The next extract form Life-Writes: Where do writers get
their ideas from …
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
I have an impressive collection of cookery books – some
belonged to my mother and grandmother, others collected by myself over the
years. There are regional and foreign cook books; several Mrs Beeton’s from the early and mid 1900s; an ancient copy
of the French classic Larousse
Gastronomique;
farmhouse cookery and wild food from the hedgerows … not to mention a dozen of
the basic how-to variety including a complete set of the collectable week-by-week
magazine, Supercook, from the early 1970s.
For a long time now, cookery books have been regularly
listed high on the bestseller lists. We have recipes from Victorian kitchens,
cottage kitchens, summer picnics, afternoon teas, Christmas feasts, seasonal
and regional suggestions, foreign food ... cooking for students and singles,
catering on a budget ... in fact, you name it and there’s probably a cookery
book in print to cater for it. Not to mention the ‘how to write about food’
guides.
And you don’t have to have a cordon bleu diploma or be
a ‘kitchen goddess’ to write about food or cookery. There is an extremely large
and lucrative market place for the cookery writer and whether you are a
blossoming master chef, or simply wanted to share the recipes from your great-grandmother’s
handwritten note book, there are lots of opportunities for entering the world
of food publishing in the form of books and articles.
The next time you visit any large bookshop, take a look
at the number and variety of the cookery books on sale - and make a note of the
publishers. Next consider the large number of women’s magazines that feature a
cookery page and study the depth of detail that goes into each article. But it
doesn’t stop at the women’s magazines … there is often a seasonal recipe included
in Home
Farmer, Farmer’s Weekly,
or game recipes in The Shooting Times. Any of the field sporting
magazines would probably be interested in a simple recipe showing what to do with
‘it’ once you’ve caught it! Then there are hundreds of different local recipes for
the multitude of regional magazines …
Without going any further for the moment, we can see
the tremendous amount of potential outlets in this field of writing, not to
mention restaurant and book reviews. If you can realise the potential and see
yourself fitting in to this area of creative writing, invest in a couple of how-to
books on the subject and add them to your reference shelf. Unfortunately most
of the ‘food writing’ books listed on Amazon don’t include basic how-to advice
but the following might help: Janet Lawrence was cookery correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and in The Craft of Food &
Cookery Writing,
she tackles that all-important question of how to identify a winning formula
for a cookery book, and explores the possibilities for selling food. Drawing on
her experience as an author of numerous cookery books, and an experienced writer
of food and cookery articles for many different publications, the guide covers
everything the aspiring food and cookery writer needs to know.
The Recipe Writer’s
Handbook.
Barbara Gibbs Ostmann and Janet Baker are experienced food editors who know
that writing recipes is a tricky business. To achieve success a recipe must be
written with impeccable accuracy and unambiguous clarity and this book offers a
wide range of information for both the novice and seasoned cookery writer. Will Write For Food by Dianne Jacob is a
complete guide to cook books, blogs and reviews for anyone wanting to be a food
writer. It focuses on the American market rather than the UK but has a lot of
sound information for those wishing to branch out in this direction.
Like Faust with his madeleines, food can be extremely
evocative - as this extract from a nostalgic article from The Countryman shows:
The men have been out in
the fields since dawn and will be looking forward to the supper spread out on the
kitchen table. Although it’s school tomorrow, we have been allowed to stay up
late to take part in the feast. No standing on ceremony here. The scrubbed boards
provide the only backdrop for the huge ham waiting for carving, with its thick
outer layer of white fat and breadcrumbs. It’s our father’s last job for the
day and everyone is quickly served with a generous helping of the succulent,
home-cooked meat. Bowls of crisp salad and juicy tomatoes straight from the
garden, and buttered new potatoes lifted just that morning, sprinkled with parsley.
Hard-boiled eggs from the hen house, and home-made pickles; fresh bread with
rich butter and cheese complete the meal …
I can still taste that supper and when I sent a copy of
the magazine in which the piece was published to a childhood friend, she
immediately remembered those hay-making suppers, which took us both back to
being about eight-years old again … We
fidget
from the hayseeds and dried grass that have crept under our clothes and into our
shoes, but we don’t want to move and break the spell…
Articles don’t necessarily have to be about food to be
enriched by the subject. I recently read a travel piece that offered some tantalising
cameos of the cuisine served aboard a French river cruise ship. There, tucked
away in the wealth of detail about people and places were some succulent
morsels of the daily fare for the passengers – and resulted in the article
being filed away for future reference when a holiday moment occurs! In fact, everywhere
we go – both home and abroad – most of us will find a local culinary moment
that is worth storing away to share with a readership at some later stage. Such
as a wonderful (and colourful) buffet lunch at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul;
or the fabulous fresh sea-food platter served in a restaurant behind the ramparts
at St Malo. Remember that no one can access the
same experiences and memories, and that offers you the opportunity to generate
unique responses to those situations.
Regional food can also be dove-tailed to provide
endless topics for articles, both regionally and nationally, and in a wide variety
of publications. Here we can draw on family background, nostalgia, memories
(and not necessarily our own), as I did when writing another Countryman piece on my partner’s
memory of cherry picking in the Kent orchards:
We break for a hasty lunch
of thick salad sandwiches of fresh-picked tomatoes, crisp lettuce and the sharp
tang of spring onions, all pulled straight from the garden earlier that
morning. There’s homemade lemonade and ginger beer for us children, while our mother
pours a thick brew of tea from her battered cream thermos flask …
Bringing it up to date with my own ‘four penny worth’ …
A quick and economical supper that his
mother often made from any leftover fruit was a cherry batter served with ice
cream or custard. I recently found a similar recipe in a 1930s edition of The Woman’s Treasury for
Home & Garden,
discovered at a local car boot sale. “The cherries were placed in a greased baking dish
and sprinkled with caster
sugar. They were then covered with batter (the kind used for Yorkshire
pudding, but sweetened) and baked in the oven for
40 mins.” Just
add the ice cream and step back in time …
Here are a few more possibilities to consider that
could earn a few bob as mini-features, readers’ letters or handy kitchen hints:
• Local magazines and newspapers are always interested
in the wide range of produce on offer at farmer’s markets, particularly when
this involves a local family. Include a seasonal recipe featuring an item of
produce.
• Recommended mart breakfasts can often find a place in
farming publications such as Farmer’s
Weekly.
There are some amazing little places tucked away in the corners of some of our
traditional market halls. Make sure your ‘menu’ is mouth-watering, not swimming
in grease!
• Home
Farmer magazine
ran a series featuring recipes from around the UK – ‘North West Nosebag’
included simple ones from the Lake District and Liverpool; while ‘Emerald Isle
Cuisine’ included farm house kitchen ideas not forgetting the Saturday morning
must-have – the Irish breakfast or Ulster Fry!
• Simple snacks and inexpensive ideas are always
popular – for example: ‘Warming Toast Toppers’ – but do make sure that you
include something for everybody. I get quite excited about new ideas but this
enthusiasm quickly evaporates because nearly all the recipes contain cheese and
I have a serious cheese allergy.
• Growing food with no garden – you would be surprised exactly
how much food you can produce on an average sized patio and these ideas could
earn prizes from the readers’ letters pages in a wide variety of publications.
And what about those wonderful 1950s home-from-school
treats of cheese and potato pie made with butter and half a pint of cream (or
full milk); bubble and squeak (or bubble and squelch as it’s called in some
areas) and ‘eggy bread’. The ideas might give the food police heart failure but
on a cold winter’s day an editor might just think it’s a tastier alternative to
beans on toast.
Old fashioned remedies and household hints are also
popular but these need to have an unusual or unexpected spin to bring them up
to date. For example, it’s a well-known fact that onions are a magnet for
bacteria and that they’ve been used in sick rooms to ‘draw’ the germs for generations.
We’ve known of cut onions being used in racing kennels to prevent kennel
sickness. This was normal operating procedure in 150-dog kennel when there was
sickness about and none of the greyhounds ever came down with it.
Remember: For the writer, everything is food for thought.
