‘Flavoursome recipes for nostalgic eating’ is the strapline for Stephen Harris’ new book, a follow up to his successful debut The Sportsman that was published by Phaidon. This time round he has turned to Quadrille to bring even more of his skillful yet homely cooking to the masses.
While his debut book concentrated on the food served at his Michelin-starred Seasalter restaurant, once named the Best Restaurant in the UK, with The Sportsman at Home Harris has brought together a collection of more comfort food dishes, as well as many that are served with a large dollop of nostalgia. Many of the recipes use Harris’ weekly column for The Telegraph, which ran between 2017 and 2023, as a starting point, where the chef would take classic recipes and simplify them - or find a central point and leave out the extraneous, as he puts it.
Within the pages, then, are recipes that Harris has borrowed and given his own touch t as well as those that take inspiration from chefs he admires. Examples include a recipe for pear, walnut and roquefort salad, an early dish from The Sportsman based on a salad from Cafe Pasqual’s Cookbook; a guinea fowl, green bean and grape salad borrowed from French chef Nico Ladenis; a dish of cold roast pork with parsley, red onion and capers, an ode to the salad that accompanies the classic bone marrow dish served at St John; and a recipe for Marmite roasted cauliflower with walnuts and grapes that was inspired by a throwaway comment from Noma chef Rene Redzepi about people in general not taking as much attention to roasting cauliflower as they might a chicken.
There are also plenty of recipes with more humble beginnings, including one for pasta with sardine ragubased on Harris feeding 10 people on a shoestring budget while living in the south of France; and another for moussaka that was inspired by his girlfriend’s mum. Whatever the dish, each is layered with meaning and a real understanding of flavour, of what worked and what might work even better.
Readers should also save room for the book’s final chapter, which takes a fond but also critical look at nostalgia. Harris notes that the food people love when they are young is often disappointing when it is returned to years later - in his case a cream of mushroom soup standing out - and so The Sportsman at Home dedicates a decent section to the chef recreating childhood dishes that more than stand up to scrutiny. These include recipes for superior versions of blackcurrant cordial, lemonade and cherryade as well as for a tropical juice drink that is loosely based on the 1970s drinks brand Quosh. Soup naturally gets a reboot - cream of tomato, mushroom, and chicken and sweetcorn - as well as sweet treats such as madeleines, shortbread, malt loaf and digestive biscuits.
Speaking to Harris just a few days after the book’s publication, it was the book’s last two recipes that he made special mention of - those for chocolate milk and chocolate spread. As childhood favourites, these are items that are often always shop-bought and never homemade but have a special place in the hearts of children up and down the land (as they continue to do today). Using Pump Street chocolate, top-quality dairy and no additional sugar, Harris’ recipes elevate these two classic preparations, avoiding the cloying sweetness of mass production and heightening the taste of chocolate.
With his restaurant, Harris almost deconstructs the dining experience, stripping out the frivolity (in dishes and the dining room itself) so that flavour - and what flavour! - comes to the fore. With The Sportsman at Home he reveals the secrets so that you can do it too.
The Sportsman at Home - Flavoursome Recipes for Nostalgic Eating
Stephen Harris
Number of pages: 255
Standout dish: Marmite roasted cauliflower with walnuts and grapes
Publisher and price: Quadrille, £30