Cooking For Chaps: Stylish, No-Nonsense Meals For The Man About Town

The Chap, in collaboration with expert cook Clare Gabbett-Mulhallen, has written a cook book aimed at reviving the lost art of British cookery.

Cooking For Chaps trawls through great British recipes from the last 200 years to bring you the finest selection of meals to prepare for breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, high tea, dinner and supper. The traditional courses have all been observed, with the addition of helpful advice on pre-dinner cocktails, picnic foods and table manners relevant to the contemporary dinner table.

Recipes begin with breakfast, with particular emphasis on breakfast in bed – both the optimistic and pessimistic versions, depending on how successful an evening a chap might have had. Lunch recipes include the Harry Palmer omelette, as created by Len Deighton for the Ipcress File, while other fictional gourmands consulted include James Bond and Bertie Wooster, including Jeeves’s legendary hangover cure.

High Tea, that criminally neglected meal, allows one to serve a houseful of guests with a table laden with pre-cooked delights, but doesn’t allow them to outstay their welcome – ideal for prowling maiden aunts and irritating brothers-in-law. Supper, too, is reintroduced as an essential meal for those who have skipped dinner to attend cultural events where champagne is the only meal served.

Dinner itself obviously gets the most attention, with four courses covering every set of flavours, seasons and occasions. From Brown Windsor Soup to Battered Samphire, through various servings of venison, pheasant, kidneys and skate, to a delicious array of puddings that would not look out of place on the trolley at the Reform Club and which include Shirt-Sleeve Pudding (yes, cooked in a shirt-sleeve), rounding off with the long-neglected tradition of serving savouries with pudding. 

Cooking for Chaps sets out to re-educate men and women in the basic, fundamental art of British cookery. Published by Kyle Books, it is available from www.amazon.co.uk For further information about the book, visit cookingforchaps.com.