Lori De Mori - Towpath: Recipes and Stories

For

DAWNY

&

in memory of

STEVEN MICHAEL ZIMRING,

free spirited, pure hearted, hilarious

and inspiringly kind

Praise for Towpath

Towpath is one of the reasons I live in London. Its a jewel-like, dream of a place. Somewhere to sit and watch the world go by. A treat for each one of the senses. This book is an invite into their magical world.

KEIRA KNIGHTLEY

Lori & Laura are a magical team with the ability and flair to know what is right, beautiful and tasty. Laura cooks an incredible, culinary juggling act as she battles with crazy cyclists, the weather and a canal. This book is packed full of food you want to know and cook. I suggest you dive in and cook up a Towpath feast for your friends and family.

FERGUS & MARGOT HENDERSON

I want to go full-on Julie and Julia on it and cook a dish every day until I have cooked every single one. This is a cookbook that absolutely everyone should possess. Its a life-changing kind of thing that youd want to pass on to your children. The only tricky thing about this book is that I will cook so much from it, I will probably have to get one each year as it will be cooked from to death.

OLIA HERCULES

When people ask about my favorite restaurants, I instantly think of Towpath. Warm, quirky, intimate, its a restaurant you never want to leave. This cookbook is the same: personal, inviting and filled with fantastically appealing food.

RUTH REICHL

I find myself transported. Your voices, my dears, are as clear as bells, the words float off the pages like the coots of the canal. The sense of place and time, wonder and friendship, the sheer joy of generosity and giving and pleasing are all beautifully woven together. The love and respect you have for each other shines through on every page as you recall adventures and dishes and people and instances galore. This book, inspiring as it is useful, is a masterclass in the good things in life.

JEREMY LEE

A book of stories and recipes for honest, unfussy food that sings of its season, and of the intelligence, love and companionship that is at the heart of Laura and Loris Towpath.

RACHEL RODDY

Family, community, friendships, sensational food in an unlikely spot. Lori and Laura create canal-side magic. Its my familys happy place. This book is beautiful. The recipes are not daunting to copy which is wonderful for someone like me. I love all the stories of how hard it was to start something like this. Its funny and human and you get the sense of what hard work it is too. Its great that people all over the world will get to have a little slice of the magic.

TRACEY ULLMAN

Towpath is my absolute favourite place in London to eat out and pass time. This book is the perfect reflection of it and will sit close to my stove forever, becoming more stained, splattered and thumb-worn as each season passes. Its an incredible gift to us that we can now cook Lauras food at home too.

ED SMITH

Towpath is the definition of community and has become our veritable home away from home. This book conjures memorable days and nights spent canal-side at the thoughtful oasis they have generously conceived.

PETER DOIG

Towpath

RECIPES & STORIES

LORI DE MORI & LAURA JACKSON

FOREWORD BY JOJO TULLOH

CHELSEA GREEN PUBLISHING

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, VERMONT

LONDON, UK

Copyright 2020 by Lori De Mori and Laura Jackson.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Project Editor: Muna Reyal

Designer: Will Webb

Photographers: Scott MacSween and Joe Woodhouse

Proofreader: Anne Sheasby

Indexer: Hilary Bird

Printed in the United States of America.

First printing September 2020.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 120 21 22 23 24

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: De Mori, Lori, author. | Jackson, Laura, 1981- author.

Title: Towpath : recipes and stories / Lori De Mori & Laura Jackson ;

foreword by Jojo Tulloh.

Description: White River Junction, Vermont : Chelsea Green Publishing,

2020. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020029370 (print) | LCCN 2020029371 (ebook) | ISBN

9781645020127 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781645020134 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Cooking, Italian. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.

Classification: LCC TX723 .D336 2020 (print) | LCC TX723 (ebook) | DDC

641.5945dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029370

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029371

Chelsea Green Publishing

85 North Main Street, Suite 120

White River Junction, Vermont, USA

Somerset House

London, UK

www.chelseagreen.com

Contents

Its hard to imagine a life without Towpath, yet there was a time when this stretch of canal offered only a blank wall. Now on sunny days the lunchtime scene is a piece of street theatre, the narrow space thronged with people, a line snaking back from the counter, waiting staff calling out names and bearing plates to the tables, old friends meeting, dogs and toddlers getting under foot, runners trying to bash their way through the throng and amidst all this hospitable melee, Lori at the wooden counter greeting both new and familiar faces with equal warmth, pouring wine and making coffee while simultaneously describing what you might like to eat or drink with her own special grace. In the next alcove along Laura is in the kitchen, head down, pinny on, toiling with such fierce concentration, putting all her considerable skill and intellect to use for our benefit.

It seems so right and inevitable that it should be here and yet the beginning was a leap of faith. How can you have a restaurant without a front door, without walls or windows to keep out the weather (or to hold back the hordes on busy sunny days)? It might seem a bit mad to look at a bleak stretch of post-industrial canal and project a vision of an unassuming yet highly ambitious eatery. It is a happiness in life that wonderful things sometimes occur spontaneously and so it was with Towpath. It came about almost by accident when three newly converted units at the base of a warehouse came up for sale soon after Lori left Italy to begin her new life as a Londoner. Towpaths starting point, like all unrepeatable successes, was deceptively straightforward. A small is beautiful approach inspired by the winning simplicity of a hole in the wall bar in Florence and Loris realisation that people want less, done better.