Young, Paul A (2009). Adventures with Chocolate
Kyle Cathie, £17.99
I’ve reviewed, and award-judged, quite a few food and cookery books over the years. While reading the title and opening the cover are invariably exciting experiences, a certain weariness takes hold all too often, all too soon — not simply with concept, contents, and evident editorial strictures, but with the process of review or award, where brief, but overwhelming excitement (I’m one of those impulsives who will shell out on a hardback for a single recipe) can play little or no part within a measured, responsible, exacting assessment.
Here, I feel free (though not irresponsible!). So first, I’d like to sum up my reaction, and reason for wide recommendation of Paul Young’s book, in a single word: “Refreshing”.
Now, I’ll explain why I’m commending it, whether as a Christmas gift or anytime-purchase in a personal but I trust not irrelevant way. You can read summaries of the contents, the chapter headings and various other comprehensive accounts elsewhere — Paul’s own site (warning: contains flashing graphics), or Amazon (note the good deal!), or a dozen Google-sourced locations. So I won’t trouble to do that.
I bought the book because the smell of the Islington shop is heavenly, transporting – coercive even. This would also be a fitting description for the brownies (recipe — one, anyhow — on page 58) and a fair number of the filled chocolates this genius chocolatier produces. Then I encountered Paul — wrapping, serving, gently encouraging. He was friendly, unassuming and not the least bit remote or mystique-laden. And indeed, so it is with the book (ah, I should add that I’ve never, to my knowledge, been disappointed by a Kyle Cathie publication).
Next, I read every word, cover to cover, including the Intro, each recipe instruction, Resources and Acknowledgements. Not conscientiously, but compulsively. Never has learning (a lot) been more fun. I ogled the photos — luscious, but with a restraint the right side of decadence. I smoothed the pages, clearly designed with as much pride and permanence as a modern, pictorial cookery book dare ever assume.
I tried a few recipes, following them to the letter, minute and millimetre. I discovered Mr Young’s oven is clearly calibrated differently to my own. The mud pudding of a brownie did have fantastic flavour – make that flavours. I wasn’t so convinced by the cocoa, mustard and cumin water biscuits. There again, cumin seemed a revelation in the chocolate sauce drizzled over fig and date tarts. And the cream cheese pastry absolutely lived up to the author’s promise of being ‘infinitely versatile and the quickest pastry you can make’. Astonishing, in fact. Best of all, his determined pushing of flavour boundaries and excited suggestions for new combinations generated dozens more ideas in my mind. Always there are the ‘solid foundations’ on which to overlay those flavours – there can’t be a reasonably determined enthusiast who could fail to turn out a delightful ganache, a perfect truffle, even a beautifully tempered chocolate bar after following the well thought out and nicely detailed instructions. Paul Young’s mission is clearly not to mystify but to enable; and to inspire not a slavish replication of his own recipes but the taking up of an adventure that is personal. Utterly refreshing.
I trust this accounts for recent short-listing in the André Simon and World Cookbook awards, quite an achievement for the Durham lad who was more mesmerised by his Christmas box of Thornton’s chocolates than the latest Space Invaders game.
If you didn’t manage to secure a signed copy at the recent Chocolate Festival, you can do so by ordering via Paul’s site. But I strongly urge you to call into one of the shops (there is one in the Royal Exchange, in addition to the Camden Passage original location) so you can taste (and smell!) for yourself where the book ‘adventure’ might lead you.