Writers Recommend: Debora Robertson

Which cookbooks must Debora press into your hands?

Hello, and welcome to the first in my series of Writers Recommend. You will find in my online store (and on displays in my physical store) curations by writers for readers, a list of books from the genre they write in – or feel passionately about for other reasons – that they desperately wish to press into readers’ hands.

These are the books that they guard on their bedside table, the books they buy again and again for their friends, the books that they recommend for entry level into a particular genre, or incredible finds for those who are already well-read in that area. I am sure within every curation you will learn something new, but even better than that, those same writers met with me to tell you just why they love the books that they’ve picked.

You have many options to hear what they have to say about these books: you can listen here by playing the podcast I’ve put together, you can read what they have to say with the snippets I have put together below, or if you scroll all the way to the end you can watch our video interview.

So, to kick us off, here is food writer Debora Robertson with her pick of the cookbooks she has loved recently. Debora is the author of Notes from a Small Kitchen Island, a cookbook I absolutely love which is not only packed with wonderful – and extremely delicious – recipes, but tales of how she upped sticks from London to the South of France during the pandemic and made a new life for herself in a ‘sleeping beauty’ house in the port – you’ll hear more about that in our interview too. There are even recipes for dog biscuits too!

Notes From a Small Kitchen Island by Debora Robertson (Michael Joseph) £26

And now for Debora’s collection…

Cooking — Simple and Well For One or Many by Jeremy Lee (4th Estate) £30

“Jeremy Lee is the most delightful man, he's a chef at Quo Vadis in London and just one of the most life-enhancing, joyful people and his food is really beautiful. And this is his first cookbook, and so I'm really excited about that because we all get the chance to cook his amazing things at home for the first time, but more than that it’s one of those books, I've had this on my bedside table for about two weeks now, and I keep dipping into it because he's such a beautiful writer and it's such a joyful celebration, not just of food, but of life. And that's what we all want. And I think he wrote a lot of this during lockdown too and I think it has that reflective quality. It's got gorgeous photographs by Elena Heatherwick, who is one of the top food photographers, so it's a real feast in every sense. And it's just got these recipes that I can imagine myself cooking forever. He’s from Dundee and it’s got his mum''s shortbread recipe in here, and it's got almond tart – I mean, how delicious is that? And asparagus and leek and cheese tart – I mean, don't you just want to eat that? And things like razor clams with breadcrumbs, where I live now in France, we're on the sea, and there is so much shellfish here, so I'm always looking for a new way to cook shellfish because they're really cheap here so I'm making the most of it.

“So this book is just an absolute joy and a delight, and it really is. It might be my most given a Christmas cookbook this year, it’s already a classic, I think everybody will love it.”

Moro Easy by Sam and Sam Clark (Ebury) £30

“This is very nostalgic for me because when I first moved to London, going to Moro restaurant was just the coolest thing and I think it's hard to imagine quite now important it was when it opened, it really changed a lot of the way we eat because all of their food is from Spain and North Africa and they were cooking these, often quite simple things, with delicious ingredients and beautifully seasoned in a way that's quite mainstream now, all of that kind of food, but there was really no one else doing it then. It had an open kitchen, so you could see your dinner being made that, and that was quite unusual then, too. And they wrote some excellent cookbooks, which I have, which are now full of Post-it notes and covered in sauce and goodness knows what, but this – their first cookbook for 10 years – they wrote during lockdown when they were at home with their children, and they were thinking: ‘well, how do you feed five people? Two adults, three near adults. Well, every single day without losing your mind.’ And this book, it's, it's called Moro Easy, so it's not millions and millions of ingredients, it's all very nice things: lentils, peas, asparagus, and broad beans – I mean, how delicious is that? Who wouldn't want that? And things on toast and clams with white wine and coriander. I mean, absolutely, soul-feedingly delicious things, but they won't take you half your natural life to make them. Their food is really beautiful and I think this book will allow you to make really delicious things every day for your tea. Everyone can do an amazing Saturday night dinner, or Sunday lunch, if you have got lots of time, I think the challenge is to feed yourself really well every day things that will cheer you up and make you feel happy and are just feel of colour and life and I think this book will do that. It’s been such a joy to read it and enjoy it.'“

Spice – A Cook’s Companion by Mark Diacono (Quadrille) £25

“Spice by Mark Diacono, so, full disclosure, this is an old friend of mine. A long time ago, I used to work at River Cottage and Mark was the head gardener at River Cottage then and he was setting up the country's first climate change garden, which is incredible thinking about it now, so he was growing peaches and olives and things like that down in Devon.

“Mark has the most incredible palette and this book about spices, it's a hymn to spices, he took talks about 80 different spices. I think there are about 120 recipes, and there are lots of things like making your own spice blends and sauces, ketchups, things like that. And the idea is you use those to spark up your every day cooking, you can do a simple thing, but then you sprinkle a bit of this in it – a bit of harissa or whatever – and it makes it much more exciting and delicious.

And it also has recipes. I'm just doing his bottled apples and pears at the moment, preserving those in time for Christmas. Also the thing about Mark is he's really funny, so it's a very good read. I think it's one of those books that you will use forever, it is one of those books you’ll have in your kitchen and it will get sort of stained with cumin and oil and sauce and all the rest of it, and the photographs gorgeous.

I think if you've got a serious cook in your life and you don’t know what to buy them for a present, this is a great book and when I say serous, nont none of it is hard, it's all very simple, he’s quite clever at making complex tasting things from very simple recipes.

I think it's great and I think you will use it for years and years if you get it. It's one of those ones you, I’ll buy one for me and then I'll buy four more for other people, which I think is a good sign of a good book.”

Home Food – Recipes to Comfort and Connect by Olia Hercules (Bloomsbury) £26

“My fourth pick is this beautiful book by all Olia Hercules. It’s called Home Food – Recipes to Comfort and Connect, which is exactly what we're talking about. But in Olia’s case it's even more profound because Olia’s Ukrainian and since the war started, she's been very involved with fundraising and campaigning to support the people of Ukraine and that makes the book even more poignant.

She's had a very interesting life having grown up in the Ukraine, and then she lived in Cyprus because her father farmed sunflower oil, so they moved to Cyprus and then she was in Italy and then she moved to the UK and she worked for Ottolenghi for a bit.

She's a profoundly lovely person and her food is completely delicious, and all of these recipes are recipes from all these different parts of her life, and as we were saying before, lots of them have stories attached, so lots of them are recipes from her friends and family and from all over the world really.

She's just such a beautiful writer, it’s a book you can really lose yourself in, and this is another one that’s been on my bedside table.”

Here is the link if you would like to watch our entire interview, or you can click below

And if this newsletter has got your appetite whetted (I don’t know about you but I am starving now) don’t forget you can purchase one or all of these books in my online shop. If you’re feeling super inspired, you can even buy the entire bundle here.