Food, glorious food...

[mrph]

Today featured some unexpected cookery. Not exactly challenging stuff - a purchased pie, some greens, some mash - but quite nice. Now, if I could just get the timings right (and remember to warm the plates beforehand)...

Spinning out of this, a couple of questions for the readership -

1) What's the perfect mashed potato? What, in your opinion, needs to be added to make it a little bit special?

2) Which cookbooks are utterly wonderful things that need to be purchased?

Comments

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Butter, milk, salt and pepper. Make sure the milk's warm - that way the mash stays light and fluffy. Cold milk maketh stodgy mash.

I'd recommend Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake Book, Katie Stewart (plain, but always useful) and I'd second Deborah's Nigel Slater recommendation. My favourite cookbook is actually one from 1936, written by Quaglino. (Yes, he who founded the restaurant.) It has no quantities and doesn't go into much detail about the methods so you need a bit of skill to use it, but I've found it very good for easy food that looks impressive when we have friends over. I don't think it's been available for about 70 years, though, and it's rubbish if you're cooking for veggies.