'The Quick Roasting Tin' by Rukmini Iyer

I received this book along with 'The Green Roasting Tin' and 'The Roasting Tin Around the World' for my birthday in 2022. Initially, the World book was my favourite - the geographical organisation gives you a sense of exploring the world through food - but now I'm not so sure.

The Quick book is organised into themed chapters such as 'Worknight Dinners' and 'Date Night', which I didn't feel as excited by. However, I think this book may contain recipes I love more than those in World.

Over the past two years I've made 51/75 recipes in this book, some of them multiple times.

Worknight Dinners - 11/11 recipes made

These were some of the first recipes I made from this book - because most of the meals I cook are 'Worknight Dinners' - but as a result most have faded from memory and my notes are not especially detailed. The Tomato, Leek & Artichoke Bake (pg40) is my favourite from this section and one I have made multiple times - it is a vegetarian alternative to Toad-In-The-Hole that periodically becomes a household regular when jarred artichokes are on offer in Lidl. The Cauliflower Curry (pg42) is great, but is similar to other cauliflower curries in Iyer's other books. I remember really enjoying the Beetroot Orzotto (pg34), but made the mistake of making it too many times in a short period and going off it - I haven't made it since, unfortunately.

Family Favourites - 7/11 recipes made

The Baked Gnocchi with Ham Hock and Peas (pg50) is great comfort food, and probably my favourite of Iyer's baked gnocchi recipes, although I write 'lol' next to where it says 'Serves: 4 generously' because we comfortably ate it all between two of us. The Sweet Potato Curry (pg60) is a solid easy curry, while the Broccoli and Bacon Pasta Bake (pg62), an improved version of the Kale and Bacon Macaroni Cheese in the World book, has become a household regular - I made it two nights ago and had the leftovers for lunch today. The Whole Tomato Dhal (pg70) was my favourite dhal recipe until a more recently discovered slow cooker dhal recipe.

Make Ahead Lunchboxes - 9/10 recipes made

Each of the recipes I tried from this section I have ended up making multiple times, and my work colleagues were often jealous of my packed lunch. Bulgar wheat is magical, as are naan croutons. The only recipe here I haven't made is the Fig, Chicory, and Hazelnut Salad (pg86).

Date Night - 7/10 recipes made

After 'Worknight Dinners', this was the section I next focused on, because each dish is aesthetically impressive despite being very easy to make. The Roasted Ricotta with Tomatoes and Aubergine (pg104) I have made multiple times as part of a Mediterranean spread while hosting guests. The Baked Gnocchi with Dolcelatte, Figs, and Hazelnut (pg106) was delicious but extremely rich and indulgent - definitely a special occasion dish. The Scallop Gratin (pg108) was great, but scallops are expensive so I haven't made it again. The Sage and Mushroom Tart (pg110) was one of my husband's favourites, but I found the texture of the pine nut mixture unpleasant. The Vietnamese style fish (pg114) was gorgeous.

And then there's the Pomegranate Duck. With this dish I felt like I'd discovered a new level of culinary enjoyment. It was a bit of a faff to make, but the mixture of flavours and textures were absolutely divine. I was thinking about it for days afterwards. Just thinking about it now has made me want to make it again as soon as possible.

Feed a Crowd - 4/12 recipes made

I was initially put off from this section, because I had incorrectly assumed that a 'Crowd' was rather bigger than 4 people. I enjoyed the four recipes I tried from this section, but don't really get why they've been grouped together as Crowdfeeders. The Charred Tenderstem (pg152) is a variant of a stir fry recipe in India Express, and I prefer the the even quicker stir fry version.

Weekend Cooking  - 5/10 recipes made

The breakfast dishes - pancake (pg170), baked eggs (pg172), traybake (pg174) - were great ways to start the day. I made the traybake for brunch yesterday, and it was certainly easier than making a fry up. The baked eggs with asparagus soldiers I enjoyed with a friend who was visiting in summer; we ate them sat outside in the garden. The Chilli Peanut Chicken (pg180) is another great comfort food recipe, one that's become a bit of a household regular. As I type, I am reflecting that is has been a while since I last made it, and I ought to correct that. The Fish Stew (pg186) was excellent, but the cost of the ingredients has prevented me from making it again, though I should treat us to it again sometime.

Sweets - 8/11 recipes made

I am not as fond of baking as I am of cooking, but the sweet made here were received well and some of them I have made more than once. The Sage and Dark Chocolate Cookie Cake (pg194) has wonderful herby savoury notes from the sage, which make it very distinct and memorable (I have made it twice to take into work). We've Blackberry and Pistachio Cake (pg196) a few times for dessert when we've had friends over for dinner. The Pomegranate Yoghurt Cake (pg198), Salted Chocolate Peanut Brownies (pg200) and Pecan and Dark Chocolate Banana Bread (pg206) were all well received at work. The Gingerbread Pears (pg208) was the first of the sweet recipes I made, and I've made it a few times since then, including most recently to take to a friends' Christmas meal; to the same meal last year I took the Apple Crumble Cake (pg212).

Reflecting on all these recipes to write this review, I am extremely glad to have made and eaten such a wide selection of dishes over the past two years, and now want to make many of them again soon. I highly recommend others eat them too!

'Strange Rites' by Tara Isabella Burton

Of the books I read during my Religion Phase, 'The Case for God' by Karen Armstrong was one of my favourites. It was marketed as a rebuttal to the various New Atheist books in vogue at the time; the cover is similar to that for 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins, but blue where Dawkins is red. I imagined the books battling each other to the sound of Star Wars' 'Duel of the Fates' whenever I left the room.

However, the book largely sidesteps, or indeed implicitly agrees with, many of the New Atheist arguments. Instead, via a potted history of religion and theology, mainly focused on the Judeo-Christian traditions, the book argues that religiosity is an incredibly important part of human nature, going far beyond the crude literalism attacked by the New Atheists, whose understanding of theology she derides as 'poor' but also 'not radical enough'. For Armstrong, supernatural entities are not the basis of religion: the search for transcendence is.

As much as I liked the book, I also found it frustrating because it was, ironically, not radical enough. A former nun, Armstrong's immersion in the traditional religions had left her oblivious to the various ways the religious behaviours she celebrates are expressed by the nominally irreligious. I wanted her to go further in exploring religiosity as human nature, but at the time I could find no book that delivered on what I wanted. I remember finding a conference on the subject, but being unable to attend due to my limited budget. George Steiner's 'Nostalgia for the Absolute' scratched the itch a bit, but it wasn't enough.

Eight years later, I've found the book I wanted: 'Strange Rites' by Tara Isabella Burton. I first heard about the book and its core argument via the BBC Sounds podcast 'The New Gurus', on which the author was a guest (the podcasts cover art also uses a similar stained-glass art-style to the book cover). 

Burton compares the World Wide Web to the printing press which was the essential catalyst behind the Protestant Reformation in Europe: those who disagreed with the established church could print and propagate their ideas, leading to Christianity fragmenting into many smaller sects. The World Wide Web is like a Super Printing Press, enabling everyone with access the ability to spread their own ideas, or find whatever beliefs suit them. Together with cultural shifts towards individualism, emphasizing the importance of the self and growing distrust of institutions, this has led to us living through a Super Reformation (or, to use Burton's more America-focused term, a new Great Awakening), in which an increasing number of people are 'religiously remixed', combining ancient and modern beliefs and practices in heavily individualised ways.

An early chapter establishes Burton's understanding of what religion is, based on the works of sociologists Emile Durkheim, Peter Berger, and Clifford Geertz. For Burton, religions fulfil four needs: meaning, purpose, community, and ritual.  

The grand narratives of religion provide an explanation as to why things are the way they are, imbuing reality with meaning and putting adherents lives into a wider context. Adherents are also given a role, a purpose, in the grand narrative, and asked to change their behaviour in various ways: personal decision-making, for even the small and mundane, is linked to and influenced by the universe-spanning narrative. Groups of adherents together form a community (physical or online), with all the psychological benefits that belonging to a community brings. Rituals help re-affirm the grand narrative, bind the community together, and mark the passage of time. 

A single religion in a person's life can cover all four needs, as historically was the norm, but modern individualism encourages a more 'pick and mix' approach to cover all the bases. For example, someone could pray to the Christian God on Sundays, practice meditation on Mondays, go to a Yoga class on Wednesdays, profess a belief in Karma, and make changes to their diet based on the perceived 'Vibrational Energy' of the food.  Religions have always influenced each other, sharing ideas and practices, or splintering into new sects, but the process is happening faster than ever before, in our Internet-connected globalised world. (I once knew someone who believed that Jesus went to India and learnt Yoga during the 'Missing Years' not covered by the Bible.)

The bulk of the book then explores various modern religions identified by the author: fandoms, with particular emphasis on the extremes of the Harry Potter fandom ('Snapewives'); Wellness culture, which utilises spiritual and religious practices to sell products and create a loyal customer base; modern Witchcraft; sexual subcultures; social justice activism; techno-utopianism; and the many regressive, atavistic online cultures from across the online 'Manosphere'. The chapters are engaging but somewhat superficial, giving an overview with varying amounts of depth, but paint a convincing picture of these subcultures as neo-religions.

There's an interesting comment in the chapter on social justice activism about how its opponents deride it as a religion, without realising how accurate they may be, and I would have preferred this to lead into a greater examination of the religious nature of political ideologies more generally. In popular parlance that nature is usually only identified by opponents: socialists and communists deride capitalism and neoliberalism as religions which put their faith in the Invisible Hand.

It's a relatively short book, so an easy criticism is that there is plenty more which could have been included, but I prefer a book to leave me broadly satisfied if eager for more, to one that overstays its welcome. I'm extremely happy to have got hold of this, and highly recommend it, especially if combined with the other titles mentioned at the start of this review.

'Ultra-Processed People' by Chris van Tulleken

Over the past two years I've got into cooking using a bunch of cookbooks, which has massive changed my relationship to food and had a huge impact on my wellbeing. I now get so much joy from cooking and eating as multisensory experiences: the intermingling of sounds, smells, and textures. 

For Phase Two of my food journey, I've decided to learn more about food and the food industry, and this book, which has had a lot of buzz and marketing around it, seemed like a good place to start. The book builds on various other work van Tulleken has done exploring Ultra-Processed Food (UPF), including a podcast (which I listened to beforehand) and various TV documentaries.

The term UPF comes from a food classification system proposed in 2010, which divides food into four groups:

1) Unprocessed or minimally processed food (such as raw kitchen ingredients)

2) Processed culinary ingredients (such as butter, honey, oils, vinegar, etc)

3) Processed food (such as tinned vegetables or fruit, cured meats, etc)

4) Ultra-Processed Food

The full definition of UPF is quite long, but the key points are that UBF is designed to be convenient and highly profitable, and is made using chemical ingredients that would not be encountered in a domestic kitchen. There is acknowledgement in the book that the definition can get a bit woolly around the edges, and there is disagreement over its usefulness. I'm personally quite happy with this breakdown, particularly with the emphasis on profitability over nutrition as the food's raison d'etre: the food is designed to encourage overconsumption. 

I had previously found complaints about "processed foods" quite tedious, and was pleased that van Tulleken took time to explain that most foods require some form of processing to be edible. There is a good discussion about how cooking is part of being human: over the course of our evolution, humans have used fire to externalised part of our digestive system. We cook food to make it is easier for us to digest; or, we cook food to partially digest it before it reaches our mouths.

(I was reminded of the various vegetarian/vegan memes which argue that since we find raw meat disgusting, this is evidence that humans shouldn't eat meat. It's certainly evidence that we shouldn't eat raw meat.)

We have complex sensory apparatus to help us detect both when something is safe to eat, and the nutrients it may contain. The chapters which explore the various ways UPF tricks our bodies into wanting more of it ('Once you pop you can't stop!') are the most eye-opening. Tastes and textures prime our digestive and metabolic systems into expecting certain nutrients: if something tastes umami or meaty, our bodies prepare to digest food rich in protein; creamy textures prime us to digest fat; sweetness signals an incoming sugar boost.

UPF tricks our bodies by dissociating these sensory inputs from the promised nutrients, leaving our digestive system unsatisfied, our metabolic system confused, and us craving more food. So we reach for another crisp, and still feel hungry after a UPF meal with 1000 calories. Fibre, very important in signalling fullness, is also largely stripped from UPF during its manufacture. When your diet is largely UPF, it is very difficult to regulate your eating behaviour. The book opens with a warning that UPF now makes up 60% of the average diet in the UK.

In addition to making me think more about ingredients and UPF deceptions, I was particularly affected by descriptions of the microbiome: the microorganisms that live in our guts symbiotically with us. We provide them with nutrients; they help our digestion. Our body is the vehicle that transports them through space. I have often felt disconnected from my body due to my less than stellar coordination; I feel like my consciousness is a pilot awkwardly controlling a vehicle, rather than being one with it. Now I feel like I have a duty to keep my microbiome passengers safe (and in turn they won't make me ill). UPF additives harm the microbiome in various ways.

The book is written in a very chatty and light style that is easy to understand and read. There were times when I personally got frustrated that the book didn't go as in depth as I'd wanted, but I was pleased it did expand on the science presented in the podcast, and there are copious references for further reading.

The writing is occasionally stylistically conflicted. The author has clearly done a lot of reading about the topic, and often writes with authority; but at other times, he presents himself as an everyman going on a journey of discovery about the topic, interviewing various experts, in the style of the documentary TV and podcasts that preceded the book. This means that parts of the book feel like an urgent and in-depth investigation into a mounting crisis, whereas other parts feel more like light-hearted gonzo journalism (à la Jon Ronson). The transitions between these parts are often jarring.

As much as it is easy to read, there are also parts where it felt like van Tulleken struggled to balance the need to simplify for a lay audience with the desire to go more in depth with the science. This peaks with a particularly overly convoluted section explaining how our bodies utilise chemical energy from food via ATP; it is simultaneously extremely simplistic yet crammed with detail and similes which make it irritating when you know more about the topic (even if you're rusty like me), and largely incomprehensible if you don't. What's most irritating is that I don't think this sequence adds anything particularly useful to the book: it just shouldn't be there.

There are plenty of other things that could have been removed to make the book better. Mainly, footnotes. There are a lot of footnotes throughout, the contents of which should either have been incorporated into the body of the text or removed because they add little of value. Most of the footnotes felt like notes on a draft; combined with the stylistic shifts mentioned above, this made the book feel unfinished, in need of some more polishing and tidying.

Early chapters also have a tendency to imply that those working in the food industry are cackling cartoon villains. I know, because I've done it, how easy it is to imagine those you disagree with as simplistic villains (and, to be honest, there are a lot of people in the world who do talk like cartoon villains), but this tendency is often unhelpful since it does not help us to understand the incentives that drive their behaviour. I was pleased, however, that as the book approaches its end it does touch on a more nuanced and systemic critique of the food industry. 

To stop eating UPF, van Tulleken does not advise just quitting and going cold turkey. Instead, he recommends eating along but consciously thinking about the UPF as you eat it. How it is tricking your body, how it messes with your body, and as you do this you will develop a disgust response and learn to not want it. Shaming people to change their diet does not work - a subject covered extensively in the 'Addicted to Food' podcast and repeated in this book. Turning UPF into a taboo will give it the allure of the forbidden; you have to learn to not want it, and for many people on lower incomes, food that isn't UPF simply isn't affordable enough to eat regularly. Alleviating poverty is the path to improving people's diets and health. 

Despite my occasional irritations with the writing in this book, I did thoroughly enjoy it and found it revelatory. The information in this book is extremely important and I highly recommend it. It was a good choice to start with for Phase Two of my food journey. 

Next up, I have a couple of books about meat eating and the meat industry.