The Roast Chicken Chronicles

The NYT’s Din­ing sec­tion had an arti­cle about Simon Hop­kin­son, the British chef and cook­book author who wrote “Roast Chicken and Other Sto­ries,”  “Sec­ond Help­ings of Roast Chicken,” and “Week In, Week Out,” (a col­lec­tion of news­pa­per essays only avail­able in Britain, but which can be sent here from the British Ama­zon arm).

The recipes are fairly straight­for­ward and deli­cious, and orga­nized by ingre­di­ents, such as “Cream,” or “Choco­late,” or “Mus­sels.”  It’s a whim­si­cal orga­ni­za­tion, a sort of “these are a few of my favorite things,” but it’s charm­ing.  The best thing about it isn’t the recipes, though.  It’s Hopkinson’s frankly opin­ion­ated, humor­ous voice– he makes fun of him­self as much as he does food­ies and fancy restau­ran­teurs, and also tells lovely tales about British inns and cook­ing estab­lish­ments of yore, when hos­pi­tal­ity meant some­thing.  They’re in the Eliz­a­beth David and M.F.K. Fisher school of per­sonal and infor­ma­tional essays to accom­pany recipes, and while his style is lighter than theirs, the cook­books are a good non-fiction read even if you’ve no inten­tion of cook­ing from the books.  The writing’s worth it, alone.  If you liked “Eat, Pray, Love” for her descrip­tions of eat­ing and food, you’ll prob­a­bly like this one, too.