A Cook's Year in a Welsh Farmhouse

Book excerpt: In an old farmhouse on the slopes of a mountain lying between Tregaron and Aberystwyth, Elisabeth Luard brings the produce of the land into her kitchen and turns it into delicious food. This book is her response to the changes she sees in her garden and the surrounding countryside throughout the seasons, with distinctive recipes at the end of each month's chapter. It is the story of a year spent planting and picking in the garden, roaming the countryside with her grandchildren and introducing them to the pleasures of rural living. Elisabeth's cooking is rooted in the culture of the Mediterranean where she once lived, as well as being inspired by traditional Welsh recipes and by her own garden. In winter she stirs up warming dishes like Spanish biscocho or Welsh winter cawl; in the spring she waits until the first mayflower comes to bloom before planting lettuces, mangetouts and broad beans in her garden. She relies on locally sourced meat for dishes like Partridges with baby onions and cinnamon in red wine, Rabbit with tagliatelle, cream and mustard or Ceps with potatoes and bacon, and rakes the countryside for ingredients like fruit for Hedgerow jelly, nettles for soup, elderflowers for cordial, cake or even fritters. With full colour photography by Clare Richardson that perfectly captures the sense of life in the Welsh countryside, this is a unique and beautiful book.