Robert Carrier's Kitchen. Ah, the golden age of cooking (1980s), when no one had hang-ups about sugar and saturated fat!
Published by Marshall Cavendish in 1980 and 1981, this is a comprehensive masterclass to almost every classic dish on the planet. It is described as a cooking course with a difference. Not pretending to teach every cooking technique in the book, it sets out to help you become a better and more adventurous cook by demonstrating new skills and building on the knowledge you already have.
This Masterclass was printed originally in 120 parts which collectively, make up 8 volumes. A 9th Volume was added as an afterthought, bringing the total to 135 parts, plus an additional (and invaluable) h/b index (which is hard to come by). We use the dish on the back cover of each magazine to identify individual issues. Plenty of international interest with Ken Lo's additions for Chinese cuisine.
For anyone who remembers the Cordon Bleu series published by Purnell in the early 70s, some of the dishes in this set look remarkably familiar. Remember pears in red wine sauce? Caramelised oranges? They're all here.
Robert Carrier died in 2006. Here's a snippet from James Collard's obit in the Sunday Times on July 9th, 2006: "....when I was growing up, his cookery programme seemed to me the height of sophistication ......Carrier cooked exotic dishes flambed with Calvados or Cognac; what´s more he did so with an air of playfully complicit extravagance, of a shared joke. Let´s call it debonair, a word which could have been invented for the man, and is all the better for sounding slightly like Dubonnet."
Updated January 2012