Overview

Daisy Garnett roasted her first chicken at thirty. It was the first meal she had ever actually cooked, something repeated – and often – throughout the pages of Cooking Lessons. A memoir by a young, emerging cook, Garnett’s recently formed kitchen wisdom is imparted with a refreshing, conversational ease. Her recipes ooze charm and wit. Unleashing this passion during a life-affirming yacht trip across the Atlantic with friends, Garnett is something of a poster girl for the still-growing movement toward reconnection with the simple pleasures of cooking. Here is someone, with the zeal of the newly converted, clearly in love with her subject.

Full review

Structure of the book

The book opens with a conversation between Garnett and her sister. The pinenut ice cream that it sparks and the beautiful recipe she develops is symbolic; placed at the beginning as a marker of how far in just five short years she has come. Essentially what follows is a biographical exploration of a (short) cooking life. Subsequent chapters reveal the various stages of Garnett’s journey and the characters who inhabit her world; those who inspired her, who taught her and slowly reveal tips and tricks she has learned along the way. Discovering how to cook a fillet of beef by (disastrous) trial and error; how to prepare the simplest of chop-and-salad meals and, as you may well expect given that lengthy, life-changing trip across the Atlantic, how to roast a chicken to perfection.

Some recipes meld with the body of the text, bold lettering denoting ingredients in order to keep the rhythm of her story flowing. A method for making a cracking salad, for example, is discussed in the context of family and friends rather than being given its own more traditional, formulaic presentation. Other recipes, mostly those from other cooks, and the ones that truly define the lessons Garnett has learned, are presented on their own pages, separate from the stories told. These are presented in a far more user-friendly fashion.

About the author

Garnett is a journalist working in both the U.K. and the U.S., writing about various lifestyle topics regularly for, among other sources, The New York Times, The Daily Telegraph and Vogue. Described as notorious party girl turned informed, passionate cook, Garnett now writes about celebrities and, it would seem, occasionally food. She began writing for Vogue after being casually offered a job by a New York editor in the early 1990’s, claiming luck had a huge hand in her success. That may well be so, but luck by birth – Garnett’s mother Polly Devlin was Features Editor for Vogue during the heady days of the 1960’s – must surely have had a hand in that success, too.

Analysis

There’s personality and characters aplenty in the book – exuberance and wit, too – but the text is, sadly, peppered with expletives and a worrying, wearing, excess of name-dropping. Garnett has a background of privilege which, for many readers, will smack of self-indulgence. Friends with property in Tangiers, a crumbling family mansion in Somerset, an English boarding school education, an Industrialist father. A succession of housekeepers fed her entire childhood. Little wonder then that cooking was an alien pursuit – these things are all hallmarks of the moneyed, ‘trustafarian’ lifestyle she has been lucky enough to live.

As an object, the book is highly desirable; a small, sturdy hardback illustrated with folksy drawings and punctuated with recipes garnered from various well-known cookbooks. The Café series by Rose Gray feature heavily. It is, however, a difficult spine to open flat in the way that all useable cookbooks should, which makes cooking from Cooking Lessons a little tricky. As a book to read curled on a comfortable couch though, glass of wine in hand, the book is a far better prospect. There are no photographic images used which may prove tricky for anyone looking to the book as a learning tool; rather the illustrations serve to provide insight into the author’s world.

Who might enjoy/use this book most?

Read in a single sitting on a sunny afternoon, just who this slight book is aimed at, I am unsure. Those looking for a book to satisfy the beginner cook should most certainly look elsewhere. A joyful ode to food, many of the recipes will prove too basic for experienced cooks, but to view this as problematic is, I think, to miss the point. Ultimately it’s Garnett’s enthusiasm for something which has, finally, given her wayward life shape and purpose that shines through.