Our favourite cookery books

I love looking at cookery books although I don't often cook from them. I tend to follow recipes only from magazines or cookery cards. Funny that. Anyway, a newspaper columnist recounted yesterday how she has been having a clear out and a lot of cookery books were binned or given away. She found herself keeping the Nigella books but getting rid of Gordon Ramsay and Antonio Carlucci.

My "keepers" would also include some of Nigella's books: I love Feast and Christmas with her gorgeous Ebay collected reindeer crockery. I'd also keep two really old, and food spattered (always a good sign) books that I used a lot years ago. One is "The Dairy Cookery Collection," which was a book sold by the milkman (!) and the other is Marguerite Patten's Everyday Cookbook. Marguerite is still seen on TV occasionally. I think she's marvellous. She was a home economist during the war and advised how to make recipes from food rations. Gary Rhodes has developed recipes with her help.

I have a couple of Delia Smith's and I would keep those. If in doubt, look it up in Delia.

I would get rid of my Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstalls, my one Gordon Ramsay amd my Claudia Roden. The latter looks beautiful but I'm never going to try the recipes.  I don't have any books by Julia Child or Elizabeth David, which a lot of chefs use as benchmarks.

It's ironic perhaps that the cookery books most of us love are by cooks, not chefs, who give us unpretentious recipes that deliver good results. Which books would you keep and which would you get rid of?

Which TV chef are you?

I was planning a blog post in my head last night about TV chefs, and then today came the sad news that eccentric TV chef Keith Floyd has died at 65.

He was a classic example of a celebrity chef who polarised opinion. You either loved him or hated him. I never bought any of his books, but he was very watchable.

TV chefs come under three categories: firstly, watchable and entertaining but not "proper chefs" (Nigella, Floyd, Worral-Thompson, Ainsley, James Martin etc). Then there are those who are proper chefs, but not always very entertaining - Heston Blumenthal. And then the very rare hybrid, both entertaining and a seriously good chef (Marco Pierre-White.)

I love watching cookery shows and J finds it strange that with all the knowledge I must surely have acquired, I can still turn out tough roast beef on Sundays. It's the meat, I try to tell him.

I adore Nigella Lawson and I do have most of her books, although I haven't tried many of the recipes. I just like looking at the pictures. I think we all wish we could be Nigella: rich, famous, elegant.

I've never understood the appeal of Jamie Oliver. He seems too young and inexperienced to me to be held up as a food expert. I remember him throwing stuff into a pan and that characterises his approach to me. I can't take it seriously.

It's the same with Gordon Ramsay. I'm afraid I never got over the fact he was a footballer. I used to like his Kitchen Nightmares programmes - the first time - but he's too shouty and profane for me.

James Martin is a tubby twit without a neck who specialises in spun sugar baskets (yawn). Delia Smith is the one who's taught most of us how to cook. I don't enjoy her shows very much but her books are indispensable in terms of know-how. I also have an old Marguerite Patten book - she's now over 90 and used to advise housewives on how to cook in the war years.

I admire Marco Pierre White very much but I wonder about his taste buds. He uses a lot of ketchup and Knorr cubes, both containing vast amounts of salt. I always want to shout at the TV when chefs criticise food for not having enough salt. They should be weaning us off it and using herbs instead.

Heston Blumenthal doesn't do it for me, either personality or food wise. I've been to his Fat Duck restaurant on a couple of occasions. The first time it's a thrilling experience. The second time, oh not smoky bacon ice-cream again.

I would like to see Michel Roux Jnr given his own show. I could imagine that with his high degree of expertise and his stern, no nonsense approach, we could learn quite a lot, although it wouldn't be as entertaining as when Floyd was cooking and pouring himself generous measures of wine.

An end to the career of Jim Davidson

This summer I successfully weaned myself off Big Brother, and didn't watch one minute of the old tripe. I suspect I'm not alone there, based on its dwindling viewing figures. The only reason Channel 4 keep it going is that advertisers like the demographic profile of the mostly teenage viewers.

I haven't turned my back on trash completely, I'm afraid to say, although I have decided not to get a Sunday tabloid any longer. I've always had the News of the World and the Sunday Times, apparently the most popular combo. But the NOTW has gone so much downhill that it nowdays has very little news or crusading journalism and I don't want to read about bimbo models and which "celebrity" footballers they managed to dupe into bed. Even the quality of scandal has gone downhill. Their few exclusives come when they dress up as sheiks and deceive people.

On the subject of trash, I've also been watching Hell's Kitchen this year. To start with, I just wanted to see what Marco Pierre White is like, as he's never done TV before. He's a very successful chef and businessman with several successful restaurants to his name, and he famously made Gordon Ramsay cry.

To start with, I thought he was fascinating: very charismatic and an inspiring leader. But as the days have gone by, I've got disillusioned with his daily pep talks and how he keeps repeating the same phrases: "allow me to take you by the hand and guide you," "keep pushing," "nature is an artist."

Plus he became very friendly with the repugnant Jim Davidson, the former comedian. I have to question Marco's judgment here. Last night Davidson was sent packing after his homophobic attacks on Brian Dowling. What made it particularly distasteful to watch was that Davidson justifies his attacks with arguments that he is now in a minority (fat middle-aged misogynist and homophobic bigots inc) and where does he, and those with the same views, go from here? He asserts that now we are all "PC" you cannot express any views these days without getting into trouble.

Yes and no. Firstly, he used to have a big following and he's now struggling to find work. What does that tell you? We are tired of his brand of humour and his risque and repulsive jokes. And that's not just the "PC" among us but his target audience, presumably a lot of whom were middle aged men.

Secondly, I'm against "PC" when it becomes ridiculous, but I do believe that everyone is entitled to respect and dignity. We must put an end to people being bullied or humiliated. Where I do resent the "PC" culture is when it comes to loony left wing councils and organisations and ridiculous court judgments. Two examples: a loony council recently failed to challenge two homosexual men who were accused of abusing the children they fostered, purely on the grounds that they didn't want to make it look as if they were persecuting homosexuals. And then there was the RAF typist who received massive damages for injuring a finger while typing, while the most horribly injured soldier to ever recover received a derisory sum that won't pay for his care for the rest of his life.

ITV took too long to step in to evict Davidson. The bullying was even more loathsome than that suffered by Shilpa Shetty in Celebrity Big Brother. We shouldn't even have had to see and hear Davidson's unsavoury and prejudiced views. Hopefully now the death knell has been sounded for his career and we won't see him again. He'll go into the trash can occupied by Michael Barrymore and John Leslie (and until recently, Bernard Manning). Brian Dowling, meanwhile, will now probably win Hell's Kitchen.