Eat Your Greens

by Sophie Grigson

Eat Your Greens

Genres: Cooking

Hardcover

First published May 5, 1994

About the author

Hester Sophia Frances Grigson is an English cookery writer and celebrity chef known as Sophie Grigson. She has followed the same path and career as her mother, Jane Grigson. Her father was the poet and writer Geoffrey Grigson.

She won the Guild of Food Writers Cookery Journalist Award 2001

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

This is a jolly cook which has saved my bacon a few times, it is not a vegetarian cook book so all vegetarians can relax and need not look quite so anxiously at the chopping knife in my hand although it does focus on vegetables or as we refer to them demotically in British English - Greens because they are, except of course when they are not, which thinking about it, is fairly often. From the cover alone I get a good impression - showing the author so out and proud of her vegetable love that like some latter day Mayakovsky, she sports a vegetable button hole, admittedly she doesn't have the haircut and she sticks to prose throughout. Nor as far as I am aware was she involved in revolutionary politics. I'm mildly concerned in that the author is the daughter of noted food writer Jane Grigson - do the off spring of young Sophie feel an intolerable urge to publish cook books or a crushing sense of guilt should they buy on a whim a sandwich or a pie in a shop instead of hand crafting their own (and writing about it)?

It is one of those books illustrated with gorgeous colour photographs of food which your own cooking will only very approximately resemble (if undercooked). My sister while at art college made friends with a young woman who was employed making giant lipsticks for commercials since for filming a commercial advertising lipstick , you are apparently better off using a giant thing made of balsa wood and painted with gloss paint than the real thing which in studio conditions looks apparently rather undesirable. Naturally I can't help thinking the same about food photography too - not that it is made from balsa wood and gloriously painted but that it probably isn't anywhere near as edible as it looks.

Anyhow from this cook book I first made Ratatouille, unfortunately since I don't live in the south of France it does strike me as unsustainable eating as aubergines and courgettes are relatively expensive unless one has a glass house and doesn't throw stones. I imagine at times an English ratatouille, perhaps in these Brexit times it is the kind of question that Parliament could usefully consider, I feel that marrow and cucumber could usefully feature but that it needs something else that is ubiquitously cheap in a climate that is not sun drenched, but hopefully has a bit more colour than cabbage obviously the dish would also need the kind of red, white and blue name fully in keeping with patriotic direction of the country, something like Sussex summer stew or Suffolk Surprise. Although she does offer up a nice cabbage recipe here in which you let it cook in butter on a low heat for an hour or so and then add a good sqwidge of lemon juice. Then again, to my mind lemons pretty much improve anything. Life without lemons would lack zest.

This very evening I turned with first home grown courgette in hand to her book for advice, steaming says she, particularly when they are small and have still their flower on - well it was a bit late for that, but grilled naked save for a dressing of oil, lemon juice and pepper was good too.

[Libbeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of my favourite books on cooking vegetables. I loved the TV series too.
Most often used recipe from this book : Stoved Brussels sprouts and carrots, page 207 and fried Brussels sprouts, aka Brussels in disguise. A very small amount of oil is used, so it’s still as healthy recipe, for all the use of the word fried. People who think they hate Brussels sprouts gobble them up this way.
Slow cooked cabbage with lemon, page 209. A very simple recipe, easily looks after itself while you prepare the rest of the meal, and delicious to eat.