The River Cottage Year - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

In this book Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall takes us through the year showing what native food is in season and his favourite ways of preparing and eating the food. The book begins with a chapter detailing what is in season when this includes, sections on vegetables, fruit, fish, shellfish, game and wild plants including greens, herbs, flowers, fruits fungi, nuts and saps. Following on from this there is a chapter on each month. Each chapter begins with Hugh describing what he likes and dislikes about the month and some of the things he does during that month to collect food. He follows this by giving about 10 recipes using the produce currently in season, the ...  Read the complete review

I’ll start by saying I’m a bit of a fan of Hugh. He has a no nonsense approach to cooking and to where our food comes from (both meat and veg). I grew up in the countryside and so I appreciate this kind of honesty and shunning of supermarket shrink-wrapped nastiness. The River Cottage year is a bit different to his other books in the River Cottage series. Meat and “The River Cottage Cookbook” are more “farm to fork” enterprises where there’s advice on growing vegetables, raising pigs, killing chickens alongside recipes for Coq au vin. The River Cottage Year is more a celebration of seasonality picking up some of the recipes from the series. It starts with ...  Read the complete review