Anna Higham shares her five go-to cookbooks
Author and Quince Bakery proprietor Anna shares her essential reading list for cooking seasonally
Hello, and welcome to Salt and the Earth!
My name is Hugo and, until last year, I was the Chef at a small restaurant on a farm in the South of England. We grew the majority of what we cooked with, made (almost) everything in-house and even butchered whole animals - ones we had reared ourselves or sourced from friends nearby.
This way of cooking taught me so much about food; from deeply understanding every cut of beef and how to cook it to what to do with gluts and gluts of fruit and how to prepare (and grow) the ultimate green salad. I’d never felt more in-line with the seasons and the ingredients I was using.
I’ve now returned to my previous job in Jamie Oliver’s Food Team, writing and testing recipes, working on TV shows and everything food related in-between.
This newsletter is a culmination of those two worlds - full of recipes that are reliable, full of flavour, and give you a deeper connection to and understanding of where your food comes from, every time you cook.
If there’s a particular season, ingredient, technique or recipe you’d like to see here - please let me know. This newsletter will be guided by the seasons but I’d love it to be shaped by you. Hugo x
In the beginning none of us really know how to cook. How we hold a knife, the number of fingers we use to fumble for salt or the shapes we make with spoons when stirring pots - these movements have all been taught to us, whether we quite realise it or not, by someone else.
One of the many great joys of working in kitchens is following the hands of those you share the stove with. Every movement, decision and thought is shaped by the kitchens that have come before. I used to religiously play The War on Drugs in the moments before dinner service, while hurriedly gathering spoons, tasting sauces and labelling pans of prep - a ritual borrowed from one of the restaurants I’ve worked at over the years. Somehow it helped me focus, with a small but comforting piece of that formative kitchen floating through my surroundings.
These formative kitchens are of the literal kind of course, but they are on pages, too; I always hear the voice of Fergus Henderson when dealing with braises, looking for the ‘alligators in a swamp’ effect when deciding on volumes of stock. Nigella Lawson is there with me whenever my oven is warming and a cake is on the horizon. Her encouragement to deal with the mixture with gusto - on the basis that cake batters, like children, can pick-up on any lack of confidence - never fails to make me smile in those final spoon-licking moments of a recipe.
I recently shared the five cookbooks, and consequently authors - their voices and their kitchens that I turn to most when seeking inspiration for seasonal cooking. As I flicked through their pages I couldn’t help but wonder who these authors look to for inspiration. Who’re the voices they share the kitchen with when gathering ingredients or tying their apron? This entry is the first in a series where I hope to find out just that.
In today’s newsletter we uncover the five books that London pastry chef, baker and Quince Bakery proprietor Anna Higham holds dear. The titles make a list that is both familiar and new - a wonderful excuse to expand your library and dive into a new book or two. I visited Anna a few weeks ago, just as the first fragrant strawberries were arriving in her kitchen. She had just brewed a pot of coffee and pulled down her favourite five titles from the bakery bookcase when I arrived on a Monday morning.
To hear Anna’s choices, her thoughts on the magic of cooking and what each of the titles means to her, you can listen to our conversation below. You can also jump straight ahead to the list.
The Last Course by Claudia Fleming.
Fruit Book by Jane Grigson
Chez Panisse Fruit and Chez Panisse Desserts by Lindsay Shere and Alice Waters
The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater
An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler
For more podcast entries, recipes and ingredient deep-dives, subscribe to Salt and the Earth. If you’ve enjoyed this newsletter at all, please consider passing it on to a friend, too.
Next week I share the summer recipe I think everyone should make at least once - roasted strawberries and toasted hay cream. It's unbelievably delicious, impressive and couldn’t be easier to make. Each time I eat it I feel completely absorbed by the magic of summer. There’ll also be some pointers on how to buy amazing dairy, and keep the wonderful and delicate flavour of it when using it in the kitchen. To get the recipe straight to your inbox, subscribe below. Hugo x
Just discovered your podcast. As a cookbook lover this sounds like everything I want to hear right now. Especially since I want to know and learn more about cooking with fruit.