Crawford - The Lovers Cookbook

This book offers a unique culinary slant on dinner deux with fun and adventurous recipes that will help love to blossom, tease palates and arouse the senses and make all the difference between a firecracker of an evening and a damp squib:

Something to Slurp on get the juices flowing with a Basil Martini or a Bloody Mary with Clam Juice
Nibbles and Tit-bits get down to some fun foreplay with Spiced Honey Almonds or Caviar Blini
Shapely Veg get forking Asparagus with White Crab Meat or Pommes Sarladaises with Truffles
Smooth and Slippery serve Miltons Moules or Salmon Tikka Skewers with Dill and Pomegranate Raita for a boost in the bedroom
Flesh wrap your mouth around Pot-roast Haunch of Venison and Beef Fillet, Ceps and Marsala Sauce
The Spice of Life get hot and spicy with Saffron Roast Chicken or Paneer Chilli
Getting Fruity with Pineapple and Pork Curry or Poached Quince with Mascarpone and Gorgonzola Cream
Sweet Bits down and dirty desserts, from Chocolate Chilli Fondant to Raspberry Rose Pudding

Read on and let Milton Crawford share his secret potions of love.

Cooking is like love: It should be entered into with abandon or not at allHarriet van Horne

Milton Crawford was born somewhere north of the Zambezi and west of the Rift valley in a small town in the middle of Africa. He has travelled the world in search of good liquor, fine food and game women. He is an author and journalist, and in keeping with the most honourable traditions of the writing profession, a bon viveur and lover of distinction. Author of the bestselling The Hungover Cookbook and The Drunken Cookbook, his previous books have been published under a more sober alias.

Also by Milton Crawford

The Hungover Cookbook
The Drunken Cookbook

For Lovers Everywhere

Disclaimer

I worry about why all my books have to have disclaimers. I said no, but the lawyers insisted.

So, here we go:

This book is intended for adults, has adult themes and contains some explicit references to sex. Although the recipes contained within these pages may suggest that they will lead to some form of romantic conquest, I cannot guarantee that this will happen. Similarly, none of these recipes claim to cure any medical conditions and, if you believe that you are suffering from a medical condition, then I recommend that you see a medical professional. These recipes are in no way a substitute for any treatment you may need to receive.

I hope you succeed in your amorous attempts, but I accept no responsibility should you fail. Please do not try to contact me for romantic advice; my past is littered with plenty of romantic failures so I do not profess to be an authority on the subject.

Good luck. Love is a wonderful thing. I hope that this culinary adventure helps you on your quest for romance.

Do aphrodisiacs really work? And, even if they do, isnt the concept of eating foods specifically to boost libido and mutual pleasure a bit old-school? After all, these days both men and women can pop a pill to produce the desired effect. So this book is not so much concerned with the direct impacts of aphrodisiacs, which are not always quantifiable, as with the idea of making food in the name of love. And of course there is the hope that, at some point, the effort of making food may gain some form of reward. If you know what I mean.

But why, you may ask, would you not simply go to a romantic restaurant with your love interest and choose a suitably sublime menu? That is surely just as romantic as cooking for them? I beg to differ. For one thing, it is more of a gift to create something from scratch; to conceive, buy the ingredients for, create and serve a meal for someone you love (or at least have designs on) is a telling gesture. It creates the impression that youre considerate; that you care; that youre prepared to make an effort. I think you get my drift. It also shows your potential partner that you are resourceful and skilful. More and more people seem to be spending more and more time watching people cooking on screen and less and less time actually doing it in the kitchen. You can demonstrate that you have this valuable skill, which, when done well, shows off many of the same skills you also need in the bedroom: finesse, a sure touch, excellent judgement and a willingness to experiment.

And, talking of doing it in the kitchen, creating a meal at home does offer far greater and more immediate opportunities for post-prandial love-making than at least most forms of restaurant that I have ever been to. Put simply: you may start sitting at the dining table; you may end up lying on top of it.

Food and sex are intimately connected in all kinds of ways: the similar noises that we make while were engaged in these two acts, the words we use to describe them, even the feelings that both can engender.

Sex, like eating, can be both mundane and remarkable. Both acts are fundamental to human existence and theres nothing new about either: the associations between food, sex and sin have existed at least since Adam and Eve. Dont be prudish about this; as I hope you already realise, Im not going to be, despite my highly repressed British sexuality.

We use our hands and our mouths for both food and sex. We make similar noises, not just the chewing, sucking and slurping, but also the expressions of delight, groans of appreciation or perhaps most tellingly the concentrated silence of genuine enjoyment.

Then there is our language. Tasty is often used to describe an attractive potential partner. Depending on your age, social class, gender and where you grew up, you might also use yummy, scrummy, luscious, delicious, dishy or hunky (like a hunk of meat). And its not unknown for the expression I want to eat you up to pass between two lovers (in a generally metaphorical sense, unless, that is, you have cannibalistic tendencies and probably live somewhere in Germany). We talk about sexual appetite, cravings, being sex-starved or sated. Post-coital bliss and post-prandial satisfaction share much in common. The associations run deep.

But were not just talking about sex here that purely biological function of procreation were talking about love. Ive always thought that romantic love needs to involve both a sense of fun and of adventure and this book offers a unique culinary slant on it, with fun, adventurous recipes that should help romance to blossom.

In conventional terms, the classic romantic encounter is a dinner date, where food, wine and conversation create an atmosphere of intimacy. Such a meal is the focus of this book. The choices we make about what to eat during this window of opportunity may make all the difference between a firecracker of an evening and a damp squib. Certain foods rich in the right vitamins and minerals, and that are suggestive in colour, shape and texture, may lead to a blossoming of mutual desire.