Kitchen Person: Notes on Cooking & Eating

by Rachel Cooke

In 2009, Rachel Cooke started a monthly column for The Observer on cooking and here are her fifty best.

In Kitchen Person , unfussy eater Rachel Cooke chronicles several food upheavals since new TV cooks, Brexit, viral recipes, the home delivery phenomenon, and the global pandemic. She journeys from her childhood in Sheffield with Henderson's relish and Granny's lamb chops, to a job interviewing top chefs and eating in fancy restaurants, to learning to shop and cook well herself, all the time growing more knowledgeable and opinionated about food.

Genres: Food, Memoir

240 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 9, 2023

Reviews

[Wendy Greenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rachel Cooke is my kind of food writer. She hits so many notes that just chime for me.

Love that she is a northerner, who called lunch, lunch yet still calls dinner, tea. As do I!
I love that she is so passionate about old books of food writing and recipes. As do I! (and am following up many she mentions)
A whole article on salt, another on mayonnaise, another on vinegar - my kind of book!

I also enjoyed the exact reproduction of old articles with updates as to what has happened/changed since she wrote or the response she received.

I wallowed and will re-visit!

[abi slade · Rating 3 out of 5]

3⭐️

pros ✅
- absolutely beautiful book. embossed, gorgeous cover, illustrations and photographs. this is the sort of book i’ll get out at parties and pass down to future generations just for how gorgeous it is
- appropriate surname for a food writer
- did giggle a lot
- the articles were the perfect bite-sized length. when i read ‘dear dolly,’ by dolly alderton (similarly, also articles) i never felt like there was enough material for each article but cooke managed to be succinct, satisfying and packed, content-wise

cons ❌
- some of it did just wash over me
- a number of the references were a little bit lost on me
- i feel like someone with more aptitude in the kitchen would appreciate the recipes more than me

[Michael Reilly]

This is a collection of articles from the British Observer newspaper. Cooke is an enthusiastic eater and cook. She says "I would never describe myself as a good cook. I know lots of people who are more accomplished cooks than I am. But I am very good at the things I do cook."

She writes on the reason to make mayonnaise and why not use what is in the jar. Hellman's is "flavourless and claggy". She convinced me that I should try making brown bread ice cream. She is persuasive about a pea and lettuce dish.

Her column on the difficulty of culling your cookbook collection rings true. She has a wonderful column on the silliness of the sea salt fad, or as she poses the problem, "When did the British middle class go loopy for posh salt?" She describes cottage cheese as "bright white as false teeth and utterly bland."

This is an enjoyable opinionated collection.

Double vocabulary bonus. "As salad goes, puntarelle is a bit of a faff."

"Puntarelle"- a kind of Italian chicory.

"Faff"- An overcomplicated task, especially one perceived as a waste of time. As in, "I spent the morning on faff for the HR department.". Can also be used as a verb. As in, "I spent the morning faffing on reports for HR."

[Niamh · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a life I wish I could live where my life revolves an endless series of bakeries with delicious things that I go to every day for bread. A world where I love unique foods and bake and cook things and am something of a culinary goddess. For 250-ish pages, 'Kitchen Person' let me feel like that. And then I remembered there's nothing in fridge. Quelle dommage.