A friend gave up her high-powered legal job in favour of a simpler, more self-sufficient lifestyle. During the first month at home she baked every day, systematically working her way through all the cake recipes in her cookery books. Once completed, she turned her attention to chutney, which was just as well since a cake-based diet, although a marvellous thing, is not without its side effects.
Unlike my friend, I have never tried all the recipes in one chapter of a cookbook. I dip in and out of chapters - and books. There are cookery books on our shelves which have not a spatter of batter glueing their pages together. They are pristine, treasured, and the cause of merciless mockery from those who do not understand the world of the voracious recipe reader.
Given my passion for gardening and reading recipes, I was delighted to receive The Allotment Cookbook by Pete Lawrence. Pete is an award-winning executive producer who has worked with a variety of TV cooks including Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson. For Pete, relaxation from food-related work takes the form of growing food, cooking food and writing about it. Obsessive gardeners will recognise this trait: many professionals spend weekends gardening and writing about plants, so we understand how the day job can also become a wonderful form of relaxation.
The Allotment Cookbook is not simply a collection of recipes, neither is it a gardening manual. Filled with anecdotes involving food and generations of family life, this book verges on becoming a love letter to fresh produce. It is not slushy, with the exception of the lovely rocket seedling proposal to his wife (I shall be discussing this with my other half as a standard to which he might aspire); rather it is an appreciation of the incredible positive transformation which can take place in our lives when we grow, rather than buy, our own fruit and vegetables.
"Growing veg feels right. When you hum the same tune
as nature - get into its rhythm - then you will learn to
savour produce at its very best." - Pete Lawrence
Pete Lawrence’s love for growing food shines through. It is a gentle, enjoyable read with delicious echoes of Nigel Slater’s writing. This book is not just for foodies and wannabe plotters, it is also a great read for experienced growers and voracious recipe readers.
The Allotment Cookbook will not remain pristine in my house. I promise, in spite of everything stated earlier, that I will have cooked and eaten every dish in the radish and courgette sections by the end of this growing season - not because I will be wrestling with gluts, but because I want to eat them. Roll on summer!
*Photos feature crops I have grown, picked and enjoyed eating. There would have been more strawberries and raspberries in the first picture, but they are notoriously challenging crops when it comes to picking and not eating.
Carefully compiled shopping lists in specially selected gardening notebooks and hastily scribbled notes on the backs of envelopes are soon jettisoned in favour of a new must-have plant or garden item. It is difficult to ascertain quite what causes such retail fervour. Perhaps it is the heady scent of spring blooms, the choice plants whispering "buy me" (please don't pretend that you have never heard a plant speak) and the sudden splashes of colour which render the lists futile. I have never skied off-piste, not least because I am too scared, but when it comes to challenging pursuits such as shopping, I fearlessly venture off-liste on a regular basis. Going off-liste is a gardener’s folly and prerogative and if you can’t go off-liste at the first show of the season, then when can you? 
