The books: Everyday Novelli

A few weeks ago, my friend and fellow parkrunner Sarah sent me the following tweet:

Now, I should have realised this could happen; after all, no matter how much a blogger might claim they're doing it purely for the pleasure of the art, we all secretly want an audience, and I'm glad the Random Kitchen concept has caught a few people's attention. Turns out we all have those under-used cookbooks gathering dust on our shelves, often principally acquired because:

...then forgotten about once the initial euphoria of having grabbed a bargain subsides. All well and good, but why should I necessarily invite further randomness into my life and deprive a charity shop of some decent stock in the process?

Sarah, though, swiftly followed up with this:

Well, that sealed it - I had to say yes. And so book #22 was added to the Random Kitchen bookshelf. Here it is in all its glory:

"More than 100 recipes from the nation's favourite French chef." Sounds good, right? "Delicious, easy-to-make treats", claims one review. And all with the promise of "everyday" cookery, which suits my limited kitchen skills nicely.

EXCEPT IT'S A BARE-FACED LIE.

Take the recipe for "Roasted Vine Tomato Tarts with Rocket Crème Fraîche", a dinner party starter whose method covers 19 steps and two whole pages of the book.

Easy-to-make. Everyday.

Or "Home-fed Mussels with Vanilla Piperade". I'm always going to be suspicious of any recipe that requires "debearding" anything, but it turns out the debearded mussels then have to be fed on dry porridge flakes and stirred every 4-6 hours. Now I'm sorry: getting up in the middle of the night to tend to a vat of molluscs might be an everyday activity in Jean-Christophe Novelli's house, but it's not my idea of simplicity.

Oh, and then there's this:

Swan meringues are not "everyday".

SWAN MERINGUES ARE NOT ANY DAY.

SWAN MERINGUES AREN'T EVEN A THING.

Except they might be if the random.org fairies have their way.

So far I've escaped this cruel and unusual punishment, but I feel like a swan-shaped Sword of Damocles is permanently suspended over my head, poised to drop at any moment.

Thanks a lot, Sarah.