Using the Plot: Tales of an Allotment Chef

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Customer reviews

review by: physiojen date: 2008-10-12 rating:
An interesting mix
I bought this book as I am a keen cook who is on the waiting list for an allotment. I thought it would be interesting to see how this book bought those two aspects together. I knew little about Paul Merrett but have seen him on a couple of food magazine type programmes.

As a diary/account of how to (or is that not to?) start an allotment I found it generally amusing and interesting. However, not as good as Allotted Time: Two Blokes, One Shed, No Idea, a book which Merrett mentions. There isn't enough real detail to help you avoid the pitfalls that Merrett himself makes, but maybe thats the whole idea of having an allotment and learning from your own mistakes. The story, which covers just over a year, flows well and held my attention enough to get through it in only a couple of sittings.

The recipes, which take up just under 150 pages, cover the usual suspect veg you would find on an allotment and range in complexity from 'root vegetable mash' (can this really be classed as a 'recipe'?) to 'slow-roast shoulder of lamb' (whose allotment ingredients consist only of garlic & rosemary). The section on preserves and sauces seems decent and I feel this is the section I would use the most.

Overall this is a really well presented book, with lovely pictures throughout both sections of the book. The recipes seems well written and easy to follow. I did enjoy this book, and found myself laughing out loud at certain points however, there are better accounts of allotment life out there and there are more useful recipes too. Saying that this is a book which brings the two together quite nicely, and gives you more information about the allotment side of things than Jamie Oliver's Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life

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review by: date: 2008-08-31 rating:
Inspiring and funny
We're at the same stage that Paul was in at the beginning of the book - an allotment that is wild and overgrown - so we bought the book to be inspired. His humour and honesty made this a brilliant read and has given us the kick up the proverbial that we need to get started. I think the last review was a bit scathing and didn't read the book properly. He tried very hard not to go to the supermarket, using the local shops as much as possible. It was his wife who loved shopped at Tesco's! I shall be buying copies of this for my gardening friends.

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review by: date: 2008-08-26 rating:
Hmmmmm.....
I wanted to like this book. It's extremely beautiful, printed on lovely paper with lovely photos. Paul Merrett seems like a cheerful enough guy and he has quotes on the cover from Gary Rhodes and Novelli. And he is from Ealing, supports Brentford, so for me it's a local local food book!

But something stopped me. I just found the book to be a bit all over the place. Merrett constantly tells us he's only going to eat home-grown food, then ends up in Tescos; he talks about wanting to be green then admits to having a patio heater, he gets an allotment and only manages to grow one thing by the first spring, he wants to persuade his children to eat more veg but behaves like a typically anal chef, not letting anyone eat bananas (which don't have too bad a carbon footprint as I understand), only just about tolerating his kids' playing and pulling up a whole row of baby spinach Because It Wasn't Straight Enough....

I think the brief of the book should have been clearer - is he doing it to eat fresher tastier food, or to be more sustainable, or to get his kids to eat more veg, or to save the world? It's confusing that sometimes it seems to be about all of the above, though Merrett doesn't totally seem to understand how any of it might be achieved.And he keeps referring to his editors and what they want from him, which is a bit too meta for me, in a cookbook.

The second half of the book is entirely recipes, but not many of them seem expressly designed to use stuff from the allotment - for example, fish pie? Or roast lamb?

And there is a sea bass recipe. Sorry, but that's just so oooooo unenvironmentally friendly! Despite the little section at the beginning of "fish" where he talks about line-fishing etc. And Merrett doesn't even bother with the really crucial allotmenteer question: what to do with all that marrow? He just says real chefs don't cook marrow.

I wouldn't have minded at all if this book had just been a chef's allotment book - why not just take the saving the world out of it, and have a caring, unhypocritical book about trying to grow more local ingredients?

However, you will get good, good recipes for:
Lamb stew with allotment vegetables.
courgette pickle
tomato and chilli jam
red onion jam
mint sauce
roasted plums
and many others.

it is a beautiful book, and perhaps I should applaud Merrett's honesty about his sense of confusion! It certainly didn't make me like him less, as I found the whole book charming and I would definitely check out future publications by him. I just think: don't try and please everybody next time...


review by: date: 2008-08-14 rating:
Ripping Yarn
The book recreates the bemusement, hard work and ultimately triumphant feeling of those starting out on an allotment career. It shows how even when it's wet, cold and you'd rather be down the pub there is an attraction to allotmenting which can only be appreciated when you sit down to eat your results of your own efforts.

The characters are only slightly exaggerated and all that he records did happen (I know I'm the one with the long socks - read the book to understand). In short a bloody good laugh: the recipes are pretty good as well. Maybe this will do for New Zealand Spinach what Deliah did for cranberries!

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