Diana Henry

The walls of my teenage bedroom were covered in cuttings and bits of paper. There were photographs ripped from magazines – landscapes, whacky portraits, still lives of food – and poems I had copied out as carefully as I could with my leaky fountain pen. Among poetry by Heaney and Wordsworth and Richard Wilbur there was a scattering of verse and prose about food, and most of it had been copied from the two Jane Grigson books I owned, her fruit book and her vegetable book. Right beside my bedside lamp there was a small  illustration of strawberries blu-tacked to the wall, and words Jane had written about them.  “Do you remember the kind and beautiful girl in Grimm’s fairy tales, who is driven out by her stepmother to find strawberries in the snow? How she comes to the dwarves’ house, and shares her crust of bread with them? And how, as she sweeps the snow aside with their broom, she finds there – strawberries? That vivid image of delight, of fruit and snow against forest darkness, is never forgotten. It’s our northern winter longing for summer, a joy of the mind. And yet, in the sudden snow of winter a couple of years ago, I went to sweep our doorway – and found strawberries.”

Until I discovered Jane Grigson, cookbooks were sets of instructions, manuals on the making of things. That in itself was precious, but when I came across her Fruit Book and her Vegetable Book I felt I had discovered someone who was speaking to me. Jane was scholarly and literary and she understood that food was more than just food, it was about memory, the imagination, stories, history. It was connected to everything. She understood, too – as you can see from her writing on strawberries – that food could be magical.

For quite a few years – in my late teens – I would tell people that you could cook for a lifetime just from her vegetable and her fruit book. I composed lists of everything I wanted to make, and I gradually worked my way through them. Before I read Jane I had no idea that the Romans used garum or that broccoli was good with anchovies. When I felt glum I would daydream about making Emperor Claude’s Ribbons from her fruit book, a dish that I thought had the most poetic title in the world.

Eventually I bought every book Jane had ever written. I also pulled out every magazine piece and series she composed; in my study she still has her own box, marked with a label with her name on it.

Jane Grigson exemplifies what a food writer should be. She is cerebral and practical – it’s hard to find practitioners who are both – and she is inclusive. She didn’t just want to tell you about cooking and impart knowledge, she wanted you to cook too. She was neither grand nor snobbish. You knew that if you ever got the chance to cook for her she wouldn’t mind if you produced something less than perfect.

I still have and use all her books, including the editions of the vegetable and fruit books that I bought so many years ago. (I love them more than any of her others). I never met her. Though in a way, I did, time and time again, because in my head we’ve talked about food for years.  She is like an old friend.

Emily Hatchwell

Growing up, visits to see Jane and Geoffrey were pretty regular. My mother, Mary, was Jane’s sister and we lived only about half an hour away from Broad Town.

I loved going to Broad Town Farmhouse. It was unlike any other house I knew – in via the stable door (never the front door), down the worn, dimly lit flagstone steps and into that wonderful kitchen, always at its best when Jane was presiding over it. There were nooks and crannies galore, hilariously wonky floors and all sorts of weird and wonderful things I’d never seen before, including two silver ex votos (a stomach and an ear) that now hang in my kitchen, alongside a few others that I’ve collected.

Sitting at the kitchen table having tea, conversation would flit easily from one subject to the next and was never dull, even as a young child listening in, and there always seemed to be plenty to laugh about. There was normally some discussion around Jane’s latest culinary adventure. My parents were often asked over for supper to eat the fruits of her labours, depending on what article she was writing for the Observer that particular week. I remember that my father was not too keen on either the squid or the every-course-is-made-with-rice week, though he wouldn’t have dreamt of saying so!

Once, it must have been around 1987, my mother and I visited Jane to find Paul Bailey there. I’d recently read ‘Gabriel’s Lament’ but was far too shy to say anything interesting to Paul about his superb book. I remember thinking afterwards that Jane always seemed to know exactly the right thing to say, that it was always insightful and often funny.

Thanks to both Jane and my mother, who was a wonderful cook in her own right, my siblings and I have inherited a great love of food – which I hope we have passed onto our own children, and through which we can honour the memory of two wonderful sisters.

Lyn Hall

The well-oiled machine of The Observer,  Paul Levy,  the chefs and Jane Grigson moved into the School in a big way, everyone was in awe.

My staff and students did a wonderful job in looking after them:  very conscientious, aiming to please with the preparation of their ingredients, privileged and aware they were working with the crème de la crème of cookery world.

We clearly remember Jane showing the audience the delights of the Northumberland Duck.  It was a shoulder of lamb, plus a saddle of lamb on the bone, which was cut lengthways and stuffed with a heavy herbed concoction, somehow put together and roasted.

I also remember Jane in Paris in the active days of the IACP, and listening to her talk  at various gatherings. Moving easily from English cooking, she was always a passionate believer in the way the French cooked and handled their ingredients in the ’80’s and before. And, for me, it was an added extra that she always spoke as a wife of a poet.

Barbara Haber

Regrettably, I did not have the good fortune to meet Jane Grigson, but always felt I knew her through her work.  How could I not?  Her warmth, good humor and honesty are there in all of her books, and writing about food gave her the necessary scope to extend her vision. She wrote exquisitely about food and this led her to explore history, culture and horticultural lore, to name just some of her interests. She was down-to-earth in her comments, and I have always remembered and approved of our shared dislike of beetroot, which she called a bossy vegetable because of its readiness to stain everything around it. And this brings me to Jane’s wit and my sadness for not having had the privilege of knowing the woman as well as her books. I am sure that any conversation with her would have delivered fun and laughter as well as her wonderful insights about food and what it represents.

Hattie Ellis

Jane Grigson’s good sense, breadth of reference, wit and wisdom make her books the best of companions at my armchair, desk and kitchen table.  Even her still pertinent criticisms of shoddy food carry the sound of a warm human voice. “Our classical tradition has been domestic, with the domestic virtues of quiet enjoyment and generosity,” she writes in the introduction to English Food. Is there a better summation of why home cooking matters?

Richard Ehrlich

Jane Grigson is my favourite English cookery writer. Her work combined so many strengths, all expressed in graceful, flowing, seemingly artless prose: deep scholarship, fastidious attention to detail in recipe-writing, a wide range of interests and enthusiasms, an original approach to the construction of cookery books.

But what I love most about Jane Grigson’s work is its sense of warmth and humanity. Whereas some cookery writers speak to us as if from a distance, she gives the impression that she is there in the room with us. She makes us feel that she is our friend, that she wants us to be happy in the kitchen. If an ingredient is rare or costly, she gives humbler alternatives and doesn’t imply that the result will be inferior. If the classic version of a dish is impractical, she explains how to simplify – again, without suggesting that you’re not really doing it properly. If she suspects that some cooks will have trouble at a particular stage in a recipe, she quietly points it out.

Grigson’s prose gives the impression that all these qualities come naturally and easily, but they don’t.They’re the product of hard, careful writing. As someone said in a different context: ‘if it weren’t hard, everyone would do it.’

I turn to Jane Grigson’s books more than those of any other writer, seeking advice,ideas, or just an enjoyable few minutes of reading while dinner’s cooking. I hate to single out one book when they are all so good, and so distinctive, but The Mushroom Feast occupies a special place in my affections. There’s the wide range interests: history, etymology, gardening, taxonomy, etc. There’s the practical-mindedness: in a platter of crudités ‘it is better to have three or four vegetables in perfection than twenty that have seen better days.’ There’s the sense that she lives in the same world as her readers. (The head note for one dish begins, ‘Fattening, but worth it.’) There’s the wide variety of culinary sources, and of cooking styles from humble to haute cuisine. And everywhere there is the wonderful turn of phrase: the head of a John Dory looks ‘lugubrious’; the precision needed in making soufflés ‘has the dignity and security of order about it’; fried rice is ‘a good way of using leftovers discreetly.’

A final word in passing. Late in her life, Jane Grigson embraced microwave cooking. I too loved the microwave (and still do), and it heartened me that she was a fellow fan. There were few others among the eminent cookery writers of the day (and today there are probably even fewer). Had she lived longer, I wonder, would my collection include Jane Grigson’s Microwave Cookery? I wish it were there on the shelf. But I’m deeply grateful for the books that are there.

Anne Dolamore

Growing up and eating in the 1950s and 60s was not the most exciting of culinary landscapes. My Irish mother was a good plain cook, much like other mothers of her time, providing roasts and shepherds pies on a weekly rotating basis, with the occasional curry thrown in when my dad was not around as he did not relish spicy food. But we did go back every summer to my maternal grandmother’s farm in Ireland where I experienced what we would now term plough-to-plate dining; so I saw raw ingredients and helped gather them prior to meals which largely consisted of boiled ham, cabbage and boiled potatoes; repetitive but fresh and seasonal. Eggs gathered fresh from the hay yard, potatoes dug ten minutes before cooking drenched in home churned butter.

A window on the world of more exotic fare was provided at the home of my bachelor godfather who had an Italian housekeeper who only cooked Italian dishes and whose ingredients were lovingly and selectively shopped for in the delis of Soho. Dishes which contained rare treats such as olive oil, garlic, freshly grated Parmesan cheese, Parma ham, and mountains of real pasta. These were the early influences which brought the realisation that there was a world beyond narrow domestic fare and there were those who might further enlighten my inquisitive palate by their
writings. And so it was when at the age of fifteen, lo, Jane Grigson’s articles first appeared in The Observer and I started clipping and tearing and adding them to my growing collection of all things food related lovingly preserved in a ring binder.

Her pull-out series on European Cookery was ground breaking and eye opening and I collected every one without fail. I have them to this day in that same ring binder, the pages as hard and crisp as sheets of filo pastry from use and more use. And so her articles led me to her books, when up at university and responsible for my own meals, I started my cookbook collection.

Then in the 1980s as central London rep for Andre Deutsch publishers I found my way to a new hole-in-the wall bookshop called Books for Cooks run by the formidable Heidi Lascelles. She wanted to go to the Oxford Food Symposium but said she felt intimidated by the prospect so would I accompany her and so it was that I finally met my food heroine Jane Grigson, and found her warm and kind and sharing; all the things in fact one finds in her writings.

Now at Grub Street it is with great pride that I have been able to reissue books of Jane’s that incredibly had been allowed to go out of print, and make them available again to generations of cooks to come. I can’t think her legacy will ever disappear or become out dated and in my job as editor nurturing first-time cookery writers Jane is my example to them of how to find a voice; ‘Read her’ I say ‘and you will understand how to be a guiding friend in the kitchen’.

Josceline Dimbleby

I met Jane Grigson in the late 1970s on my first experience of a culinary press trip. It was to Germany; we travelled from place to place by coach and wherever we stopped we were plied with huge amounts of sausages, rye breads and goose fat. In the coach I was thrilled to be sitting next to Jane, who I already revered. Our companions were a group of editors from various food and cookery publications. Jane and I were soon talking eagerly about things we loved to eat, in particular Sussex Pond Pudding, an old recipe for a steamed pudding made even more famous by Jane.

Mouths watering, we spoke of the way the river of melted butter and brown sugar mingled with the lemon juice which oozed out of the cooked lemon and burst through the crisply golden suet crust, and we sighed with pleasure as we remembered that indulgent taste of rich sweetness with a titillating tang. But suddenly we were aware of a hush around us.

‘I’ve NEVER heard anyone talk about food like this’, said one of the editors.The others nodded in agreement, and looked equally shocked. It was as if Jane and I were openly discussing our personal experience of a taboo sexual practice.We could hardly control our laughter; that moment was the start of a long, affectionate,and for me a wonderfully supportive friendship.

Felicity Cloake

Jane Grigson is one of the quiet greats of the food writing world; her work wears its considerable scholarship very lightly. It’s always accessible, always friendly and often wryly amusing too – opening one of her books feels like coming back to an old, and very wise friend. Practical, no-nonsense and packed full of fascinating little nuggets of detail, somehow one trusts her instinctively.

Linda Challis

I never met Jane Grigson face to face but she and I became good friends in about 1987. I had just emerged from a particularly gruelling period at work, had established some kind of a routine with child care, my husband had said he didn’t want to eat meat anymore, and I thought it was time I learned to cook properly. Someone suggested I read Jane’s books; from that day to this Jane and I have been on first name terms.

It was the whiting in orange sauce that did it. I couldn’t quite believe that a rather boring fish – my grandmother used to feed it to the cat – and rather bitter oranges could produce something special, but it did sound promising, mostly because Jane’s prose. The preamble to the recipe told of a search for scallops that turned into a search for whiting, and of the winter oranges where, ‘one of the great pleasures of existence is to observe the changing seasons and celebrate them in one’s diet’. I was hooked, the meal was, though I say it myself, a triumph, and Jane and I have been together ever since.

I may venture into the middle east, the far east, north Africa, and elsewhere, but when I need to be re-charged in the kitchen it is Jane that I turn to, and she has never, ever let me down.