The New First Slice Your Cookbook - Softcover

Boxer, Arabella

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1898697930 ISBN 13: 9781898697930

Publisher: Grub Street Publishing, 1998

Synopsis

This is a collection of recipes providing "mix and match" menus for simple lunches or full-scale dinners. The pages are "sliced" horizontally into three sections which cover soups and starters, main dishes and puddings. The result is a variety of recipe cards which are interchangeable to provide a wide variety of menus, and all three courses can be seen at-a-glance. To help plan balanced meals, each recipe is colour coded for richness, lightness or neutrality. The recipes range from dishes that are suitable for small family lunches, to dinner parties. Some recipes, considered by the author to be timeless, simple and beyond fashion, have been retained from the original edition, and many are completely new. Recipes stem mostly from Britain, with some from America, France and Italy.

About this title

Review

First Slice Your Cookbook was originally published in 1964 and drifted out of print many years ago. The idea, like all really good ones, was luminously simple once someone had actually had it: A recipe book divided horizontally ("sliced") into three, for Starters, Main Courses and Desserts, allowing any number of different meals to be assembled and taken in at a glance. Additionally, the individual recipes were colour-coded to indicate the degree of richness, helping the cook to avoid a meal largely composed of cholesterol (as we would say now). It was a fascinating production of its time, the original smart Sixties dinner-party book, at once sumptuously chic (the original edition was handsomely presented in a slipcase and now apparently commands three-figure sums) and polemical in its rejection of the assumptions, then practically universal, that good dinner-party food must involve quantities of cream, eggs and butter.

Now re-issued, First Slice Your Cookbook must make its way in a very different world. Arabella Boxer has replaced about half of the original recipes, but she retains the original emphasis on simplicity and on "unpretentious English dishes". There is, as she points out, no trace of pesto, sun-dried tomatoes or polenta. Starters include the winningly pure Potted Brown Shrimps, Chicken Liver Pate and Leek Vinaigrette. Main courses range from the unprepossessing-sounding but delicious Belgian Cod, to such old-fashioned delights as Tarragon Chicken, Navarin of Lamb and Grilled Wood Pigeon. The puddings are like a soft, welcoming bed: Orange Boodle's Fool, Chocolate Roulade, Floating Islands, Elderflower Fritters. Irresistible. Welcome back. --Robin Davidson

Edition details

• Publisher: Grub Street Publishing
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1898697930
• ISBN 13: 9781898697930
• Binding: Spiral-bound
• Number of pages: 176