New Kitchen Basics, a review of the latest book by Claire Thomson

I was given my first recipe book, Penguin Cordon Bleu Cookery for my 18th birthday, by a school friend called Margaret.

I have lost touch with Margaret, but I still have the book, which triggered a life long love of cookery books and cooking.
The first dish I made from that book was Spaghetti Bolognese, an antidote to the bland and boring diet of 1970s Yorkshire.  It necessitated the household's first non-medicinal purchase of olive oil and a tub (the shame of it!) of Parmesan cheese; neither of these exotic items were available in Broughs or Hintons, Northallerton's supermarkets (in truth, no more than large grocery stores) and meant a trip to the exotic and expensive Lewis and Coopers, who are still going strong today.

So what has this got to do with Claire Thomson's new book, New Kitchen Basics?

Well, Claire starts NKB with a reminisce about her mother's spaghetti bolognese, "My mum....would agree that she cooked this dish, every week, all year round.  Yet it still felt like an exotic, international supper."
Even more so in the rural Yorkshire of the seventies, where Elizabeth David was unknown and spaghetti bolognese was something served up in the bohemian London suppers of novels by the likes of Muriel Spark, Beryl Bainbridge and Margaret Drabble.

All of this meant that I was drawn in by those opening lines and didn't put the book down until I had read it cover to cover as I once read the novels of the above.
And no, this review has not been influenced in the slightest by the photo of a prospector pan on page 23!

It is a brave move to create a new set of Kitchen Basics, after all, we all have our go-to dishes, served up as regularly as clockwork, or Claire's mum's spag bol.  Cookery books, magazine article and on-line advice all tell us to Keep It Simple, just roast a chicken and buy a dessert.  Stick to the basics, don't stress.
And "10 essential ingredients, 120 recipes,: revolutionize the way you cook, every day" is a very bold headline.
But what Claire has done is take 10 basic ingredients, ones we all fall back on, and created not so much new kitchen basics, but a whole set of new classics.
We all know that avocado and tortilla chips are the perfect partners, but the first recipe I cooked from the book took that pairing simply as a springboard to a complete dish, combining the ideal combination of flavours and textures - Spiced Roasted courgette with Lime, Avocado and Broken Tortilla.  Starting with the tortillas, avocado and lime liaison we all love, then adding more flavours, more textures and a bit of heat - from the oven and from the chillis - and you are in a whole new ball park.  And yet the prep was simplicity itself,  it only took 20 minutes to make; an ease and speed at odds with the complexity and lip-smacking, lip tingling taste of the finished dish. 
Guacamole and chips is never gonna be enough from now on.  

The book is living on the kitchen table, is full of page markers, which will undoubtedly get moved around as each must-make is ticked off. 
This is a book for everyone; as Claire says "for the contentedly greedy and the curious." 

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