Introduction

      Knowing how to cook and eat well is not only one of life’s most essential and great pleasures, it is a tonic for daily life. Engaging your senses, working with your hands and letting your mind unwind as you gently caramelise onions in butter until they smell so good you’re compelled to eat them straight from the pan: this is the magic of home cooking. And it should be fun, too. Where there’s cooking there’s often – delete as appropriate – lovers/friends/family/kids/dogs/wine/music. There’s discussion and debate, sometimes drama. The kitchen fills with the scent of good food, the windows steam up, the glasses brim, and the warm, fuzzy mess of our lives unfolds over plates of food greedily scraped clean.

      Cooking is one of the most enriching and creative things we can do for ourselves and for those we love, and as something that we have to do most days, it should be joyful. For me, that means food prepared with a little thought and care. It could be as simple as a thick slice of homemade toast, soaking with really good butter and topped with a couple of excellent preserved anchovies; or clouds of golden meringue deep with the molasses kick of muscovado sugar. First and foremost, it’s about flavour.

      As a food and cookery writer, it’s my job to obsess over food, write about it, create recipes, and I care immensely about every morsel I pop into my greedy, not-so-little mouth and the mouths of those in my vicinity. This book celebrates the possibilities and pleasures that homemade food can bring us when we take the time to prepare and cook good things.

      Whether you’re planning a weekend slow-cooking project or have hurriedly squirrelled a few ingredients into your post-work shopping basket, here are recipes to enliven your cooking. Across these pages you’ll find ideas, tips, stories, simple seasonal suggestions and – most importantly – inspiring but achievable recipes that will help you coax the most flavour you possibly can out of everyday ingredients. As well as showing you how to make simple, celebratory springtime lunches, lazy summer picnics, special suppers, comforting soul food and sumptuous seasonal desserts, I want to arm you with fun and satisfying skills that will ultimately help you become a more creative, intuitive and resourceful cook.

      I’ve included some gratifying and straightforward DIY techniques that will allow you, should you wish, to be a bit more self-sufficient at home. I show how methods like smoking, curing and brining can bring the best out in meat and fish in recipes like the Cured Smoked Sea Trout (see here) and the Whole Brined, Spatchcocked Barbecue Chicken (see here).