McEvedy - Big Table, Busy Kitchen: 200 Recipes for Life

First published in Great Britain in 2013

Quercus Editions Ltd
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7th Floor, South Block
London
W1U 8EW

Text copyright Allegra McEvedy, 2013
Photographs Chris Terry, 2013, except image 1, 2, 3.

The moral right of Allegra McEvedy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Quercus Editions Ltd hereby exclude all liability to the extent permitted by law for any errors or omissions in this book and for any loss, damage or expense (whether direct or indirect) suffered by a third party relying on any information contained in this book. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. However, the publishers will be glad to rectify in future editions any inadvertent omissions brought to their attention.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Ebook ISBN 978 1 78206 288 2
Print ISBN 978 1 78206 287 5

Publishing Director: Jenny Heller
Editor: Ione Walder
Print design and illustration: Two Associates
Food styling: Allegra McEvedy, Kate McCullough and Deniz Safa
Prop styling: Allegra McEvedy and Danny Craze
Copy-editing: Imogen Fortes

You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk

Note on ingredients:
All recipes were tested using medium eggs. Use free-range wherever possible, and ideally free-range chicken too. Apart from poultry, pigs are the only other animal that are intensively farmed in this country, and we love pigs, so please try and buy higher welfare pork. All sugar, coffee, tea, chocolate, bananas, nuts, spices etc. should be Fairtrade where possible.

In my mind this was written
for all mums and daughters
especially those I hold dearest:

S. McE, S. S, F. McE & S. (Mc)S

In my heart its all about Delilah

When my sister and I were growing up, the most reached-for book on our mums cookery book shelf was a rather tatty orange photo album, which contained all her favourite recipes. It was split into sections starting with hors doeuvres and hot starters going right through to cakes and rich puddings, each page with a stencil of a little blue flower at the top. Most recipes were cut out of newspapers or magazines, though some were copied out by hand. Often they had notes scribbled in her distinctive scrawl, notes that made me smile with familiarity after shed died. She loved cooking, especially puddings, and was regarded by her friends as rather talented, in a homely way.

In our house, food and mealtimes were central to our lives. On Saturday mornings over a vat of coffee, Mama would write out the suppers and subsequent shopping list for the week to come before dispatching me and my dad to the local shops. Later in the afternoon, after I had spent a good hour arranging the weekly fruit bowl (think 18th-century still life), my favourite activity was sitting at the kitchen table, turning to the cake section in that beloved orange recipe book and then making a mess of myself and the kitchen (some things never change).

Jump forward: I was a chef and had been for over 15 years; my mum had been dead for nearly 20 (she died when I was 17). The now supremely tatty photo album/recipe collection had become a deeply symbolic embodiment of my relationship with my mum. After all, this album represented all her favourite food, and I now cooked for a living. Cooking was a love that we shared and a link to one another, even though one of us was no longer here.

About this time I was working on a cookbook of my own. I turned to my mums recipe book for inspiration and took it in to show my publisher. I nervously agreed to leave it behind, but only after explaining its exact meaning to me: quite simply, it was one of the three things I would grab if the house were on fire. Possibly the first.

The next day my mobile went: Mums cookbook had gone. Forever. Not just gone, but it was halfway up the Thames on a barge heading for landfill. It had been put under a desk for safekeeping but the cleaners had come in the night and found Mums cookbook in all its loved scruffiness, presumably in the vicinity of the bin, and had accidentally taken it away as rubbish. There was nothing to be done. Despite all apology, it was gone.