Nobody Does It Better: A Review

	Nobody Does It Better: Why French Home Cooking Is Still The Best In The World Trish Deseine Kyle Cathie Ltd, 2007 RRP: £25
On the evidence of this passionate and entertaining book, French home cooking is still in pretty fine fettle.
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While the French restaurant star may have slipped a little over the last few years, or at least been partially eclipsed by the likes of The Fat Duck and El Buli, the premise is that it still shines bright in the homes of the French.  And on the evidence of this book, long may it do so.

Here in the UK, dinner at someone's house can mean anything - from a ready-meal from M&S to a faithful rendition of one of St Jamie's dishes to a full blown multi-course special.  I had one flatmate who used to treat every guest to pasta and pesto; the pasta generally flabby and overcooked, the pesto from a jar at the back of the fridge.

Trish Deseine's friends in France seem quite different - with chinaware to dazzle and cooking skills to envy. 

Rather than taking the usual cook-book format (starters, fish, meat, dessert etc or by region) in this book, she tells us how the French keep ahead of us when it comes to homecooking with a chapter on each secret:

• How they shop wisely
• How they know their classics
• How they steal from chefs and
  
• How they rise to the occasion

The key to all of this is the largest chapter - that on shopping wisely.  The French just seem to have better access to the sort of markets and specialist shops that I can only dream of.  Shopping wisely, according to the book, involves getting your butcher or your fishmonger to do much of the prep for you or it may mean buying a desert from a great patisserie.  Shopping wisely allows you to focus on quality ingredients and cooking them to perfection.

Deseine is an Irish woman living in France - she isn't a restaurant cook but a keen home cook, and this book is full of recipes aimed at similar people based over here.  While some of the ingredients are hard to come by (truffles, anyone?), most of the recipes are reasonably easy to reproduce this side of the Channel.  While some recipes require you to spend hours in the kitchen - cooking a pot au feu, for example - others are much more simple requiring mere assembly of great ingredients.  And perhaps that's the key: Cook some, assemble some, buy some and what you end-up with is a terrific meal.

One word from my wife:  Lose the dust-jacket of this hardback - the front cover is standard cookbook stuff, whereas the photo inside is far more stylish. 

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