Cookbooks with More

I like cookbooks that, apart from having good recipes, are pleasurable to read and have lovely photos to set the tone of the book. They are enjoyable as a coffee table book even if you don’t want to cook anything out of them, but you will…

Winter in the Highlands by Great British Bake Off contestant Flora Shedden and The Christmas Chronicles by Nigel Slater are both cozy cookbooks where the authors evoke the season before we even reach the recipe section. Both of these authors appreciate winter and engage our senses by capturing familiar wintry situations, appetites intact. I have included a taste of each writing style below. The photo above is from Winter in the Highlands.

“There is something undeniably enticing about winter in Scotland. The sharpness of the air, the deepening of the skies, the way the land hunkers down into a slow, deliberate rest. Scotland’s shades and tones were made for cold weather, if you ask me. Dove-grey clouds filled with snow, the silver of a naked birch tree, pale sparkling blue from a cloudless day, the charcoal silhouette of pine when the moon shines from behind. On days when the temperature is below freezing and the sun rises from the horizon, it brings with it a pinky-orange shade that is so perfect I would like to turn it into a pudding or, failing that, a paint colour. And that is simply on good days. When the weather is heavy and dreich, the palette of dark greens, almost inky-black trees fade into bracken-rich browns, before seeping into frosty-covered chestnut and cinnamon. Lastly it darkens again to a deep plum at the top of the heathery hill. There’s plenty of adoration for autumn, its golden hues, romanticism of leaves falling like confetti, the promise of a rich harvest. But for me, winter rises above all other seasons. The colder months bring a quieter, more complex beauty, one that often goes unnoticed beneath the glare of the tinsel and glitter that fills our lives from November onwards. I have a great fondness for those winter days when the snow falls heavy and soft, when the world is hushed. There is a quietness that fills the space between breaths, where the only sounds are the crunch of snow or ice and the creak of frozen branches. It is the kind of stillness that, in turn, makes the warmth of home all the more delicious. “