New year, not-so-new project

Fifty Two Cookbooks, continued

I’ve long maintained that January is the worst time to make resolutions. Beaten down by the winter, the chaos of Christmas and the inevitable guilt of time spent on the sofa chomping endless segments of chocolate orange: defences are low, and rash decisions can only lead to failure in a few short weeks – or days, in some cases. I think it’s far better to wait until September – a time of year that since the age of three or four we’ve been conditioned to think of as a season for new beginnings and fresh starts.

Despite this assertion, last January I got caught up in the excitement and gazed at the wall of cookbooks in my home kitchen. I realised that even if I knew the pages, few of them were food-stained. I may have recognised the photos, but the flavours they hinted at remained unknown. Furthermore, my own repertoire outside of the restaurant kitchen had become a bit samey: at home, I found myself resorting to a tiny roster of easy-to-make staples. 

An exciting project was born: the challenge was to cook at least one recipe from a new book every week. The titles were chosen in a frenzy of excitement. Some books I selected were familiar to me, but we’d grown apart over the years. Others were barely touched, and offered pleasingly stiff spines and splatter-free pages. Either way – a full year of recipes stretched before me, and I couldn’t wait to get started.

It began well: I selected recipes, cooked them on days off, took their photos and wrote them up with careful discipline – it was like blogging again – but six months in, life got complicated and my dashboard started to flicker with warning lights. The cookbooks project was the first to go: it bunny-hopped through a few more weeks of cooking-without-writing – but before the end of the summer, it stalled completely. I kicked its tyres but had to leave it by the roadside gathering dust as I struggled into what became an increasingly challenging second half of the year. For everyone, I might add – it seems most of us had a tricky 2023, which is somewhat reassuring to know I wasn’t alone.

It wasn’t just this project that ground to a halt in autumn. There were other sacrifices: I’ve barely been running since around the same time, despite clocking up around 600km over the first six months of the year – nor have I written anything of note since my last, hopeful, round-up Substack post mid-way through August. 

‘Cook. Writer. Runner’ have always been the three words that I’ve used to define myself – so when 2023 gradually, and then, rapidly burned away that simple trifecta, it was more than a little alarming. The longer this survival mode went on, the harder it became to rekindle my interests enough to encourage them back into the flames I needed to illuminate and warm the darkest months. 

But right at the end of the year, it got better. December was full of sparkle and promise and hope: our festive treat boxes sold out, supported as always by the brilliant Mill Road community who queued on collection day. Our team Christmas meal in Fancett’s private dining room was glorious, a celebration of the incredible efforts from the most amazing group of people. And my own family Christmas, which we celebrated in the restaurant for the first time, saw over 20 of our nearest and dearest sharing a feast, toasting each other and playing games until the tiniest hours. A much needed beacon to close out 2023.  

Even though I stand by my assertion that September is a more resolution-friendly time of year, I couldn’t pass up the first of January as an opportunity for a re-start and reset. A new year begins: full of potential and promise, and my resolve to refuse to resolve is weak. It looks like I have around twenty cookbooks left from last year’s project, which – if I learn from last year, and take it a little slower, and perhaps try for one recipe every two weeks, at a more sustainable pace – should give me around a year of recipes, new meals and culinary adventures. First on the list, rather amusingly, is Viveca Sten’s Swedish Summer: a glowing torch in the dark winter nights. 

Here’s to a boldly delicious, more considered 2024. 

You can follow my adventures on Substack, or Instagram – and if you’d like to join us for feasting in person, tables at Vanderlyle in February are available right now: head to Tock to book your seat.