River Cottage Good Comfort: Best-Loved Favourites Made Better for You

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During River Cottage Spring (2008) Hugh helped a group of Bristol families start a smallholding on derelict council land. He has just finished filming his most recent series, which accompanies his most recent book, River Cottage Every Day. Last time we had friends over for dinner, I made a dessert of home-made avocado ice-cream, with brownies. I should have taken a photo because it was scrumptious, despite the recipe's claim that the brownies had only 91 kcal per serve because they were made with yoghurt instead of butter. I don't care about calories, but I do try to offer desserts that are healthy-ish. OTOH if I'm only going to make brownies once or twice a year, I want them to taste decadent.

Yeah, that works really well with fish pie," says Hugh, "because that's all quite creamy anyway. So you mash up the butter beans, and you get a bit of pulse in there, and it helps get more protein and fibre into your diet and it tastes really great. It's about 20% butter beans for 80% spud and there's still butter and milk in there to make it all creamy and yummy. So it's not about making comfort food acetic, it's about making it super good by adding a few tweaks." But where this book does fall down is in not giving any general advice in the introduction about preferred dairy substitutes, and in which dishes they do and don't work - and in having very few cakes and puddings with vegan options. I don't bother to find fault with older omni cookbooks for being full of dairy with no substitution ideas; it was just the norm before the last few years. But as HFW and River Cottage have already produced a fully vegan book ( Much More Veg), and even early Nigella books happen to contain a few more dairy free or even accidentally-vegan cakes than this one does, I definitely think they could do better in this area. Titled River Cottage Good Comfort: Best-Loved Favourites Made Better for You, it aims to debunk the perception that the food we love can't also be good for us. Maybe they are planning a River Cottage Vegan Baking handbook, like they have the Gluten Free one and other food-group specific handbooks like Mushrooms. There is more and more great technical advice out there from the likes of the aforementioned Vegan Baking Bible, and Philip Khoury's upcoming A New Way to Bake, on restaurant-grade patisserie, with restaurant-grade ingredients you can also see listed under his YT videos. But so far as I can tell, there still isn't a high-quality, trustworthy book focused on vegan baking with the sort of fruit and veg grown in the UK and on vegan versions of traditional British sweet recipes.

About the contributors

Indulge your taste buds and boost your health at the same time with these delicious new recipes, including: The River Cottage Fish Book: The Definitive Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Fish and Seafood So I am pleased to add River Cottage Good Comfort, to our recipe book collection. (That's the British River Cottage TV series with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (HFW), not the Australian adaptation with Paul West.) A talented writer, broadcaster and campaigner, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is widely known for his uncompromising commitment to seasonal, ethically produced food and has earned a huge following through his River Cottage TV series and books. I'm already onboard with reducing sugar: I find most modern recipes and storebought cakes have far too much sugar for my taste. My cakes, biscuits and puddings mostly come from battered recipe books from decades ago. HFW's other mission is to encourage cooks to use a variety of good ingredients, which is my culinary mission too.

The success of the show and the books allowed Hugh to establish River Cottage HQ near Bridport in 2004.He continues to write as a journalist, including a weekly column in The Guardian and is Patron of the National Farmers’ Retail and Markets Association (FARMA).

People used to making recipes dairy-free or vegan will already have their own preferred method of making standards like batter, but this book seems likely to interest omni households who cater for vegan guests from time-to-time, or who may have one (perhaps newly) vegan resident who isn't the main cook. (The recipes really suit a relaxed family dinner.) For these circumstances , it would be a good idea to consistently include advice for such things, as is done for the lasagna. I also love the presentation and design; neo-70s you might call it. It has tones reminiscent of 1970s to early-80s books, but is glossier and more visually appealing, and with cleaner lines. Therefore more appetising, than, say, my mum's copy of Cookery in Colour by Marguerite Patten, which I used to look through as a kid. It's an early-autumn colour scheme, with lots of green and brown: the start of my favourite time of year, and also when keen cooks are gearing up to make exactly this kind of food. It was actually spot-on. (As far as is possible, given they don't have a dairy-free book - although there is a gluten-free baking one.)His early smallholding experiences were shown in the Channel 4 River Cottage series and led to the publication of The River Cottage Cookbook (2001), which won the Glenfiddich Trophy and the André Simon Food Book of the Year awards.

And Good Comfort is in every way generous, as Hugh makes our favourite foods healthier not by taking stuff out of them, but by putting more in: the best whole ingredients, celebrated in all their colourful and seasonal diversity. And Good Comfort is in every way generous, as Hugh makes our favourite foods healthier not by taking stuff out of them, but by putting more the best whole ingredients, celebrated in all their colourful and seasonal diversity. There are people who actually prefer the taste of the healthier versions that are implicitly denigrated by entrepreneurial millennial vegans like Tegelaar and these café owners. The last time I made a cake with the full amount of suggested sugar, I found it pretty unpleasant, and sugar totally overwhelmed the other flavours. The introduction in Good Comfort, when mentioning reducing sugar in their café cakes, at least recognises people like us exist and are worth catering to: "the few guests who notice this change invariably comment positively: 'I really like that it isn't too sweet'". The River Cottage Fish Book: The Definitive Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Fish and ShellfishUltimately Hugh leads us on a journey to tweak our tastebuds and pamper our palates so that we can take as much pleasure – and ultimately more – from dishes that we know will do us good. I asked the River Cottage people online which of their cookbooks they would recommend for a dairy-intolerant omni who enjoys their veg books and who likes cooking soups and stews. The first of their recommendations was this. I was sceptical as it was their most recent publication - maybe they just wanted to shift more copies - but I took a closer look. The concept of this book - healthy comfort food with plenty of vegan options - is a perfect fit for the sort of cakes and puddings I want to make: heavy on fruit, lower added sugar, but not full of niche American vegan ingredients. (The best approach I've found so far is to make the cakes in The Seasonal Vegan by Sarah Philpott and reduce the sugar by up to half as per this excellent and methodical advice; see under blended cakes.)