Rose Prince - Kitchenella

For my children

Contents

: White bean well-dressed soup

: Summer vegetable broth

: Braised chicken rice, steamed with allspice

: Apple tart quick

: Birthday cake

breads

: Crisp smoked bacon, polenta cubes, bittersweet chicory

: Pan-fried plaice with lettuce hearts and lemon

: Eighty degrees beef

: Oxtail stew

: Young lamb shoulder, shrugged off the bone

: Pot-cooked spring chicken with young veg

: Argiano pork with herbs and garlic

: Mothers aubergines

: Picnic pie

: Banana and almond cake

: Crepe-wrapped asparagus with grated cheese

: Raspberry clotted-cream fool, with honeycomb

: Wild garlic omelette, with chilli, cheese and ham

: Potato, beef and parsley hash

: Toffee bread pudding

: Courgette, basil and egg soup

: Risotto

: Aunts pasta, with sweet cooked tomato and anchovy

: Onion tart

My earliest memories are full of the voices of women, telling you things. Their kitchen secrets, handed down, were at the heart of good suppers. Whispered advice or stern warnings, they are still there in my head, impossible to rub out, simply because they are useful. I collect these morsels now. I cant let something good pass by without asking how? In all honesty, I cannot cook unless I tune in to that busy frequency of influence.

This is a book about feminine cookery, at its best heroic: generous, practical and nurturing. It is more than a bag of worthy survival tools (though it has a proven track record in that respect). Feminine cookery is creative. Nurture is a deal, an agreement that can be a real struggle to sustain. The heroic feminine cook, Kitchenella, transforms it into a gentle art.

For most, stepping into the kitchen raises one dilemma or another. It is rarely the leisurely activity unrealistically promoted in the media. Often the need to cook is just a matter of answering hunger with little time and limited ingredients: dinners made with whatever can be bought in a late-night shop on the way home from work. But the idea of a pan filled with a hot, bubbling lava of melting salty cheese and tomatoes, ready within minutes to eat with bread, dissolves the problem, leaving behind a work of beauty.

We eye our children and plan to please them, but how? On the one hand they are difficult customers who run up a lot of credit, on the other they are much loved people we spend far too little time with. We aim to choose food that avoids arguments, but encourages adventure: sweet cooked tomato, whizzed into a non-bitty sauce, to use in at least seven dishes, has become a fridge standby to bless. Gently-spiced rice with chicken is an everyday staple, the crispest roast potatoes or pancakes a treat. This is family food with a long history of clean plates.