Life

Chef Gizzi Erskine on taking a slower approach to cooking and eating

Chef and TV presenter Gizzi Erskine's new cookbook is all about investing time in the kitchen. Ella Walker and Lucy Hubbard find out more

Gizzi Erskine has hosted cookery programmes including Cook Yourself Thin
Gizzi Erskine has hosted cookery programmes including Cook Yourself Thin Gizzi Erskine has hosted cookery programmes including Cook Yourself Thin

GIZZI Erskine is not into fast recipes, or 'easy' ones, for that matter. Don't expect corner-cutting tricks and 10-minute meals with this new recipe collection.

In fact, she's of the mind that, if you're going to eat a crab, you ought to know how to buy one fresh, crack it open properly, and unhook the creamy flesh yourself. It's this style of cooking – investing time, energy, care, attention – that's "how I genuinely get my thrills", explains the 39-year-old chef and TV presenter.

So, if you're always in a hurry, the London-based food writer's new cookbook, Slow, might not be on your 'must-read' list – although it ought to be.

Erskine's food is "technique-based and ingredients-led", meaning Slow is laden with dishes that require a little more effort than hungrily snatching at the nearest available supper. "What I really love to do is sit around a crock pot or a lovely roast – a dish that's been in the oven for a really long time," she explains. "Everyone sits together, shoulder-to-shoulder, with glasses of wine, helping each other serve."

Within the book, you'll find a sticky oxtail stew and salt-baked sea bass, Polish golabki (stuffed cabbage leaves), pastries and cloud-like lemon puddings, as well as hand-pulled noodles and a rich lamb hotpot. It's structured around process, the aim always being to cook meat so luxuriantly that it falls from the bone with barely a nudge.

"Yes, it might take you an afternoon to learn how to make fresh pasta or fresh noodles, or to make a proper stock, but what you get out of that is something that tastes so much better and is so much better for you," says an unapologetic Erskine. Slowing things down, she notes, is a way to better become "at one" with your ingredients, their heritage, their properties and culinary possibilities.

Essentially, she's not going to dumb down cooking for you, but that doesn't mean her food is out of reach: "I want people to be challenged. Often, we're told we're not capable when we are, we are all capable to do anything we want."

She's interested in the slow growing of foods, too. Not interfering in terms of antibiotics being given to enhance animals, or pesticides being applied to crops, as well as the cooking of them – provenance and quality of ingredients, she says, is crucial.

"I want people to understand that to make the best food, you have to have the best ingredients," she notes, explaining how the greatest, most delicious gravy is so good it "sticks your lips together" because of the quality of the gelatine in it.

But Slow isn't designed to be "worthy" or to make you feel bad. "I'm very, very aware of the implications of money on [better quality] food," Erskine admits, "but also, if we want to make a difference in the world, we all need to start cutting back on [industrially farmed] meats.

"If we understand how food is grown," she adds, "we might think differently about how we utilise it as an ingredient."

Despite a stint as a professional body-piercer, Erskine cannot remember a time she didn't cook ("There's pictures of me as a baby with bowls in front of me, stirring things"), and spent a lot of her time in Asia as a child, due to her mother's work in Bangkok, Thailand. "I got to eat as much Asian food as I could. That's probably where I learnt to cook," she remembers. "Me and my mum will eat anything, and we'd bugger off and go to the markets and eat all the seafood."

Erskine trained at Leiths Cookery School before landing a BBC Good Food internship, and going on host cookery programmes like Cook Yourself Thin on Channel 4. She's also worked in professional kitchens.

Having launched two new businesses this year – her Mare Street Market restaurant-cum-deli and Pure Filth, her veggie burger joint – and written Slow, her plan now is to not "spread myself too thin".

"I want to get it all right: I want to be good at business, I want to get better as a cookery writer, I want to keep enjoying myself and doing what I love," she says. "I want to be really good at my job."

:: Slow by Gizzi Erskine, photography Issy Croker, is published by HQ, priced £25.

CHEESY POLENTA AND DIRTY PRAWNS

(Serves 4)

To make the cheesy polenta:

2L fresh chicken or veg stock

200g polenta, cornmeal or grits

Sprig of thyme

80g Cheddar, grated

30g Parmesan, grated

30g butter

Pinch of cayenne pepper

Pinch of white pepper

Sea salt

Method

Put the chicken (or veg) stock, polenta, thyme and quarter of a teaspoon of salt in a medium saucepan and bring to the boil. Allow to simmer over a low heat for one hour. Initially it will resemble murky yellow water, but have patience, it will slowly come together. Keep whisking the mixture, especially during the last 15 minutes, to prevent the bottom scorching.

Once you have a nice thick gloopy consistency similar to a well-cooked porridge, mix in the cheeses, butter and peppers. Season with salt to taste and keep hot until ready to serve.

For the dirty prawns, spring onions and bacon:

16 raw king prawns, peeled with tails on, deveined and split down the middle to butterfly

1tbsp olive oil

6 garlic cloves, crushed

100g smoked streaky bacon, cut into lardons

1tbsp butter

4 spring onions, finely chopped

1/2tsp sea salt

1/4tsp white pepper

Good pinch of cayenne pepper

Squeeze of lemon juice

Method

Place the prawns in a bowl with enough olive oil to coat them; add the crushed garlic and allow to marinate while you get everything else ready. Heat a frying pan over a medium heat with a slick of oil. Add the bacon and fry until it is starting to crisp and the fat has rendered. Remove from the pan and set aside.

In the same pan, melt the butter in the remaining fat. Turn up the heat to high and add the prawns. When they have begun to turn opaque, return the bacon to the pan along with the spring onions, salt, pepper and cayenne.

Check for seasoning and give it a generous squeeze of lemon juice before serving alongside the polenta.

SESAME MISO ROASTED RED CABBAGE

(Serves 4)

1 red cabbage, cut into 8 wedges

2tbsp rapeseed oil

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dressing:

1tbsp fresh white miso

1tbsp mirin

1tbsp sake

1 1/2tbsp water

1tbsp sugar

1tbsp sesame seeds

1/2tsp roasted sesame oil

Method

Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan. Spread out the cabbage wedges on a baking tray, toss with the oil and season lightly. Roast in the oven for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile make the dressing by whisking together all the ingredients. Once the 30 minutes is up, use a pastry brush to coat the cabbage pieces in the dressing then turn the oven up to 240C/220C fan and return them to the oven for a further 15 minutes until cooked through, caramelised and beginning to get a little crisp at the edges.