Does Oxfordshire have its own distinct identity? In terms of food, The Oxfordshire Cookbook sets out to prove there's more to Oxfordshire than Dreaming Spires and Le Manoir, by showcasing gastropubs, restaurants, delis and food producers from around the county, and sharing their recipes. Part good food guide, part wine manual, part recipe book and part story of where our food comes from, it's the sort of book you could read in an armchair or cover in flour.
It is, inevitably, part of a series, and the back cover lists some of the other counties the team have explored in this way. And it does suffer some of the pitfalls you might expect of this approach - it's a bit advertorial in tone, and some of the production seems a bit hasty: there are some problematic apostrophes, and it was created in one season judging by the predominance of rhubarb and asparagus.
But the proof of a cookbook is surely in the recipes. There's a good range, from a simple salad of grains and middle eastern flavours, centred around good dinner party fare, through to fancy Masterchef-style recipes and staples you wouldn't normal make for yourself, like Scotch eggs, or cheesecake cannelloni. If I were cynical I might think some of the recipes are there just to make you think "Gosh this looks a bit complicated: let's hightail it over to the restaurant instead". But if you have always wondered how to make the perfect fondant potatoes, or whether Shepherd's Pie would be better made of goat, then it's all here.
For my trial run, I chose to make Kedgeree, followed by Apricot and Almond Tart, and to test another interesting feature of the book: the wine pairings for each dish, suggested by Eynsham Cellars.
The Kedgeree recipe is supplied by The Quince Tree in Henley, and the recommended wine is a 2015 South African Viognier. In the event, I am just too obstinate to follow a recipe to the letter, even in the interests of reviewing, and the wine is no longer available. This is a perennial problem with wine recommendations. If you are recommending interesting wines where vintage as well as variety matter, they will have a limited lifespan. Happily, the boys of Eynsham Cellars are adaptable experts, and recommended a Riesling or Gewurtztraminer, and we settled on a Gewurtz from Hunawihr, Alsace. This was a pricier bottle, at £15 or so, but because I was thinking in the context of restaurants, £15 seemed reasonable since you'd pay that for any wine in a restaurant, and here we were getting excellent wine.
I guess price is another point in favour of this cookbook - the total bill for ingredients probably came in around £45, of which around £27 was alcohol, and we fed three adults the first night, then four adults plus three children on the leftovers for lunch the next day. In addition, I wouldn't be able to eat any of these recipes as served in their original context, due to food allergies. But with minor modifications I get to enjoy them all too.
Back to the food... My go-to recipe for Kedgeree is from another restaurant - The Cinnamon Club. They call for individual spices; The Quince Tree for mild curry powder, which I didn't have. I used a blend of other spices, but clearly should have included turmeric, as my version didn't appear as buttery yellow as the picture. The other thing which surprised me about The Quince Tree's version was that they don't make much use of the lovely poaching liquor from cooking the fish - flavoured so beautifully with herbs, cloves and onion. In the restaurant perhaps they make use of this for something else but at home if it isn't part of the rice cooking it really goes to waste. In all other ways the recipe worked very well, and they were absolutely right about poaching the eggs first and keeping them in ice water. Mine were straggly ghouls compared with the perfect bombes in the picture, but nevertheless flowed unctuously into the rice. The cool white Gewurtz worked very well to refresh and cool after the heat and salty-smoke of the fish dish. We ate it with a crisp green salad, to balance the comforting stodge.
For dessert, the apricot and almond tart was probably supposed to be served with cream, but I realised this only when handing out plates. The pastry was a little disastrous, but that's gluten-free pastry for you, and definitely not the fault of contributor Chadlington Quality Foods. Essentially a sort of simple frangipane, I again defied the instructions by replacing almond essence with vanilla. This made it less marzipanish, and lighter. The filling matched the sharpness of apricots. Here the accompanying wine, a South African sparkling demi-sec made by Graham Beck, was absolutely sublime. When they said it would pair excellently they were soaringly correct. (And I think cream would have interfered in this partnership.)
Altogether the human guinea-pigs who tried these dishes gave a resounding endorsement of the book, which we will bring out again for weekend cookery and home-made date nights. Next up, perhaps Builder's Tea Crème Brûlée with homemade Hobnobs?