Richard Mabey's sparky, offbeat book is about canny and inventive making-do, or 'busking in the kitchen'. Whether creating a cassoulet which uses English ingredients, making bread from chestnuts or slow-cooking a Peking duck in front of an ancient fan heater, he encourages us to be daring and imaginative in our cooking and our approach to food.
Although it contains wonderful, mouth-watering recipes like broad bean hummus, pumpkin soup and fillet-steak hearts this is more than a recipe book - it is a guide to a whole new way of thinking that embraces scrumping, celebrates picnics, and revels in saving energy wherever it can, whether that's by one-pot feasts or cooling on car radiators. After all, if you care about food 'life's too short not to stuff a mushroom'.
Previously published in hardback as The Full English Cassoulet.
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Mabey has been described as 'Britain's greatest living nature writer' and he brings equal authority to writing about food in this engaging memoir cum recipe book - Sunday Telegraph
The frugality of its recipes is offset by the gloriousness of its prose. This is the man who brought us Food For Free, so there's nothing about making do that he doesn't know - this book's a delight - The Times, Books of the Year
Excellent... More than just a recipe book. It covers a useful skill in a downturn, the art of foraging - Independent on Sunday
Learn the art of culinary busking with home-grown staples in this spirited and hands-on guide - Dailiy Mail
A book for both the ecologically anxious and thrify, and since that means virtually everyone in Britain these days, it should sell by the truckload - Observer
Although not intended as a sequel to Food for Free, The Full English Cassoulet is similarly easy-going and personable... It manages to be both warmly eccentric and timely - Scotsman
Recommended Christmas gift for budding chefs and bon viveurs... Inventive cooking using things in every which way - Easy Living
There aren't many people who know how to make a 'passable imitation of Corsican cheese' using nothing but milk, a couple of lemons and a pair of old tights. Then again, there aren't many writers like Richard Mabey, most lovable of naturalists. Ever since he first instructed us on the wonders of weeds in Food for Free, Mabey has shown himself alert to possibilities in nature that most of us are deaf to... Cooking methods are dealt with in a far more authoritative manner than in many a grander recipe collection' - Sunday Times
The critic, conservationist and botanist Richard Mabey looks at how to make do in the kitchen by using local and seasonal food to their full potential. This book includes recipes and cooking advice with anecdotal stories and sketches to accompany them - The Times
This is a helpful, down-to-earth book with some lovely ideas in it - Sunday Telegraph
Mabey is a natural forager, and he describes the process of cooking with a sort of purity and simplicity - Evening Standard
Among Richard Mabey's acclaimed publications are Food for Free (his first book and never out of print), GilbertWhite (Whitbread Biography of the Year) and the ground-breaking bestseller Flora Britannica, which won the British Book Awards' Illustrated Book of the Year and the Botanical Society of the British Isles' President's Award and was runner-up for the BP Natural World Book Prize. He collaborated on Birds Britannica (which was his idea) and Nature Cure, described as 'A brilliant, candid and heartfelt memoir', had such wide appeal that it was shortlisted for no fewer than four prestigious prizes: the Whitbread Biography, the J.R. Ackerley for autobiography, Mind (for its investigation into depression) and the Ondaatje Prize for the evocation of the spirit of place.
Richard Mabey was born and brought up among the beech woods of the Chilterns, and now lives in Norfolk.
