Summer Cooking

For Elizabeth David, summer fare meant fresh, seasonal food—recipes that could be prepared quickly and savored slowly, from Gnocchi alla Genovese (‘simply an excuse for eating pesto’) to La Poule au Pot to Gooseberry Fool. Her 1955 classic work, now reissued in a handsome, attractively priced hardback edition, includes an overview of herbs as well as chapters on impromptu cooking for holidays and picnics.

Divided into chapters on Soups, Salads, Eggs, Fish, Meat, Poultry and Game, Vegetables, and Sweets, it contains recipes from all over the world. Summer Cooking is a witty, precise companion for feasting in the warmer months — every bit as unexpected and enchanting to read today as it was 50 years ago. But the purest thrill of Summer Cooking, as in all of her books, is the pleasure her food delivers and the graceful way her prose captures the reader’s delight.

Elizabeth David
Her life was remarkable and her legacy astonishing. Her brilliant writing stems from a genuine love of food and an intellectual interest in how and why it is prepared. For her food and living were inseparable. Drawing on dishes she had eaten and learned from cooks in France, Italy, Greece and North Africa, her books are evocative pieces of travel writing, creating an instant connection with the places she had visited, and hence her recipes are like a diary and have stood the test of time. Practically all of today?s serious food writers have acknowledged her influence (and continue to do so).