I have only ever eaten Simon Hopkinson's cooking once, during the days when he was chef at London's Bibendum, but the lunch still remains in my mind as one of the lustiest, truest-tasting meals I have ever enjoyed, especially a dish of smoked trout on green leaves with a marvellous green mayonnaise with which we began the meal.
Hopkinson has been out of the kitchen for a few years now, earning his crust as a writer and he has delivered his sensuous thoughts on food in one masterpiece of a book, Roast Chicken and Other Stories. He followed this with The Prawn Cocktail Years, which was a pretty awful tome, full of hectoring reprimands about how good things like Russian salad can be, if only you make it properly. Yeah, sure.
But Gammon and Spinach, a new collection of recipes written for the London Independent, sees Hoppy bang on form, cooking and writing about food which is logical, unpretentious and delicious. He may be a little too fond of offally, rather gelatinous things, for some people's tastes, but the authority of the professional chef and the downright zeal of the true lover of good food make this a marvellous collection.
Gammon and Spinach by Simon Hopkinson is published by MacMillan, £25 in the UK.