Spinach with Golden Raisins

Provencal Leeks Recipe below

Lamb Stewed with Brandy Recipe below

For a detailed description & pricing information
of A Elizabeth David's Table click here.

A beautiful, lavishly illustrated new collection of the most inspiring, everyday recipes from Elizabeth David--the culinary genius who revolutionized British cooking, introducing a dreary post-war nation to the sun-drenched tastes and delights of the Mediterranean.

In the dreary years after World War II, one woman changed the tastes of a nation forever. Thanks to Elizabeth David, everyday British cooks were introduced to the flavors of the sunny Mediterranean--olive oil and pasta, artichokes and fresh herbs--foods that have become the staples of our diets today. While her recipes brought color and life into kitchens everywhere, her books contained only plain text recipes unadorned by any photographs--until now. More...

Provencal Onion Pie

Mushroom Soup

Pears Baked in Red Wine

An Excerpt from the Introduction by Jill Norman:

Elizabeth David was born in 1913, one of four daughters of Rupert and Stella Gwynne...

[Her] first published work, A Book of Mediterranean Food, appeared in 1950, but her writing career had begun in the winter of 1946-7, in a hotel in Ross-on-Wye. She had returned to the deprivations of postwar Britain after years of relative plenty in the Middle East and, although the hotel was at least warm, she wrote that the food was "produced with a kind of bleak triumph which amounted almost to a hatred of humanity and humanity's needs." She started to write down her memories of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cooking, creating a private refuge from the cheerless reality of rationing. In 1949 a friend in the literary world offered to show her collection of notes and recipes to publishers. Most of them thought the idea of a cookbook when there was little food to cook at best absurd, but John Lehmann liked the material and agreed to publish it.

The introduction to Mediterranean Food paints a vibrant picture: "The cooking of the Mediterranean shores, endowed with all the natural resources, the color and flavor of the south, is a blend of tradition and brilliant improvisation. The Latin genius flashes from the kitchen pans. It is honest cooking." At that time the ingredients of the Mediterranean lands--olive oil, saffron, garlic, basil, eggplants, figs, pistachio nuts--were hardly to be found in central London, and readers had to rely on memory or imagination to savor Elizabeth's recipes.

These were honest recipes too, collected in Provence, Italy, Corsica, Malta and Greece. Mediterranean Food was acclaimed as a serious work, with reviewers expressing their belief that once the shortages in Britain were lifted the book would become practical as well as inspirational. The first paperback edition, published in 1955, brought the book to a wide audience at the right time. Rationing had ended in 1954 and Mediterranean imports were beginning to arrive. Many of Elizabeth's dishes were unknown in the Britain of the 1950s but in a few years foods like paella, moussaka, ratatouille, hummus and gazpacho had become familiar in home kitchens, restaurants and supermarkets throughout the country.

The success of A Book of Mediterranean Food was followed in I951 by French Country Cooking, a small book of robust, rustic dishes. In 1960 appeared the more substantial, classic work French Provincial Cooking, which dealt with "sober, well-balanced, middle-class French cookery, carried out with care and skill, with due regard to the quality of the materials, but without extravagance or pretension"--a phrase which sums up neatly Elizabeth's own standards. The two French books drew many enthusiasts to France to explore the foods of the countryside "at the riverside inns, the hospitable farmhouses of the Loire and the Dordogne, of Normandy and the Auvergne, in seaport bistros, and occasionally also in cafes routiers." Pates and terrines, soups enriched with bacon and garlic, meat and poultry stews simmered in wine, and open tarts both savory and sweet found their way into the repertoire of enterprising and creative British cooks. In the 1960s, dinner parties, whether cheap and cheerful or stylish and sophisticated, were often drawn straight from her books.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth had returned to live in Italy for a year, to research and collect material for her third book, Italian Food... She was one of the first writers to emphasize the importance of regional differences in Italian food. The country was not unified until the later part of the nineteenth century, so to an Italian there was, and is, no such thing as Italian food: "There is Florentine cooking, Venetian cooking, there are the dishes of Genoa, Piedmont, Romagna; of Rome, Naples and the Abruzzi; of Sardinia and Sicily; of Lombardy, Umbria and the Adriatic coast." These provincial differences are clear to every discerning traveller, but at that time found no reflection in the Italian restaurants in Britain; they served up the spaghetti, veal and chicken dishes the British had come to regard as Italian food. Elizabeth then started work on Summer Cooking, a smaller and less demanding collection of recipes for simple summer meals, cold buffets and picnics, drawn from old English dishes as well as those of the countries she had travelled in. She concentrated on herbs, fruits and vegetables in season, and on light dishes of poultry or fish.

By 1964 all five books were available in paperback, and they have remained in print to the present day, with sales into the millions. They found, and continue to find, a large and enthusiastic audience. During the years spent writing the books, Elizabeth also contributed to a variety of newspapers and magazines...Her subjects were wide-ranging but topical, with occasional "harmless fun at the expense of restaurant guides or the baiting of public relations persons who made imbecile suggestions."

Elizabeth had a passionate interest in English cooking, and owned a large collection of old English cookery books which she read avidly. From this enthusiasm came the idea for Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen, published in 1971. A fine collection of English spiced and aromatic dishes, it revived old treats such as salt duck and spiced beef.

English Bread and Yeast Cookery took five years to write and is the most comprehensive book on English baking. At the time of publication (1977) it had an immense influence. Eighty per cent of the bread sold in Britain came from factories--soft, white and sliced. A revolt against bland, flabby industrial bread was gathering momentum and people were starting to bake their own bread. They seized Elizabeth's bread book and created a demand for flour from small millers, for supplies of yeast, for good bread pans. The industrial loaf is still with us, but look at the wide variety of other breads on sale in supermarkets, delicatessens and from independent bakers, and thank Elizabeth...

...Elizabeth's recipes make you want to cook; the aroma of a dish and its vibrant colors spring from the page. The instructions may be brief and sometimes sketchy, and were not written in the formulaic style that is considered appropriate today, but they do not let you down. She assumes her readers are intelligent, curious and able to think for themselves. Her writing is clear and authoritative; she tells you the correct way to make a risotto or a pilaf, ossi buchi or boeuf a la bourguignonne. She wrote as she cooked: with respect for tradition and provenance, with passion and knowledge. She celebrated the pleasures of the table in simple, authentic recipes and evocative essays on the markets of France or Italy, on dishes discovered on her travels, or describing the food of the past...

...At Elizabeth David's Table contains a combination of easy, quick recipes that fit well into today's busy schedules, and classic dishes that may take longer but once put together are often left to cook slowly and can be prepared well before the meal. Some recipes are kept in the narrative style, but where there are many ingredients they have been listed at the head of the recipe. Between the recipe chapters are essays on different topics, written over the course of her life. For the first time, the dishes have been photographed, keeping to the same muted colors, earthenware pots and plain white china that Elizabeth describes in her "Dream Kitchen" essay...

I hope you will enjoy this illustrated collection of recipes from the greatest food writer of our times.
--Jill Norman

PROVENCAL LEEKS
poireaux a la provencale

3lbs leeks (dark green, tops cut off), 2 tablespoons olive oil, salt and pepper, 1 1/2 lb tomatoes, 12 black olives, juice of 1 lemon, 2 teaspoons finely chopped lemon zest

Chop the cleaned leeks into 1 1/2-inch lengths. Into a shallow heatproof dish put the oil and when it is warm, but not smoking, put in the leeks, add a little salt and pepper, cover dish and simmer for IO minutes. Add the tomatoes cut in halves, the pitted olives, the lemon juice and the chopped lemon zest and cook slowly for another IO minutes. Serve in the dish in which it has been cooked. This is excellent cold as a salad.

Enough for four people.

Copyright © 2010 by The Estate of Elizabeth David. Reprinted from At Elizabeth David's Table with permission from Ecco.

LAMB STEWED with BRANDY and GARLIC
tranches de mouton a la poitevine

Have two thick leg of lamb steaks, with the bone, weighing about 3/4 1b each. Brown them in butter in a heavy shallow pan with a well-fitting lid. Salt and pepper them; pour over about l/4 cup brandy and the same amount of water. Add a dozen peeled cloves of garlic. Cover with parchment paper and the lid, lower the flame, and cook as slowly as possible for about 45 minutes. There will only be a little concentrated juice when the dish is ready, but the lamb will be very tender with a highly aromatic flavor. You can, of course, use less garlic if you like, but some there must be. Almost any root or dried vegetables go we! dish, either braised or plain boiled, or in a puree.

Slices of shoulder of lamb can be stewed in the same way, allowing 1 3/4 — 2 hours' cooking time.

There should be enough for four people.

Copyright © 2010 by The Estate of Elizabeth David. Reprinted from At Elizabeth David's Table with permission from Ecco.

For a price and to purchase At Elizabeth David's Table click here.

Also by Elizabeth David:

Is There A Nutmeg In The House? Hardcover	South Wind Through the Kitchen Hardcover	English Bread and Yeast Cookery Hardcover	A Book of Mediterranean Food Paperback	Summer Cooking Paperback	Elizabeth David Classics Hardcover
Harvest of the Cold Months Hardcover	Omelette & a Glass of Wine Paperback Hardcover	Spices Salts & Aromatics Paperback Hardcover	French Provincial Cooking Paperback Hardcover	Italian Food Paperback	Elizabeth David's Christmas Hardcover