The Secret of Cooking: Recipes for an Easier Life in the Kitchen

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In 1997, while still a graduate student, she appeared as a contestant on the BBC cooking show Masterchef, reaching the semi-final stage. Wilson and her three children live in Cambridge, England (her doctorate in history comes from the university there). When the pan is full, sprinkle over the thyme and distribute the remaining garlic as evenly as you can, tucking it into the crevices. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

This British author will change the way you work in the

Wilson's next book, in 2008, was Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee – The Dark History of the Food Cheats. When our children were little, we went on holiday together a few times and the thing I remember most is being in the kitchen with Claire for hours, roasting a big chicken and making her ra-ta-tatouille, a slow process which left lots of time to talk as we chopped the courgettes and peppers. It’s a gentle powerhouse of a book that, subtitled “Recipes for an Easier Life in the Kitchen” might seem, at first glance, to be aimed at those who are reluctant, nervous or inexperienced cooks, and it’s certainly true that those of you who fit that description will find guidance and succour in its pages, but I think that holds true for all of us. No matter how tearful I had been the night before, I still had to get up in the morning and cook breakfast for my son, who was then 11. I got the idea from Jeremy Lee, the chef-proprietor of Quo Vadis restaurant, who makes a similar meringue but with almonds.Most recently, she has written a series of Long Reads for The Guardian on subjects ranging from clean eating to ultra-processed food to the history of the British curryhouse. She is currently working on two documentary series for BBC Radio 4, making podcasts for brands including the British Army and has started working on a book about siblings. The recipe I’m joyfully sharing with you today, however, is the ravishingly beautiful (and gluten-free) Raspberry Ripple Hazelnut Meringue. And what this means is that we have to learn ways to make food that delights us, because no cook enjoys making a dish when the end results are disappointing.

‘Cooking brought me back to my senses’: the recipes that

Wilson's publisher, Basic Books explains that "Technology in the kitchen does not just mean the Pacojets and sous-vide machines of the modern kitchen, but also the humbler tools of everyday cooking and eating: a wooden spoon and a skillet, chopsticks and forks". I particularly love the Mellow Soup For Frayed Nerves; Roasted Vegetables Every Which Way (which begins “I wish that all things in life were as forgiving as a tray of roast vegetables”); Slow-Start Roast Chicken; Green Salad with Drinkable Vinaigrette; Heavenly Overnight Waffles; Bread Salad with Courgettes and Grapes; the revelatory Amulet Eggs with Dijon Mustard; Green Curry with Crispy Fish and Peas; Silky Black Bean Ragù; Sicilian Pork Meatballs; Homemade Frozen Pizza with Buttermilk Dough; and Vegan Pear, Lemon and Ginger Cake. Everyone who eats it falls in love with the dressing, which is based on one in Keep It Simple by Alastair Little, although Ruth changed it quite a bit.This might not sound like a big problem but if it gets repeated every day, this feeling of confusion about what to eat can tie you in knots and give you a sense of mild dissatisfaction with whatever you finally cook. But I hated to waste both the sausages and my efforts up to this point, so I decided to plough on regardless.