Midnight Chicken
Ratings4
Average rating4.5
15
Ratings4
Average rating4.5
Recipes that reveal the life-changing happiness of cooking
There are lots of ways to start a story, but this one begins with a chicken.
Midnight Chicken (& Other Recipes Worth Living For) is a cookbook. Or, at least, you'll flick through these pages and find recipes so inviting that you'll head straight for the kitchen: roast garlic and tomato soup, uplifting chilli-lemon spaghetti, charred leek lasagne, squash skillet pie, spicy fish finger sandwiches or burnt-butter brownies. It's the kind of cooking you can do a little bit drunk. It's the kind of cooking that is probably better if you've got a bottle of wine open, and a hunk of bread to mop up the sauce.
But if you sit down with this book and a cup of tea (or that glass of wine), you'll also discover that it's an annotated list of things worth living for: a manifesto of moments worth living for. Because there was a time when, for Ella Risbridger, the world had become overwhelming. Sounds were too loud, colours were too bright, everyone moved too fast. One night she found herself lying on her kitchen floor, wondering if she would ever get up - and it was the thought of a chicken, of roasting it, and of eating it, that got her to her feet, and made her want to be alive.
This is a cookbook to make you fall in love with the world again.
Reviews with the most likes.
Ella Risbridger was at a deeply sad place in her life, and she was saved by food. It became a habit with her to enhance her mood by cooking or baking, and Midnight Chicken is the result.
I will be preparing a recipe from this book in connection with the Cook the Books book club and reviewing it further later in the month here: https://readerbuzz.blogspot.com/2022/01/wordless-wednesday-midnight-chicken.html
The only cookbook that has made me cry. Deeply relatable, heartwarming, and reassuring. As someone who has attempted suicide, someone who lost a life partner too soon (it's always too soon), and someone who loves cooking, this book truly spoke to me. The recipes were vibrant, and the writing style is like being wrapped in a warm blanket. I loved this book.
As a vegan reviewing a cookbook where the first recipe and the title are a chicken dish, I feel confident in saying, this book is for more people than it might first appear. My relationship status with food these days is ‘it's complicated', but there's something about the simple joy in cooking and eating - no dietary recommendations, no shame about indulgence, this book hit the right tone for me. I wouldn't go so far as to describe it as a food memoir primarily, because it is mostly recipes. But the interstitials are talking about the author's life, their struggles, their loves, and above all the comfort that food can bring. Sprinkled in a few book recommendations as well. However you choose to describe it, I recommend reading food memoirs and cookbooks only while snacking (on something book friendly) or having just finished a meal, because inevitably something will make you hungry. I love the decision to illustrate the book rather than provide photos of the dishes, it just adds some thing to the warm, handcrafted mood.
As with so many things, it'a also a matter of personal taste: the author clearly favours umami tang and mentions fennel on multiple occasions. Neither are really my bag. I can go for salty and creamy as tastes and there's a lot of room for that here, though the salt and cream is regularly Parmesan. Butter and eggs are large proponents as well. So yeah, vegans will have a better time if they go in for the pleasure of sharing joy over food, than necessarily looking for recipes to convert.
⚠️attempted suicide, mental health concerns
