up. The book takes its title from one of the site’s star columns, a compendium of standout recipes. So in one book here you’ll find Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi’s basic hummus, Julia Child’s gratin of courgette, rice and onions with cheese and Nigella Lawson’s dense chocolate loaf cake, along with 97 other exemplars of perfection.
Photographer Katie Wilson has spent the past 10 years in London’s commercial kitchens, documenting the hands that feed the city – from kebab shop and greasy spoon owners to high-end chefs, including Ollie Dabbous and Skye Gyngell. An exhibition of the resulting portraits opens at Londonewcastle Project Space in Shoreditch, London on 3 April. Prints of the photographs will be on sale, with proceeds going to the anti food-waste charity FareShare.
Prestat, royal purveyors of exquisite chocolate confections brilliantly clad in tissue and gilt tendrils, has the Easter egg down pat. This year’s range features a red velvet egg, a marc-de-champagne egg, a sea salt caramel egg and a London gin egg, each replete with its namesake truffles: creamy, delicately perfumed, magically sweetened.
Cook loves a bit of culinary anthropology, so we’ve been enjoying Back in Time for Dinner, a six-part show fronted by Giles Coren. It looks at the post-war revolution of food through the decades. If you like a hefty dollop of food nostalgia, tune in to BBC2 at 8pm on Tuesday for the third instalment and catch up on iPlayer. Right after GBBO.
