Warm my Soul

I've invited lovely people for supper tomorrow. This morning I cooked a pan of Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage and Apple.... one of the accompaniments to the main course.

Although it tastes sharp and savoury and fruity, like a bowl of muddy brown curry it's not easy to make it look appetising in a photo. Hence the addition of a crinkle tulip. I couldn't resist their weird and wonderful design and bought a bunch in the market yesterday.

I associate Red Cabbage and Apple with Robin's father who used to make a delicious classic version to accompany the Christmas turkey. He was a meticulous fine chopper of the cabbage.

My version - with blackcurrants, grated beetroot, fresh ginger and pomegranate molasses -  is inspired by Diana Henry's recipe, Red Cabbage and Cranberries, in her gloriously named book of winter cooking

Roast Figs Sugar Snow.

Subtitled  -  Food to Warm the Soul.

Her writing is pure mouth-watering informative  poetry. I read her like a novel....eager to find out what happens next.

The other book of hers I own is called

Crazy Water Pickled Lemons

Enchanting dishes from the Middle East, Mediterranean and North Africa.

Both of them are illustrated with photographs by  Jason Lowe  - probably the best food photographer in the business.

Just the titles make me curious to open the covers. I do look up recipes on the internet more and more these days but I still have shelves and shelves of cookery books. Even though I don't refer to all of them I still love them and their titles....like Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros. 

And although I'm a total supporter of healthy eating... and I'm lucky that I like 'healthy food' and follow a  mainly plant based, mostly vegan diet( although I am struggling to like kefir)..... I am not really inspired to open a book entitled

Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Sugar Free and Vegan which I saw in Waterstones Bookshop this afternoon.

It doesn't warm my soul like 

Roast Figs Sugar Snow.