This is such a valuable little book. It’s not a cook book exactly, though it does contain plenty of excellent recipes, but a compendium to keep in your kitchen drawer and use often. Melrose and Morgan is a first rate grocery shop, with two branches, one in Hampstead and another in Primrose Hill, and a very loyal following. The shop is known and loved because it stocks such a good range of things to buy and because each product it offers has been so carefully sourced and chosen – so you know you are buying the best produce to cook, as well as delicious things to eat – light but proper lunch dishes, soups, pies and tarts, sandwiches and salads as well as lovely cakes and bread. It’s the kind of food shop that you find in every neighbourhood in New York, but which is woefully thin on the ground in London.
We can’t all shop at Melrose and Morgan, it’s true, but Good Food For Your Table is the next best thing, because in effect it teaches you to become a master grocer in your own home. It’s a guide to the best ingredients, what to buy and when, and how to source and store everything. Even more usefully, it tells you how to actually use all that stuff you store in your larder. We’re always forgetting, for example, if we should rinse quinoa before we cook it, or what ratio of water to use when making bulgar wheat. Good Food gives you the correct info on cooking every grain in a quick-glance chart, so you’re not endlessly thumbing through recipe books or going online when you just want a couple of simple guidelines. The book is full of similar tips, charts and explanations, about everything from vinegar to yoghurt, potatoes to eggs, coffee to pasta, spices to classic meat sauces and how to make them. It’s a gem of a book and will help any cook, whatever level.
