Swaying at the Stove

Rosemary Hill

  • Elizabeth David: A Biography by Lisa Chaney
    Pan, 482 pp, £10.00, September 1999, ISBN 0 330 36762 5
  • Waiting at the Kitchen Table. Elizabeth David: The Authorised Biography by Artemis Cooper
    Viking, 364 pp, £20.00, November 1999, ISBN 0 7181 4224 1

When Elizabeth David’s A Book of Mediterranean Food appeared in 1950, many of the ingredients it called for were unobtainable. But even after meat came off the ration, few people can have had much practical need for a traditional Turkish recipe for stuffing a whole sheep. That was not the point. Saturated with description, of figs and aubergines, of fishing boats at anchor in Marseille and paella pans left out to dry in Spanish courtyards, Mediterranean Food brought a beakerful of the warm South to chilly, postwar England.

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