River Cottage Good Comfort: Best-Loved Favourites Made Better for You

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The book begins with an Introduction. It's the usual cook's philosophy section, which in this case is HFW's mission to recreate comfort foods that are not heavy, cloying, too rich or too sweet. His key principle is 'Go Whole: The more whole, unrefined ingredients we can get on to our plates, the better. But he doesn't just mean the grains and pulses we typically associate with the term 'wholefoods'. He means foods that are whole, or very close to it, when we take them into our kitchens. (I heard these described the other day as 'foods your granny would recognise'.) Minimally processed is ok, so he includes dairy foods such as yoghurt and cheese, and some tinned vegetables (such as low-salt tomatoes canned with just water and a little salt.) He stresses that it's important to get the balance right: overdo the pulses and you're in the danger zone of 'padding'. Likewise, full-on wholemeal flour can take you a little far from textures you know and love, so 'half-wholemeal' is a better choice. And Good Comfort is in every way generous, as Hugh makes our favourite foods healthier not by taking stuff out of them, but by putting more the best whole ingredients, celebrated in all their colourful and seasonal diversity.

I also love the presentation and design; neo-70s you might call it. It has tones reminiscent of 1970s to early-80s books, but is glossier and more visually appealing, and with cleaner lines. Therefore more appetising, than, say, my mum's copy of Cookery in Colour by Marguerite Patten, which I used to look through as a kid. It's an early-autumn colour scheme, with lots of green and brown: the start of my favourite time of year, and also when keen cooks are gearing up to make exactly this kind of food.I'm already onboard with reducing sugar: I find most modern recipes and storebought cakes have far too much sugar for my taste. My cakes, biscuits and puddings mostly come from battered recipe books from decades ago. HFW's other mission is to encourage cooks to use a variety of good ingredients, which is my culinary mission too. People used to making recipes dairy-free or vegan will already have their own preferred method of making standards like batter, but this book seems likely to interest omni households who cater for vegan guests from time-to-time, or who may have one (perhaps newly) vegan resident who isn't the main cook. (The recipes really suit a relaxed family dinner.) For these circumstances , it would be a good idea to consistently include advice for such things, as is done for the lasagna.

During River Cottage Spring (2008) Hugh helped a group of Bristol families start a smallholding on derelict council land. Ultimately Hugh leads us on a journey to tweak our tastebuds and pamper our palates so that we can take as much pleasure - and ultimately more - from dishes that we know will do us good. He continues to write as a journalist, including a weekly column in The Guardian and is Patron of the National Farmers’ Retail and Markets Association (FARMA). The success of the show and the books allowed Hugh to establish River Cottage HQ near Bridport in 2004.Last time we had friends over for dinner, I made a dessert of home-made avocado ice-cream, with brownies. I should have taken a photo because it was scrumptious, despite the recipe's claim that the brownies had only 91 kcal per serve because they were made with yoghurt instead of butter. I don't care about calories, but I do try to offer desserts that are healthy-ish. OTOH if I'm only going to make brownies once or twice a year, I want them to taste decadent. Titled River Cottage Good Comfort: Best-Loved Favourites Made Better for You, it aims to debunk the perception that the food we love can't also be good for us. But where this book does fall down is in not giving any general advice in the introduction about preferred dairy substitutes, and in which dishes they do and don't work - and in having very few cakes and puddings with vegan options. I don't bother to find fault with older omni cookbooks for being full of dairy with no substitution ideas; it was just the norm before the last few years. But as HFW and River Cottage have already produced a fully vegan book ( Much More Veg), and even early Nigella books happen to contain a few more dairy free or even accidentally-vegan cakes than this one does, I definitely think they could do better in this area.

And Good Comfort is in every way generous, as Hugh makes our favourite foods healthier, not by taking stuff out of them, but by putting more in: the best whole ingredients, celebrated in all their colourful and seasonal diversity. In the same year, Hugh published The River Cottage Meat Book to wide acclaim and won a second André Simon Food Book of the Year Award. It was actually spot-on. (As far as is possible, given they don't have a dairy-free book - although there is a gluten-free baking one.) The River Cottage Fish Book: The Definitive Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Fish and SeafoodI asked the River Cottage people online which of their cookbooks they would recommend for a dairy-intolerant omni who enjoys their veg books and who likes cooking soups and stews. The first of their recommendations was this. I was sceptical as it was their most recent publication - maybe they just wanted to shift more copies - but I took a closer look. His early smallholding experiences were shown in the Channel 4 River Cottage series and led to the publication of The River Cottage Cookbook (2001), which won the Glenfiddich Trophy and the André Simon Food Book of the Year awards.