My guest this week is Niki Segnit with her latest book Lateral Cooking – One dish leads to another.
A ground-breaking book, designed to help creative cooks develop their own recipes, from the bestselling author of The Flavour Thesaurus. One dish leads to another…
Lateral Cooking is, in a sense, the ‘method’ companion to its bestselling predecessor, The Flavour Thesaurus – and is just as useful, ingeniously organised and enjoyable to read.
The book is divided into 12 chapters, each covering a basic culinary category, such as ‘Bread’, ‘Sauces’ or ‘Custard’. The recipes in each chapter are then arranged on a continuum, the transition from one recipe to another generally amounting to a tweak or two in the method or ingredients. Which is to say, one dish leads to another: once you’ve got the hang of flatbreads, for instance, then its neighboring dishes on the continuum (crackers, soda bread, scones) will involve the easiest and most intuitive adjustment. The result is greater creativity in the kitchen: Lateral Cooking encourages improvisation, resourcefulness, and, ultimately, the knowledge and confidence to cook by heart.
Lateral Cooking is essentially a practical book, but like The Flavour Thesaurus it’s also a highly enjoyable read. The ‘Flavours & Variations’ sections, for example, draw widely on culinary science, history, ideas from professional kitchens, observations by renowned food writers and personal recollection. Entertaining, opinionated and inspirational, Lateral Cooking will have you torn between donning your apron and settling back in a comfortable chair. Get a copy NOW!
Niki Segnit’s first book, The Flavour Thesaurus, won the André Simon Award for best food book, the Guild of Food Writers Award for best first book, and was shortlisted for the Galaxy National Book Awards. It has been translated into fourteen languages, including French, Russian, Japanese and Korean.
On BBC Radio 4, she has contributed to The Food Programme, Woman’s Hour and Word of Mouth, and her columns, features and reviews have appeared in the Guardian, the Observer, the Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Sunday Times and Prospect magazine. She lives in London with her husband and two children.
Learn more about Niki.
Later in the program I’ll be talking to Dawnita Miller about “Operation Christmas Child” – a program associated with Samaritans’s Purse. Samaritan’s Purse is an evangelical Christian humanitarian aid organization that provides aid to people in physical need as a key part of Christian missionary work. The organization’s president is Franklin Graham, son of Christian evangelist Billy Graham.
Good Life Guy’s Wine of the Week:
2017 Troon Vineyard Vermentino, Applegate Valley Oregon
Making orange wine is always a voyage of discovery. Our first orange wine, or as we call it “Whole Grape Ferment”, was made with riesling. We were so excited with the results we also decided to ferment some Vermentino on its skins in 2017. Once we tasted the wine, we knew this would be a wine we were going to make again. For those new to orange wines, they are white wines made like red wines, which means they were fermented on the grape skins. Normally, when you make a white wine you press the fruit right away and ferment only the juice. Fermenting on the skins adds an incredible range of flavors, aromatics and textures that make these wines unique. Starting with the 2019 vintage, this wine will be fermented and aged in amphorae. www.troonvineyard.com
- Aged in mature French Oak barrels for nine months
- 11.5% alcohol, pH 3.34, T.A. 5.7
- 94 points BevX.com, 92 points Enobytes, 91 points Terroirist
- “Texture and mouthfeel on this wine is glorious,” Terroirist