REAR COVER QUOTE from JANE GRIGSON:-
"Every time we begin to feel fussed by the cookery elaborators with their flashy tricks and colour photos, we can restore confidence by returning to Elizabeth David."
From Artemis Cooper's 'Writing at the Kitchen Table', pg 307 - 'An Omelette and a Glass of Wine' delighted Elizabeth's legion of fans. Jane Grigson praised it for including all the dishes most closely associated with her, Spiced Beef, Salted Welsh Duck and Syllabub.

'Here for the first time is a selection of ED's journalistic work written for a wide range of publications.
Articles, book reviews and travel pieces, they will be new to many of her readers and a delight to all for their highly personal flavour.
Her subjects range from the story of how her own cookery writing
began to accounts of some restaurants in provincial France, of white truffles in Piedmont, wild risottos on the islands of the Venetian lagoon and odd happenings during rain-drenched seaside holidays in the British Isles.
Here we can share the ED appreciation of books, people who influenced her, places she loved and the delicious meals she enjoyed. She writes so vividly that we can see, taste and even smell the dishes she describes.
pgs 50-51 '......everyone knows that the success of omelette-making starts with the pan and not with the genius of the cook.......As to the omelette itself, it seems to me to be a confection which demands the most straightforward approach.
What one wants is the taste of fresh eggs and fresh butter and visually a soft, bright golden roll plump, spilling out a little at the edges. It should not be a busy, important urban dish but something gentle and pastoral.........And although there are those who maintain that wine and egg dishes don't go together, I must say I do regard a glass or two of wine as, not obviously, essential - but at least as an enormous enhancement of the enjoyment of a well-cooked omelette........
.......But we are not in any case considering the 'great occasion' menu but the almost primitive and elemental meal evoked by the words:-
'Let's just have an omelette and a glass of wine.'


The title says it all   October 7, 1999
 122 out of 143 found this review helpful

In the UK today you could be forgiven for thinking that the era condemned by Ms David in many of her writings was a figment of someone's imagination. Post-war shortages? Nasty and ersatz flavourings recommended as ingredients in recipes? Over-complicated and over-priced dishes in mediocre restaurants? How quaintly historic.

After all, we live surrounded by food and its images. There seem to be as many magazines featuring food as there are featuring improbably-breasted women on the top-shelf of the corner shop; book-stores are piled high with recipe books by chefs who have achieved celebrity status; and the question is often not 'does your local supermarket sell balsamic vinegar,' but, 'how many kinds, and where from, exactly'?

So what is the point of reading this (or indeed any) of Elizabeth David's books? The answer is as simple as the title of the book. David's culinary lifetime was spent in encouraging the fresh, the simple and above all the fitting meal. This is much more than giving hints and recipes, or stunning yourself and your guests with exotic and hard-to-achieve perfection, it is an attitude of mind about eating and appreciating food. Lost in a welter of food from every country and culture in the world (I even discovered an Inuit recipe for seal-blubber ice-cream the other day, which is one ingredient I suspect my supermarket-of-choice has not got around to selling, at least as yet), David's often ascerbic style when she writes about bad food provides as much relish as her descriptions of what is good.

And much as I might enjoy the occasional beautifully seared loin of some imported fish I've never tried before, on a bed of ginger and lemongrass flavoured veggies, with a something-or-other salsa,(to say nothing of the possibility of seal blubber ice-cream for pud), there are those days when only the perfectly simple will do. Perhaps a beautiful and simple omelette, with of course, a glass of chilled white wine. Enjoy!