Delia's Kitchen Garden: A Beginner's Guide to Growing and Cooking Fruit and Vegetables

by Gay Search, Gay Search

Delia Smith has always been concerned with the quality and flavor of the ingredients she uses, and nothing comes fresher than fruit and vegetables straight from the garden. When the opportunity arose for her to work with garden expert Gay Search to create her own kitchen garden, she seized the chance. This guide, with gardening advice by Gay and recipes and advice on cooking the crops from Delia, is for any cook interested in good food, free from pesticides, who wants to try their hand at growing their own. It follows a year in the life of Delia's kitchen garden, with a chapter devoted to each month, and contains detailed advice on sowing and planting, fruit and vegetable varieties, and how to harvest. Lavishly designed with hundreds of color photographs, and with Delia's recipes that use the produce at its peak, this guide is suitable for first-time horticulturists and cooks of all levels.

Genres: Cookbooks

168 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2007

About the author

Gay Search is a BBC televison gardener.

Reviews

[Joani · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book for many reasons, some of them have nothing to do with how good the book actually is, so you might want to knock a few stars off to compensate for bias. You see, this book was written by a British gardener and a British chef and is about the chef's walled kitchen garden and how they made it perfect. The garden has raised beds, lots of old brick, espalier trees, a green house, I think you get the picture. It is basically my dream garden, in the land I practically worship (anglophiles unite!), so yeah, I am a bit biased. It's a, "you had me at walled kitchen garden" kind of thing. However, even without my British leanings, there are many elements I like about this book. To start, it has many gorgeous, large and small photographs and while some are basically eye candy, most are very helpful snapshots of the garden. I also find the format of the book helpful, as it goes month-by-month, explaining what the garden is doing and what you should be doing as the year marches on. In addition, after a gardening chapter for each month, there is a chapter of garden-fresh recipes by the chef, Delia Smith. For me, this book ticks all the boxes, it's beautiful, informative, well-oraganized and, most of all, inspiring!

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

A birthday gift from my hubby as we will have our vegetable garden together.