Backlisted - How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

How to Cook a Wolf (1942) by the inimitable M.F.K. Fisher is the book featured in this episode of Backlisted. Joining John and Andy to heed this call to culinary arms, written at a time of national crisis and thus exceptionally relevant to 2020, are journalist and food writer Felicity Cloake and author and adventurer Dan Richards. Also in this episode John has been delving into the backlist of Booker-winning novelist Bernardine Evaristo with The Emperor's Babe (2001), while Andy enjoys Barry England's existential thriller Figures in a Landscape, shortlisted for the very first Booker Prize in 1969.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)9'50 - The Emperor's Babe by Bernardine Evaristo16'01 - Figures in a Landscape by Barry England21'46 How to Cook a Wolf by MFK Fisher* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. When you're working out at Planet Fitness, it's a judgment-free zone, so you can really step up your workout. That's why we've got treadmills. And our team members are here to help, so you can be carefree with the free weights.

There are also balance balls, bikes, cables, kettlebells, and TRX equipment. But, like, no pressure. Get started for $1 enrollment and then only $15 a month. Hurry this $1 enrollment sale of Planet Fitness ends July 18th. $49 annual fee applies. See Home Club for details. yes i'm gonna have some run now. Three minutes early. Thanks, everyone, for doing this. Felicity, where are you calling us from? I'm calling you from my flat in North London,

which has become all too familiar to me in the last four months. So, yeah, I can't sound very happy about that fact, I'm afraid. It's quite a nice flat, but I'm over it, as they say. And you appear to be in a kitchen. Is that a Zoom backdrop or is that your kitchen? If it were a Zoom backdrop, it would be considerably better appointed. It would be Nigella Lawson's kitchen with a large marble island. No, this is my actual kitchen, the extent of my kitchen.

This is basically my flat, you can see. Oh, I see. You've had your flat converted into a kitchen. It's just an enormous kitchen. I just sleep by the dishwasher. That's my life. Dan, where are you? I'm up in Edinburgh. Edinburgh. Yeah. It's quite nice. Is the sun shining?

The sun's shining. The Scottish government, unlike the English, doesn't appear to want to kill us all immediately. So that's lovely. That is nice of them. You know, I went out for a walk today and bought some lovely wine for this very, you know, very event. And, yeah, it's all going quite well. So I've got wine. You've got wine.

John, what have you got in your flask there? I'm afraid I've just got water in my flask. But I might have to remedy that. One of my young servants might bring me one in a moment if i knock on the floor they'll know dad wants his beer but felicity i can see you are sipping a concoction what is it yeah concoction is probably the right word i might not go as far as cocktail and sipping gingerly i would would say. So it's MFK Fisher's Half and Half cocktail, which is very much, if you happen to find yourself in a tight spot

with not much to drink, you might go for. I'm not sure that I would go for it in other circumstances apart from this evening. So it's half dry vermouth, half dry sherry. And then to make it even more bitter, you add quite a lot of lemon juice and then some bitters to just top it off. There's no sugar in it at all. Sounds vile.

No, no, no sugar in it. I don't know what that says about Mary Frances. It does sound horrid. Is it horrid? It's not horrid. A bit medicinal. But, yeah, it feels like it's... I don't know if it's doing me any good,

but I don't think it's something you drink for pleasure. You drink to forget. It's still looking quite full, isn't it? Yeah, I don't think it's going to go down that quickly. I've got more. It makes a lot, her recipe. That looked like it was an actual beaker as well. It is, yeah.

Which would be appropriate. It's got a slightly sample-esque look to it, actually. Good equipment. This is mouth-watering stuff. It is. Oh, should we crack on? Well, I think we're convened. Let's go. Let's do it.

Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today, you find us in 1942, somewhere in California. Wartime privations are beginning to bite. We're hungry but undaunted. We've made a fruitcake with a can of tomato soup and used the empty can to help boost the feeble rays from the coal fire.

There's a tray of baked apples bubbling in the oven and we've a half and half on the go with some salty crackers to nibble on. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously, and joining us today are two first-time guests, the writers Dan Richards and Felicity Cloak. Good evening.

Hello. Hello. Hi. Dan's first book, Holloway, was co-authored with Robert McFarlane, illustrated by Stanley Donwood, self-published in 2012 and picked up by Faber and Faber in 2013 and became a Sunday Times bestseller. His fourth book, Outpost, A Journey to the Wild Ends of the Earth,

was published by Canongate in April 2019. Max Porter, a backlisted regular, it says here. He's also an author. He's not just a backlisted regular, John. He's also achieved other things. He's a fine, fine author, as we know. Has called Dan a wonderful storyteller, wise, wry and open-hearted, the perfect travelling companion. Dan has written about travel literature, art and music for publications, including The Economist, Guardian, Telegraph, Monocle, Slightly Foxed and The Quietest. He claims to love both oysters and MFK Fisher.

Well, we'll see whether that stands up to close scrutiny today. Our other guest today is Felicity Cloak. She's a food writer and the award-winning author of the Guardian's long-running How to Make the Perfect series and the New Statesman's Food column, as well as five cookbooks, including the Andre Simon Award shortlisted The A to Z of Eating and a culinary travelogue, One More Croissant for the Road, which was recently shortlisted for a Fortnum & Mason award. Do you win something from Fortnum & Mason? If you win the award, you win something.

If you're only shortlisted, you get a little sticker on your book, which is nice. But I did win something a few years ago and they sent me an enormous hamper and a very strange award, which I don't know. I left in a pub actually that evening. I did subsequently get it back. I've just put in an order for two jars of Fortnum's horseradish don't know. I left in a pub actually that evening. I did subsequently get it back. I've just put in an order for two gels

of Fortnum's horseradish, you know. It's the only one I trust. The only one I trust. The only brand I trust. You don't make your own, Andy. I'm disappointed. Do you know what? I don't make my own horseradish, no. That's why I thought I should be taking a back seat later in the episode.

I'm not sure MFK would approve. Felicity has been obsessed with MFK Fisher. She claims to be obsessed. She claims to have been obsessed with MFK Fisher for at least a decade and wrote the foreword to the 2019 Daunt Books reissue of Consider the Oyster, though in truth she hasn't eaten many oysters since consuming one the size of her hand in Brittany.

Was that a pleasurable experience? No, it wasn't. Was it horrid? It was. I don't think that you should have to take a sharp knife to an oyster. I think in general your teeth, I'm not someone that just swallows them, but I feel like your teeth should be weapon enough for an oyster. But in this case, the oyster man had to lend me his special knife to cut it up

and he told me it was 15 years old and I just really went oh because they're alive of course when you when you eat them they're still alive the whole thing was extremely off-putting it just puts me in mind of alien yeah am I the only one who went there sort of like you know John Hurt's you know glorious love of interstellar oysters And then you just go somewhere with your friends and you're just there and it's a quiet little place. And you think, oh, I've got a big one over. Have you ever seen West African snails? The land snails, yeah.

Yeah, which when cooked are, I mean, again, really much larger than the snails you would imagine you'd get. Knife and fork job. And so anyway... The book that dan and felicity are here to discuss guess guess by whom is mfk fisher's how to cook a wolf her classic guide to surviving the privations of war first published in the united states by jewel sloan and pierce in 1942 and first published in the uk as part of a collection called The Art of Eating by Faber and Faber in 1963 and released earlier this year in a handsome new paperback,

edition by Daunt Books. Can I just say two things about that, John? It's actually unclear if it's included in The Art of Eating or not. Really? Because it says on the copyright page. It does. or not really because it says on the copyright page it does that it was but elsewhere it says it it had to be left out of the british edition of uh the art of eating so if anyone listening to this has a copy of the art of eating published by faber and faber in 1963 and can have a quick

look and tell us whether it contains how to Cook a Wolf, that would be great. I just want to say a quick word before I ask you what you've been reading this week. Just to say the original plan with this episode is we've been talking about doing this episode on MFK Fisher for a year, and the idea was we were going to do one of her books, Consider the Oyster, and it was going to be great because Dan and Felicity were going to come to Whitstable along with Nicky and John,

and I was going to walk literally five minutes down the road rather than coming all the way to London. And we were going to sit in Wheeler's Oyster Bar in Whitstable, and they'd agreed to let us do this. We were going to use their back room to record the podcast, and then we were either going to have lunch after we recorded the podcast or before we recorded the podcast. So then we're going to be oysters,

perfectly normal-sized oysters available to us. But then obviously 2020 got in the way of us doing that. However, Daunt Books have just republished How to Cook a Wolf. And the reason they've republished it is the same reason that we wanted to feature it on the podcast, which is it's a book about how to make the best of a difficult situation in culinary terms whether there's a war on or a plague as it turns out so so that's why we've

decided to do how how to cook a wolf today but we will be talking about all sorts of books by MFK Fisher. That said, John, what have you been reading this week? I have been reading a wonderful novel, 2001, by Bernadine Erristo called The Emperor's Babe. Like a lot of people, I read her girl, woman, other last year and loved it and thought I was aware of... Co-winner of the Booker Prize. Co-winner of the Booker Prize.

But I was aware of The Empress' Babe when it came out and thought what a brilliant idea, a novel set in Roman London with a feisty black girl character written in verse. So I remember thinking that sounds great. It got terrific reviews, but I never read it. So I settled down last week and read it. And it is as good as I hoped it would be. It's a quick read.

It's like a kind of, it's like a verse Roman version of Sex and the City. It's a bit of a rom-com. Zuleika, who's the main character, we meet her as a sort of, I guess she's probably 14, 15 in the City. It's a bit of a rom-com. Zuleika, who's the main character, we meet her as a sort of, I guess she's probably 14, 15 in the book. She's a bit of an urchin, kind of with her friend Alba and her kind of transvestite mentor Venus. They are kicking up all kinds of fun and mischief in Roman London. And then she gets, her dad is a bit of a nouveau riche trader.

They've come out of Nubia, what is now Sudan, into the Roman Empire, into Londinium, into this incredible melting pot of a city. And one of the best things about the book is the sense of Roman London. It's full of kind of different races, different languages. There's a lot of Latin in the book, sort of slangy Latin. What regards does she have for historical verisimilitude?

Or is that not the point? No, absolutely. No, this is what I love about the book. She was writer-in-residence at the time at the London Museum. So the book is absolutely based on firsthand research into the presence of Africans in London or Londinium in that period. So it somehow manages to be a really interesting historical novel,

but the verse, the kind of flowing free verse way she tells the story means that it clips along and it's funny. It's very, very funny. It gets darker and sadder towards the end. I won't give anything away. Zuleika is a great character. And what happens is she gets married off to a rather boring businessman by her dad,

then meets the emperor and falls head over heels with the emperor who is basically kind of bit down on his wife and very much down on the latest concubine. They have a fantastic affair and dot, dot, dot. I'm not going to tell you the way the story writes. It's brilliantly written. It's both contemporary and, as I say, you know how a lot of historical fiction

really creaks and groans under historical research? Somehow in this book, Bernardino Veristo has managed to fill you full of the... I'm going to read a very small bit in the moment, give you a flavour of it, fills you full of the sort of sense of the city and the particular sense of the city and the different languages and the food and the smells. But it's because of the form that she's chosen, it works as a sort of, as a narrative. Some of the lyric poetry, there are bits of serious lyric poetry where, of course, Zuleika becomes a poet. She's given a Greek tutor and she learns. She's bored rigid by the Iliad and pretty much bored by the Aeneid,

so she starts to write her own funky kind of rhyming lyrical poetry. If you're interested in the history of London, it's, I would say, a very, very, very good summer read, but also has kind of rigour and depth and some beautiful, beautiful writing in it. Read us a bit. I thought this would work because this is the first date between Septimus Severus, the emperor, and Zuleika,

and they're together for the first time, and they're having, a la Tom Jones, a sexy supper together. Oh, sweet death, we were together, finally, and obviously this is Zuleika talking, A sexy supper together. Small songbirds soaked in asparagus sauce with quail's eggs. Dormice cooked in honey and poppy seed. Salted fish with oyster dressing. My lord. Milk-fed snails just for you. Fried jellyfish. Bear cutlets.

Sliced flamingo tongue marinated in turmeric and clove oil. I'm filling my hunger. Par-cooked courgettes. Boiled holes. Sautéed peacock brains. Melt in my mouth. You look across. I'm stuffed. Dates torn between my teeth. Sours udders, larks tongue in gall, garlic spiced with perfume peacock feathers,

and peppered rose petals, sweet wine cakes to follow. Olives with thyme is on our side, all drowned down with finest African wine. We were silent, letting oils drip over our lips and chins, watching each other lick it up with acrobatic tongues. He was solid, like a gladiator, my Libyan, my lover-to-be, my libidinous warrior, my belcher. His black eyes following the slope on my shoulders, my shimmering cerise gown, décolleté, fastened with sapphire glass,

setting gold, flattering my shining bazookas. The horizon fall with each excited breath. He was in Britannia, waging war, he said, would leave that when the whole of Caledonia had been taken, from Hadrian's Wall to the Antonine Wall and way up to the North Sea. His marriage was impossible, he said. His wife had gone from swan to donkey. He knew Felix well, had often dined with him at his villa in Rome. News to me, he called me to him, nibble my neck, his harsh bristles scratching my delicate skin, stuck his tongue down my ear, making me squeal, growled, are you ready for war? Are you ready for war?

Good Lord. I mean, I just thought, MSK Fisher, come on, let's have a bit of fun. It's a Friday afternoon. Anyway, it's just, it's a proper romp and I loved it. Andy, what have you been reading? Loyal listeners to Backlisted will recall that we came back after our failed sabbatical with an episode on Excellent Women by Barbara Pym and we were joined by Becky and Nora from Curtis Brown Heritage and we asked them to pitch books to us which I confess that I had read over the over our

break and we featured a couple of them on the podcast, but there were a couple more they pitched which were great, which don't deserve to vanish. So I'm going to talk about one this time and the other on the next podcast. The first one is called Figures in a Landscape by Barry England. And here is our former guest, Becky Brown, with the pitch that we asked her to make for that novel. Okay, so Figures in a Landscape by Barry England, shortlisted for the first ever Booker Prize,

utterly deserved it. It's, in some ways, your kind of archetypal man on the run, escape thriller, think Rogue Male, just think Rogue Male, because that's the only other good one in my opinion and sorry John Buchan and imagine that Kafka wrote it and then you have something approaching Bigger Than a Landscape it is about two men over eight days fleeing a helicopter and a whole army and you just watch them slowly die she's so good. You know, I listened back to that and I thought, I can't really improve on that. I can merely augment it.

Dan, have you read Figures in a Landscape? I have not, but I have seen the film, which has Malcolm McDowell in it. It did. It was directed by Joseph Losey and it starred Robertcolm mcdowell in it it did it was directed by joseph locey and it starred robert shaw and malcolm mcdowell it's quite a strange film um what becky says there about the uh uh the kafka meets household you wouldn't think that's a combination that you would that would work but it's true it's a really it's a bit like Steven Spielberg's film Duel, where you put somebody in a hostile landscape.

You don't know anything about them. And then you pursue them. Now, no spoilers about anything. Duel and Figures in a Landscape have different outcomes. And the existential element of Figures in a landscape have different outcomes and the existential element of figures in a landscape a thriller which drives its protagonists to the point of disintegration almost literally initially when i was reading it i was thinking i don't understand why this would have been booker worthy and by the time time I finished it, I thought, oh, yes, of course. It manages to do a very, very rare thing of matching ideas

with a really propulsively forward-moving plot. I'm just going to read you the beginning of the book. This is the first paragraph of the book and actually gives you a feel for what it's like for the next 200 pages. With their hands tied as usual behind their backs, they had just been paraded through the streets of a small village for the edification of the local population. While they were being formed up for the march to

that night's camp, McConnachie had suddenly come close and whispered harshly, If I go left, will you come? Ansel, remembering a hundred humiliations at McConnachie's hands, had stared at him in astonishment. What? Will you come? Yes, when I move, follow. And that was the extent of their planning. They had been beaten for talking. Stumbling along in the fierce heat, Ansel struggled to make his brain think clearly. What have I committed myself to? What have I done? His bound arms ached his back, his anguish of mind feeding on his torment of body. Through glazed eyes, he saw McConnachie look back towards him

and his stomach contracted with fear at the thought of what lay ahead. Not an hour before, he had committed himself to a man he feared because that man despised him. So it's the opposite of a buddy movie. It's these two guys who don't like one another, but McConnachie has recognised that Ansel has something he needs and what he has is a brain so it's like a split between the will in man it's the body versus the brain to see which can allow them to survive

longer I cannot recommend this book highly enough becky was absolutely right and it's just as well we waited four months to talk about it because it's republished by vintage this week it's been out of print for 20 years barry england shortlisted for the book of prize in 1969 had a second novel published by Cape in 1997 called No Man's Land, was a filmmaker and a playwright, only published two novels, is no longer with us. You know, one of those books that feels like a contemporary classic, had it not been unavailable for a significant proportion of its life. Time now for an advert.

So the book we're here to talk about today is MFK Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf. Felicity, when did you first read or hear of or encounter the work of MFK Fisher? Strangely enough, I remember it really clearly. I was quite new to food writing, and I went to an event by the already well-established food writer Diana Henry, of whom I was and still am a massive fan. And I was sitting at the back, and she was talking, she was being interviewed by someone, and she was talking about how she'd long had a taste for American food writing

because in America it it's not seen and it is not, it's never been seen as vulgar to talk about yourself and food. You know, there's still that slightly repressed Elizabeth David sense that you can talk about food in an aesthetic sense, but you can't talk about your emotional relationship to food or how it fits into your own life. And, you know, something that's reached its zenith with blogging and, you know, a 5,000-word essay on why this reminds you of the death of your mother. But anyway, and so Diana said she's had no truck with this idea

that you can't talk personally about food. And she talked about how much she loved MFK Fisher and how, you know, she did it best. And so, of course, i wrote down in a notebook at the time i think this is probably before iphones i wrote down an mfk fisher's uh name and i went and ordered i couldn't find her in any bookshops so i went and ordered books online and actually i think that my editions are all american editions they're that sort of larger format and i devoured her and it felt like. And it felt like such a treat.

It felt like diving into, you know, that first drink of a holiday or something, that excitement that you've got more to read. She's just so human. And everything is imbued for me with glamour. Even the slightly sort of fuzzy bits of her work are something thrilling about them. I just absolutely, I fell in love with her from the first page of An Alphabet for Gourmets and I'm always recommending her to people. I absolutely love her.

Dan, similar question to you. When did you first read How to Cook a Wolf? How to Cook a Wolf, I read very recently for you. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. In a very backlisted answer, I've had the book for years. Did you think you'd read it? Were you under the impression that you had in fact read it?

No, I can tell you why as well, because the edition I had, the Daunt edition is very, very lovely. The edition I had had MFK's picture on the front, and it may even have been this very picture that was in the back of the Daunt book. Quite a glamorous picture, but quite Gimlet-eyed. And perhaps that's what put me off, because the Daunt editions are great, you know,

and consider the oyster has an oyster on the front, so you kind of know what you're dealing with there. But the MFK Fisher was rather like a family portrait cover that hangs over a dining room when no fun or speech has ever been had. Oh, there she is. She's holding it up there. This isn't the one, but the American editions I've got, which are North Point Press, all have portraits of MFK Fisher.

Bloody terrifying. She's always repeated to be an extremely attractive woman. I think they've chosen a rather nasty picture of her. Uncharacteristic photo. It's a very odd way of publishing food books, by the way, I think, isn't it, having a picture of the author? So you had the book and you read it a couple of weeks ago for us, and thank you.

But when did you encounter her writing for the first time? So I started, and I would encourage people to start this way, with Consider the Oyster. And I'm going to say I read that book mainly for the foreword by Felicity Cloak. And, yeah, Consider the Oyster is fantastic. And it leads you immediately on to the gastronomical me, her memoir. And then from there, you can read anything you want.

But it actually sets you up incredibly well to then come, I have discovered in the last two weeks, to How to Cook a Wolf. Because in a way, it primes you for what to look out for. Yes. Because How to Cook a Wolf, as we will talk about, is a queer beast. Yes, I totally agree. I think she's a brilliant example of one of those writers

who when you've read all of her books you've read one of them uh because she she finds it hard to create one essential text and the more you read of her the more her personality infuses the other things that you then go on to read john had you heard you're a foodie yeah had you read her before had you heard of her before? Yeah, I'd only read bits and pieces, I'd never read I'd never read Consider the Oyster although it had always been a book that I'd want because it's a great title and I like oysters

I was aware that it had been reissued with an introduction by Felicity but I hadn't heard of How to Cook a Wolf at all, I just hadn't crossed my, to Cook a Wolf at all. I just hadn't crossed my – and again, it's one of those great titles. I have to say she's good on titles and she's good on chapter titles.

But I – like Felicity, I was really interested in her – well, I had read because – I mean, much as I admire the English food writing tradition of which Elizabeth David is the sort of the, you know, the sort of the Grand Dam. It is quite academic. It is. There is a lot of research in it. And of course, I love that, too. Even with Jane Grigson, what you don't get is what you get in. You remember when we talked about Pomian, what you don't get is that. Oh, my God, this is delicious. is delicious this is you know that sort of that pleasure that ability to write about food as pleasure and of of of constructing a meal um and

relaxing in an armchair and and drinking wine the the shabbily in pomian is always winking at the brim and suddenly i thought like here's a writer that's writing from a completely different tradition that's doing exactly that so i'd always got I've always had that thing I must read more and now I have and really I mean I've been like a hog in ship for the last sort of two weeks I really have I mean it's like this is this is this is my comfort this is my comfort lockdown reading of choice well uh our producer Nicky Birch always keen to ask the to cut to the heart of the matter um was concerned that some listeners may not have heard of mfk fisher which i think is perfectly reasonable um uh concern um but i thought i'd just share with you uh

a diary entry by alan bennett from uh 2001 he was in he was on holiday in france by Alan Bennett from 2001. He was on holiday in France. And on the 28th of August, 2001, this is what he wrote. I won't do the voice. Pick out from this holiday bookcase, As They Were, a book of travel pieces by MFK Fisher, and read About Looking Alone at a Place, an account of a winter visit to Arles in 1971. I am shamed by its exactitude of expression,

and though the language is simple, her ability to hit on a phrase. She's like Richard Cobb in finding out the ordinary rhythms of a place, its habits and the flavour of the small lives lived there. Waiters and the shoes of the waiters. Hotel receptionists, attendants in museum. Born 1908 and now presumably dead. I have never heard of her. And that was Alan Bennett.

And that was Alan Bennett, who not only had not heard of her, she was still alive, in fact, when he wrote that. Makes me feel a bit better. Thanks, Alan. Okay, good. So thanks, Alan, yeah. So Felicity, is How to Cook a Wolf a cookbook? Of Fisher's works, I would say that it's the most practically useful it's actually the first despite having you know big myself up as an MFK Fisher obsessive in the introduction I provided

you with I've realized that this is actually the first the tomato um soup cake which I I baked for this podcast um from the book is actually the first recipe that I've ever made of hemiphyllum fishers okay but I did think of making some oyster recipes when I wrote it forward to consider the oyster but I just never got you know they're so lovely to read but I just never felt the need to to make any of them but how to cook a wolf is actually I think it has some sound practical advice in it um and there's some other things that i might consider making although i always think there's a great quote from the tls's review of her first book um i think serve it forth and i can't remember what

it is exactly but it basically says one one suspects that um that Miss Fisher's expertise and knowledge is not quite as wide as she would have us believe. Yes, I've got it here. Felicity, I've got it here. This is how it starts. Mrs Fisher has written not a cookery book. She only gives two recipes and those merely incidentally, but a book in praise of a good food and judicious eating.

That's, I mean, that's, Dan, that seems quite, But a book in praise of a good food and judicious eating. That's, I mean, that's, Dan, that seems quite, that's 1937 in the TLS, but that seems fair, doesn't it? This is why I love her, because she isn't really a cookery writer. This is my theory. She is an explorer. Essentially, she's lived a fantastic life. She is a travel writer and she sort of in some way, the I suppose if you were going to put in the punctuation of her life, the punctuation is the food. The food is what holds everything down because otherwise it would float away.

She is an experiential writer in that way that Alan Bennett talked about. She talks about place. She talks about people. She talks about experience. And it's about the food, but not necessarily in that order. Dan, you went on a pilgrimage, didn't you? Yeah, I went to see, I mean, this is where we get into trouble because all of these places have names.

And the place I went was in Switzerland, French Switzerland. So I went to somewhere which translates as the grazing ground. So that's La Paki, I think, which is in a place called Cherb, which is just above or Cherb, don't know, not sure, just above Lake Geneva. And I went and I tracked down where she lived from 1936 to 39. She's a huge hero to me in terms of her travels, the way she travels, the way she talks about life and the food. I've never cooked anything that she has set down in her books. But I have experienced food differently as a result of the things that she has written about. And I would say that my life as a sensualist is massively enhanced by her writing and the fact

I discovered she existed. I love oysters now, you know, to an oomph degree more than I did before because of MFK Fisher, Queen of Oysters. It's impossible, I think, to imagine that you could write a better book than Consider the Oyster about oysters. She covers everything. She covers, you know, getting sick from oysters, brilliantly and wittily. She looks at the oyster's sex life. It's a very bizarre sex life.

She looks at everything. It's the sort of book I'd give to a QI researcher and say, if you really want to get underneath a subject, read MFK Fisher on the Oyster, Felicity. As I say, I worship at the richly comparisoned altar of MFK Fisher. I don't think, The Oyster is great, but I don't think it's her best work. And I think it's because, like How to Cook a Wolf, I believe that it was, she had to write it relatively quickly because she needed the money.

And I think it's an excellent example of what a great working writer that she was, that she put that out and it's such an engaging book. But I've sort of got that sense of, however well it's written, that she is struggling to pad things out. And there are some things where I look at it and she's 32 and she's talking about eating oysters on a junk in Singapore Harbour or something. And I'm thinking, did you bollocks?

I've read your autobiography. Yeah, didn't happen. That shouldn't matter. But for me, I think she's better when she's just, as Dan said, she is writing about the people that she's met, the places that she's been, the restaurants that she's better when she's just, as Dan said, she is writing about the people that she's met, the places that she's been, the restaurants that she's experienced, the sensual pleasure of that, rather than attempting to write a sort of comprehensive guide to an oyster.

We should say one of the things about MFK Fisher, which she's such an interesting mixture of, to use the word Dan used there, the word sensual, she's a sensualist, but she's also, and in the best terms, she's a hack and the daughter of a hack yeah yeah right so the idea is you produce the work you don't rewrite she she famously claimed that she never rewrote you got it down and then you moved on to the next thing dan i love the idea that felicity your as it as it's in this book your introduction to consider the oyster is five pages long i've just come up with a theory you took longer for your five page introduction than she took for the monograph yeah that will be true

that is totally true yeah so let me just read i'm going to read the blurb on the new edition of How to Cook a Wolf. So just introduce the book that has given us the pretext for this episode. Written in 1942 to inspire courage in those daunted by wartime shortages, How to Cook a Wolf has continued to rally readers and cooks during times of both scarcity and plenty. With her trademark wit and warm wisdom Fisher shares her timeless tips for keeping up spirits and appetites when ingredients are in short supply. Instead of regretting what we don't have she teaches us how to savour what we do. Fisher also offers dozens of recipe ideas, from making soups and simple omelettes, to baking bread and sprucing up tinned food. Knowing that the last thing hungry people need are hints on cutting back and making do. Fisher gives us licence to dream, experiment

and invent adventurous and delicious meals from whatever we can salvage from the back of the cupboard. How to Cook a Wolf shows us how to feed our hungers and nourish our souls, even when fear is in our hearts and the wolf is at the door. So that is Howlin' Wolf, Wolf at Your Door. And I just want to talk about that blurb. It's a good blurb. Well done. Very good blurb. And talking about things found in store cupboards. So you've mixed whatever that lovely cocktail is called.

Half and half. You've also prepared, haven't you, a cake from a recipe in How to Cook a Wolf. What have you cooked? I have cooked the tomato soup cake from the book simply because I could not, as soon as I read it, I looked at the margin note, this little pencil note saying, now this I have to try. And I did a little bit of research on Twitter,

which informed me that it would have been condensed tomato soup. So I needed to go and buy some of that, which is actually surprisingly hard to track down. And then I made it earlier in the week and it's actually still going strong today. And I've tested it on various people and most of them couldn't guess what was in it, despite it being, it's got a great tan, this cake.

It's very orange, got a kind of tandoori look to it. Apparently you don't taste tomato soup unless you know and then you really do taste it so i'm just looking at what mfk fisher wrote about it and this i think for for those of you who want to get the feel of what of of uh why she's so perfect so she gives the recipe and then she says this is a pleasant cake which keeps well and puzzles people who ask what kind it is. The thing that put me in mind of, you know, I think you were talking recently about Craig Brown's 1, 2, 3, 4 about the Beatles. There's that vignette where, you know, they go for dinner with their dentist and then they're given tea and then they're told, oh, no, you can't drive home.

I've given you lsd by the dentist's wife in that same i can see that mfk fisher would absolutely be a sort of like slipper in of lsd if she'd been sort of like born at a slightly different time and in 60s london it would be oh it's lsd cake i'm so sorry the lsd jaffa cakes that i've made and also presumably though it Felicity as Dan was suggesting the food is there as a way of talking about other things though right you know any any listeners who are concerned that this is a a cookbook you could use it as a cookbook but it but you wouldn't come to it primarily no no no no no um and many of the recipes are interesting to read without you necessarily wanting to make it but no it's not primarily a cookbook it just happens to

be the book of hers that has the most recipes in it and the most practical advice but even when she's writing about fuel efficiency she she manages to do it with interest yeah i mean there's like life hacks in there as well i the one that i've been obsessed with is making stuffing pin cushions with dried coffee grounds yeah or there's a bit where she um she's talking about you know washing up and getting and get how do you stop your hands getting kind of chapped so she says uh basically unwrap a quarter pound of butter rub the paper on your hands before you throw it away. Or if you're making salad dressing, catch the last drop of oil from the bottle on your fingers.

If you mix ground meat with tomato juice and egg crumbs of some kind of loaf, rub the film of fat onto your hands instead of washing it off at once. It will soon vanish and you will have smoother fingers and more firmly beautiful nails. It's like you've got meat fat on your hands. Dan, the wolf there, we heard the wolf at the door right the wolf howling at the door what is the wolf in how to cook a wolf the wolf is all sorts of things it's amazing the wolf is the second world war the wolf is propriety the wolf is um

kind of your self-respect there's an amazing bit where she talks about the importance of having a mirror in your kitchen so that you can make yourself nice should you have unexpected callers and you know it's that thing where she holds these entirely um warring ideas in her head and in her book at the same time. And she manages to make it all work as this amazingly expedient strategy. The whole book is MFK Fisher against the world in a lot of ways. And her idea of what America is, what cooking is, what sensualism is, and what's for dinner. At the same time, you know, there are great things about blackouts

and, you know, entertaining in a blackout. And she keeps saying, you know, my friends in London do this. My friends in London do that. And you really get thinking, don't they? Don't they, though? Are you sure? What I love about both our guests, huge MFK Fisher fans, have never cooked any of her recipes and constantly questioning

the veracity of her stories as well and actually when i went to switzerland and when i went to her house so i found her house where she was i'm sure we'll talk about this later where she had this amazing kind of menage a trois what former guest rowan pelin would call a blended marriage um you know and she was there on the sort of the steep shores above Lake Geneva where they have all the vineyards. And I was there and I found her former house where she'd done a lot of the stuff that ends up in the gastronomical me.

And of course, it's all changed. Her garden's been grubbed up. There's a Porsche in the drive now. It's a gated kind of drive and all that. But I hiked up a little higher and I found this really old vineyard this really old guy who runs a vineyard generation and generation and generation of people have run this vineyard and we got quite drunk and he was explaining that the wine in that region it gets three suns of course you get the sun itself the

sun off the lake and the sun from from the walls that the Romans built themselves. Yes, sir. All these walls were built by the Romans. And then we got very drunk on red wine. And he said, of course, Mont Blanc, visible from here on a clear day. And I just remember thinking, even in my slightly sort of, you know, my state, I was like, is it bollocks, mate? And it was perfect because, of course,

all MFK Fisher's books are essentially, of course, on a clear day, you can see Mont Blanc from here. I met someone once on a dining train from Istanbul who could see Mont Blanc from here on a clear day. There's always that sort of layer of someone of my acquaintance, this book is full of sort of women with five children who are starving to death and feed them on five cents a year or something. She knows an inordinate amount of people with many, many children.

Yes, yes. Yeah. The thing it reminded me of, reading House of Cookawolf, is it reminded me of, this is often quoted, it's a guy called Pete Meaden's's definition of what mod was in the 1960s if you wanted to know what mod was he defined it you know suits and the who and tamla motown he defined it as clean living under difficult circumstances right and mfk fisher what this book is about maybe not clean living but how do you approach life when constraints have been put on your life?

And we'll use food as a way into it, but how do we live stylishly? Near the end of the book in a chapter called How Not to Be an Earthworm. And John is absolutely right. She is the queen of the chapter title. I mean, it's almost like spoilers if i were to read them out but like how not to boil an egg seems to me especially for 1942 that's a pretty good title how to make a pigeon cry how to be cheerful though starving you know etc you know it's all she writes this near the end of the book. And remember, this is written in 1941 or two.

If you are not in a state of active emergency, but merely living as so many people have lived for many months now, taking sirens in your stride and ration cards with a small, cautious grin, you will be able to make very good meals indeed for the people who live with you. As long as the gas or the electric currents supply you, your stove will function and your kitchen will be warm and savoury. Use as many fresh things as you can always and then trust to luck and your blackout cupboard and what you have decided inside yourself about the dignity of man. That's it, isn't it? I mean, that's where we are in July 2020.

I'd say there's a brilliant, I mean, you talk about this, the expediency of stuff in war, you know, making best, but there's something of Sergeant Walker about her, isn't there? There's something of the Siv in the same way. You know, she's, there's a wonderful chapter towards the end of the book where she talks about the importance of the dream. And here are some recipes that you won't be able to make, but they will pull you through. And she says, I mean, this, the book is peppered with these purple passages, but it's also peppered with these lines that really hit you, hit you in your heart. And she says at one point, so many wonderful cookbooks have been written, at least in part in the

concentration camp, or at least in a prison cell. And that really got to me because so much of the book is jolly. It's jolly in so many ways that word can be used. Can I read a bit about Gaspaccia? Because I feel that you get like the full symphony, the Fisher symphony, you're getting every level of her at some level. Let's hear it. So this is in a chapter, chapter titles, How to Boil Water. and i should say before i start

that also this um the daunt reissue it has two fishers it has the fisher who wrote it the first time around and then it has the fisher um 10 15 years later in the 50s who talks slightly obliquely about this new cold war you know at least in the old days we knew what a war was and all of that. So here we go. There is another kind of soup, certainly not bland, but with a freakish appeal to it. Brackets. I don't know why I said freakish. This soup, which is more widely served each summer in America, is as respectable as any Yankee chowder, which should be served as icy cold as vichyssoise and might well act as an alternative to those weary, brittle souls who live through the summer months in any city, thanks mainly to what their grandparents probably called cold potato cream. It is simple to make

and inexpensive, and unlike vichyssoise, is fairly fairly elastic depending in the main on how fortunate you are in growing or buying herbs this recipe stems partly from paul rebou and partly from a spanish chef on an italian freighter which runs between marseille and portland oregon and it's just that thing and then she she gives you, can I read a recipe? Because I think you get a sense of her in the recipe as well. Yeah, let's hear a recipe. Go on. So this is gazpacho.

Brackets. Immediately brackets. So this is a second thought. Because in the past few years, I have found myself involved in a discussion, esoteric as well as practical, about the correct way to make a gazpacho. I still stay loyal to this recipe while accentuating the fact that it, like rules for all good native soups, can vary with each man who makes it.

One generous mix handful of chives, chervil, parsley, basil, marjoram, dot, dot, dot, any or all but fresh. One clove of garlic. One sweet pepper. Pimiento or bell. Two peeled and seeded tomatoes. One small glass olive oil or really flavourful nut oil or substitute. There are lots of those.

Or substitute. Bacon grease. Juice grease, yeah. Juice of one lemon, one mild onion. And Felicity might be able to fill me in. How do you know when an onion is mild? I was reading this whole book thinking, there is so much tomato juice, and how do you know when an onion is mild?

What if I get a sort of rotter? One cup diced cucumber, salt and pepper, half cup breadcrumbs, chop the herbs and mash thoroughly with the garlic, pimiento and tomatoes, adding the oil very slowly and the lemon juice. Add about three glasses of cold water, brackets. I still say this is the correct liquid, but often I use good meat or fish stock, close brackets, or as much as you wish. So put in the onion and the cucumber, season, sprinkle with breadcrumbs, ice for at least four hours before serving. And then she goes on to say, I love to serve this at drinks parties because people don't really drink it very much, but it leaves them vaguely sober for good conversation.

And then it keeps well so I can eat it with my family later, which is just, you know, what with the freighter and then the hangovers, that's classic. I want to ask Felicity, the thing that while you were reading that, I want to ask Felicity, The thing that while you were reading that, I want to ask Felicity, do you envy Fisher, her freedom from precision and truth? Because we're basically saying she, she like, she's, she, she spins a yarn and she's approximate, right? In all sorts of ways. Is that a thing that you would like to do more in your writing? Yeah, it is frustrating because when you cook a lot, as I do,

and I assume she did, although some of the recipes do make me wonder, you know that this doesn't matter and this does and you know you put more or less according to to what result you want or what ingredients you have or whatever and so that's nice it's actually very annoying to have to say exactly you know people say oh is this a fan oven or a conventional oven is that a tablespoon or this it doesn't matter stop fussing however um with that recipe as with so many others i do think that sometimes she's just i mean she put the book together in a month i do wonder um whether she also found herself freed from the convention of trying out the recipes,

which is perhaps less desirable. I don't know if anyone else noticed, and this is really a pinnacity thing, anyone else noticed that she recommends boiling spaghetti for 20 minutes? Yeah, I did notice that, absolutely. Which puzzled me because I'm sure that she must have eaten spaghetti. Yeah, and also, Felicity, what about this?

The 2020 publishers have got a note at the front of the book, haven't they? About Borax. What do they say in their notes? Well, she's got this strange chapter. So what we were talking about earlier, that she's perhaps not quite so expert in everything as she likes to make out. So there's a chapter not only on canine nutrition, which seemed to me she starts talking about how dogs only eat meat

and cats don't, which seems to me entirely the wrong way around. But again, that's pernickety. She also has a chapter on making your own soaps and, you know, says that she knows certain nice ladies in London who are maybe not glamorous but very clean who have been saving their bacon grease, I believe, to make soap, which is chilling, gives a recipe for homemade soap using Borax, which the publishers have appended a note suggesting

you don't try because it's potentially fatal. But some of the other recipes I would also recommend you probably don't try. Just enjoy them. Enjoy the pros for what it is. So we're now building on this by saying the recipes are not merely unreliable, but actively dangerous. I wanted to ask, can you see yourself referring?

I mean, have you done a how to make the perfect gazpacho? You must have done at some point. Yes, I have. But can you see in any of these recipes, can you see yourself quoting as you do? That's what I love about your thing. You quote lots of different people's versions and you come up with sort of the best of the best.

Can you see any of the recipes in this book finding their way in? I would love to. If I found a recipe that worked, I would love to, but then I'd be worried that it didn't work and then I'd have to badmouth MFK Fisher, who, as I said, I love and I don't want to do that. So I suppose I would just put it down to her freedom as an artist rather than a cook.

We all dip into that pot, yes. Dan? I love that in a similar thing. So, you know, when we're talking about dangerous things in the book, page 230, ladies and gentlemen, a vodka where she you know and also you know and i know felicity you want to possibly hold dawns up about this as well there was no kind of warning in the front about she will suggest that you should buy some alcohol from your local chemist and then make a vodka shall i read read the vodka thing? Just read.

Just read the ingredients. That's all everybody needs on this. Here we go. This tells a story. One quart water. One teaspoon glycerin or sugar. One lemon rind. Shaved.

So far, so good. Half orange rind. Shaved. One quart. rind, shaved. So far, so good. Half orange rind, shaved. One quart alcohol. That's it. It's the most cavalier. And she goes on and she says, to make a very acceptable liqueur,

add more fruit shavings. Or a spoonful or so of honey. Yes. It's lethal. No, no, no. There were are three lines before you i mean i don't want to do her simmer first four ingredients very gently about 20 minutes or spaghetti as it's known remove from stove add alcohol and cover instantly with a tight lid let cool and strain and i mean i feel the only help she's given her audience there is strain so they don't choke on some people you know but they will die as if they drunk i guarantee blind i think but felicity do you i mean we're having fun with that but the central point remains which is the book is speaking to people in wartime and

presumably is speaking to people here in 2020 about not it seems to me giving in really to the spirit of the times not giving in to i don't want to call it austerity because that word has changed its connotations in the last 10 years. But you know what I mean. It's about an attitude to the time we're living in. Yeah, I think that she uses the phrase a couple of times in the book of sort of facing hard times of grace and gusto. And that seems to be the theme. I would say that the wolf is, for me, mostly represents sort of having an agency a choice about what you do and

actually if you're at rock bottom which i think she does acknowledge you know in the book several times she says you may not you may not actually have the money to to buy your your alcohol at the chemist or whatever and therefore you may be beyond beyond my help but you know there's a certain marianne twanet isish quality to some of it to me. There's, you know, a lot of talk of maybe making a steak tartare and some good, honest wine and you don't need any pudding. And I think if I've got enough money to buy, you know, steak and good, honest wine, I'm probably okay,

to be honest, with pudding. But, yeah, I think it's very much a state of mind for her. It's less a practical guide and more a sort of pep talk. She is able to transform. I love this little bit about polenta, right, which is she just says, polenta is one of those ageless culinary lords like bread. It has sprung from the hunger of mankind

and without apparent effort has always carried with it a feeling of strength and dignity and well-being. It costs little to prepare if there is little to spend or it can be extravagantly, opulently odorous with wines and such. It can be made doggedly with one ear cocked for the old wolf sniffing under the door or it can be turned out as a well-nourished gesture to other simpler days. But no matter what conceits it may be decked with, its fundamental simplicity survives to comfort our souls as well as our bellies, the way a good solid fugue does, or a warm morning in spring. Ah, it's good. It's beautiful. So here's a very short clip I wanted to get. There are some clips out there of MFK Fisher talking.

She led quite the life. Here is a clip of her talking about why she chose her pen name. I was horrified to find out I was a lady, a woman, a woman. They thought I was a wispy Don from Oxford or something. And they said, well, women don't write that way. Women just don't write that way. Because they thought I was a wispy Don from Oxford or something, you know. And they said, well, women don't write that way. Women just don't write that way. And so I said, well, what do we do?

What do we do about it? I'm a girl. Well, so they decided I'd be MFK Fisher from then on, because nobody would know. So, Felicity, does her writing strike you as feminine, she that she says that they chose the name mfk fisher because they they thought if they if people knew she was a woman it would put them off and yet to me the writing seems very uh feminine in a wholly positive way yeah it seems it seems feminine that you could be under no illusion when you read it that this is a woman talking she's very aware of her her feminine charms there's a lot of talk of sort of seducing men she's about i think she's she's a very proud woman and she knows her attractiveness

you know even in later life she got married quite quite late in life for the fourth time I think third or fourth time I do think that it's quite unusual to read a woman who's quite so sure of herself particularly at this time and it's not to say you know Elizabeth David was someone else who was extremely sure of themselves but I love that that she's very confident in her own opinions and you know we only get her account of it but the men in her life you know are very much minor even you know, we only get her account of it. But the men in her life, you know, are very much minor. Even, you know, Dilwyn, who was the love of her life, very much a minor character. MFK is the central, central love of her own life, I would say.

And I really like that about her. I'm not sure whether I do know someone that knew her towards the end of her life and said that she was extremely charming. But I don't know. I don't know. She and Elizabeth David deliberately didn't meet. They had a little bit of a beef, I believe. Well, I said that she'd led a full life.

And you're going to read something from The Gastronomical Me, which is her autobiography. Do you think you could just say a little bit about that book? Because it seems to me that's probably the book, isn't it? The Gastronomical me the gastronomical me was um actually the second book of hers that i read but i think it's definitely essential if you would like to to know mfk fisher as she saw herself which is important for the rest of the rest of her work because as said, she was the subject of her own writing.

She was the principal subject. And it's a series of essays that sort of takes you from her birth in a slightly fantastical essay about her own birth, which, if you read her biography, may contain a small kernel of truth, right up until, I think, the 1960s, I think. The focus for me is very much her years in Europe. So with her first husband, Al, travelled to France and they lived in Lyon and various other places.

And then with her second husband, they lived in Switzerland. And it's just the discovery of this young Californian woman who'd grown up in kind of a small town in California, discovering Europe and the freedom of that and the food. And it is just wonderful because you share her excitement in finding out about going to the markets and the wine and the restaurants and things, and you're there with her and her learning to cook as a new wife.

And it is just glorious. Well, could we hear a little bit, please? Yeah, so this is from an essay called Define This Word, which she labels 1936. And it details a visit she made to a restaurant on her own. There's a lot of, that's one of the themes of her writings, a lot of her eating on her own as a woman and a defiance to that. And she finds herself in a restaurant set up in northern Burgundy by a very famous Parisian chef. She finds herself the only diner with a very, very over-eager waitress

who's almost sort of borders on the obsessive. At this point, she's already eaten lots of hors d'oeuvres that she didn't order and is feeling a little bit trapped in this restaurant on her own. When I had been served and had cut off her anxious breathings with an assurance that the fish was the best I had ever tasted, she peered again at me and at the sauce in the bowl. I obediently put some of it on the potatoes,

no full eye to ruin treat or blur with a hot concoction. There was more silence. Ah, she sighed at last. I knew Madame would feel thus. Is it not the most beautiful sauce in the world with the flesh of a trout? I nodded in credulous agreement. Would you like to know how it is done? I remembered all the legends of chefs who guarded favourite recipes of their very lives, and murmured, yes. She wore the exalted look of a believer describing a miracle at Lord's, as she told me, in a rush,

how Monsieur Paul threw chopped chives into hot sweet butter and then poured the butter off, how he added another nut of butter and a tablespoonful of thick cream for each person, stirred the mixture for a few minutes over a slow fire, and then rushed it to the table. So simple, I asked softly, watching her lighted eyes and the tender, lustful lines of her strange mouth. So simple, madame. But, she shrugged, you know, with a master. I was relieved to see her go. Such avid interest in my eating wore on me. I felt released when the door closed behind her, free from a minute or so from her victimisation. What would she have done, I wondered, if I had been ignorant or unconscious of any fine flavours? She was right, though, about Monsieur Paul.

Only a master could live in this isolated mill and preserve his gastronomic dignity through loneliness and the sure financial loss of unused butter and addled eggs. Of course, there was the stream for his fish, and I knew his pâtés would grow even more edible with age. But how could he manage to have a thing like roasted lamb ready for any chance patron? Was the consuming interest of his one maid enough fuel for his flame? age, but how could he manage to have a thing like roasted lamb ready for any chance patron? Was the consuming interest of his one maid enough fuel for his flame? I tasted the last sweet nugget of trout, the one nearest the blued tail, and poked somnolently at the minute white billiard balls that had been eyes. Fate could not harm me, I remembered winily, for I had indeed dined today, and dined well. Now for a leaf of of crisp salad and i'd be on my way but she's not on her way and it goes on for several more pages with this increasingly

bizarre waitress stuffing her full of lovely rich food that she has not ordered winely winely now that's a writer's word that's's beautiful, right? Well, listen, I'm going to go and buy some winkles in a styrofoam cup tomorrow, but eat them stylishly. So long as you've got some good, honest wine, you'll be fine. That's what you need. We've got to wrap up. Have a half and half. We've got to wrap up.

Felicity, just maybe an alternative out. If you were going to recommend where to start with MFK Fisher, which book would you press on people i would go for an alphabet for gourmet just because it's a selection of um you know an a to z of essays that she wrote for gourmet magazine it's very accessible it gives you a good sense of how she is as an author you can dip in some people do find her too much they find her too rich but I think that you will not um you won't regret it please read it buy it Dan if you could recommend one MFK Fisher book to start with which one would it be it would be the oyster just for its purity and the fact that you can enjoy it and it's fresh and it's new and it will inspire you to read the rest of it I hope my recommendation would be how

to cook a wolf then those two but actually the place to start is all three of those books, I think. And also, Let's Not Leave Out the Gastronomical Me, which is a superb book. It's an amazing book. So listen, thanks very much, Dan, and thanks, Felicity, for giving us this wonderful tour around a brilliant writer and also dining in a stylish, lavish way on tomato soup.

And yes, indeed, Felicity, a delicious slice of tomato soup cake to celebrate. It's my dinner. Our hunger is now sated. The wolf is banished from our door. Thank you, Dan and Felicity, for inspiring this varied menu. To Nikki for baking four ingredients into a nourishing loaf, and to Unbound for loading the dishwasher.

You can download all 115 previous episodes of Batlisted, plus follow links, clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website at batlisted.fm. We're always pleased if you contact us on Twitter or via Facebook. You can also show your love directly by supporting our Patreon at www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. We prefer not to have intrusive paid-for adverts, but we want the quality of what we do to remain high, and that takes time.

Your generosity is our sole source of income. All patrons get to hear backlisted episodes early, and for less than the price of six Colchester natives, lot listeners get two extra lot-listed a month, the place where we relax, talk, cry, swear and laugh about music, film, TV, art, whatever. You also get to hear your name read out on the show as a mark of our thanks and appreciation.

Can you read my name? I mean, I'm a sponsor. I've done it. I mean, Anna'm a sponsor. I've done it. I mean, Anna and I are both... You were on last week. You got mentioned last episode. Oh, I should have really fucking listened, shouldn't I? OK, fine. This week's batch of Locked listeners are

Andrew MacDonald, Barbara van der Swaag, Aaron Rosenberg, Kirstie Sider, Justin Hardy, Scott Bragg, Tom Roper, John Rambo, Tracy Kidner, James Hanna, former guest, James Brewer, Rachel, Grace Carter, Emma Chippendale, Georgia. Dave Rowe, South London's Alison Sakai, Sophie Tomlinson,

Hannah van der Brande, Christina Benoit de Bicauvets. Oh, I'm sorry if I didn't say your name right. Contact me and upbrave me. I'm going to try again. Christine Benoit de Bicauvets. Colin Udall, Rowan. That must be the Rowan who we mentioned earlier. I hope so. Nick Rendell, Rosie Hims, Joe Westmore, Kitty Spence, Steve Skelton, Lucy Scholes.

Hooray! Joe and John Sills, thank you everyone for your generosity. Thank you. And that's it. Thank you for listening. We'll be back in a fortnight. If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts, you can sign up to our Patreon.

It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. As well as getting the show early, you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted, which is Andy, me and Nicky talking about the books, music and films we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.