Easter Cookbook Special - Salmagundi by Sally Butcher
With Easter Sunday fast approaching, that all-important
family lunch is looming ever closer.
This year, why not give the tired old lamb roast a rest and try reaching
for something fresh?
Salmagundi is the
latest offering from Peckham’s own Sally Butcher, and includes a host of
variations on the ostensibly humble salad. However, discard any preconceptions
you might have about the limits of this much-maligned dish. As Sally explains, ‘there are no rules’ when
it comes to concocting your salad, and the book contains a plethora of exciting
new ingredients and flavour combinations to spark your imagination.
Sally Butcher is a well-known name around South London food
circles. As owner of Persepolis, the consistently excellent purveyor of Persian
ingredients, Sally is one of the most knowledgeable and influential voices on
the subject of Middle-Eastern cuisine to emerge online in the last few years.
After her earlier volume, Persia In
Peckham, was released to critical acclaim back in 2007, hip provincial
eateries up and down the country have been tripping over themselves to find
space for baba ganoush or ghormeh sabzi on their menus. Sally’s writing is
always excellent; highly informative whilst remaining breezily conversational,
and Salmagundi is no exception. Brimming with a frankly astonishing number of
recipes, the book is clearly a passion project for Sally. But not only do the
recipes shine, the lengthy passages of exposition transform the work into a
paean to the egalitarian breadth and versatility of the salad, with recipes to
fit every budget.
With chapters on meat, fish, cheese, grains, and a host of
other elements, the book leaves no stone unturned in its quest to redeem salad
from its prevailing image of limp iceberg and watery tomatoes. Her expert
knowledge of Middle-Eastern gastronomy informs the whole book, yet influences
are drawn from around the world. Despite taking its name from a 17th
Century English word meaning a salad containing everything, recipes and
ingredients are drawn from across Europe, Africa and Asia to offer a truly
comprehensive spectrum of flavours. Featuring helpful sections on diverse
subjects such as urban foraging or tips to grow your own herbs, the book is
also a handy do-it-yourself guide for those looking to push their newfound
salad obsession that bit further.
In addition to being a truly exhaustive tome, Salmagundi is a refreshingly literary
work. Sally consistently inserts quotations from a range of poets and authors
to best illustrate her passion and knowledge for the subject, making the work a
pleasurable read for both the casual food lover and the confirmed gourmand. Drawing
from an extensive range of sources, Sally traces the history of salad making to
its earliest origins, and her research sees her including passages from
original recipes dating as far back as the 14th Century. Her own comments are consistently
entertaining too; whether denouncing the Romans as ‘the Borg of antiquity’ or skewering
the pretences of modern food culture, her prose is never less than
first-rate. A definitive yet light-hearted textbook on all things salad and
beyond, Salmagundi is essential
reading for any foodie.
Pick up your copy here.
Pick up your copy here.
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