About the Author
Elisabeth Luard is an award-winning food writer, journalist and broadcaster. Her cookbooks include A Cook's Year in a Welsh Farmhouse, European Peasant Cookery and The Food of Spain and Portugal. She has written three memoirs, Family Life, Still Life and My Life as a Wife. She has a monthly column in the Oldie, is a Trustee of The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery and writes in Country Living, the Telegraph, Country Life and the Daily Mail. elisabethluard.com / @elisabethluard
Featured books by Elisabeth Luard
Squirrel Pie (and Other Stories) Adventures in Food Across the Globe
'Sacrilegious to say it but Elizabeth Luard even beats Elizabeth David. Exquisite writing and wonderful food, and funny too' Prue Leith 'Elisabeth Luard proves that no matter where you are, there is food to be gathered, or hunted, or found. Squirrel Pie is a beautifully written tribute to food that has all but vanished from our everyday lives' Alice Waters Elisabeth Luard, one of the food world's most entertaining and evocative writers, has travelled extensively throughout her life, meeting fascinating people, observing different cultures and uncovering extraordinary ingredients in unusual places. In this enchanting food memoir, she shares tales and dishes gathered from her global ramblings. With refreshing honesty and warmth, she recounts anecdotes of the many places she has visited: scouring for snails in Crete, sampling exotic spices in Ethiopia and tasting pampered oysters in Tasmania. She describes encounters with a cellarer-in-chief and a mushroom-king, and explains why stress is good news for fruit and vegetables, and how to spot a truffle lurking under an oak tree.
Other books by Elisabeth Luard
The Flavours of Andalucia
Winner of the 1992 Glenfiddich Award for Food Book of the Year, this is a cookery book with a strong travel bias, dealing with each of Andalucia's eight provinces in turn to provide a personal, geographical and culinary survey of the area. It shows how the land itself and historical events have influenced the culinary tradition of the region, with its intriguing combination of hearty peasant fare and the delicate seasonings that are a legacy of the Moorish invasions. Each province draws on its own magnificent natural larder, and the recipes, such as hot gazpacho from Huelva, salt cod with potatoes and peppers from Jaen, pork and beans with chard from Seville and chickpea and wheat soup from Almeria, reflect this diversity. The author lived in the area for several years. Her personal reminiscences are interwoven with a wealth of cultural and historical information, and the text is accompanied by the author's own watercolours of dishes, places and scenes of Andalucian life.
Squirrel Pie and other stories Adventures in Food Across the Globe
`Sacrilegious to say it but Elizabeth Luard even beats Elizabeth David. Exquisite writing and wonderful food, and funny too' Prue Leith `Elisabeth Luard proves that no matter where you are, there is food to be gathered, or hunted, or found. Squirrel Pie is a beautifully written tribute to food that has all but vanished from our everyday lives' Alice Waters Elisabeth Luard, one of the food world's most entertaining and evocative writers, has travelled extensively throughout her life, meeting fascinating people, observing different cultures and uncovering extraordinary ingredients in unusual places. In this enchanting food memoir, she shares tales and dishes gathered from her global ramblings. With refreshing honesty and warmth, she recounts anecdotes of the many places she has visited: scouring for snails in Crete, sampling exotic spices in Ethiopia and tasting pampered oysters in Tasmania. She describes encounters with a cellarer-in-chief and a mushroom-king, and explains why stress is good news for fruit and vegetables, and how to spot a truffle lurking under an oak tree. Divided into four landscapes - rivers, islands, deserts and forests - Elisabeth's stories are coupled with more than fifty authentic recipes, each one a reflection of its unique place of origin, including Boston bean-pot, Hawaiian poke, Cretan bouboutie, mung-bean roti, roasted buttered coffee beans, Anzac biscuits and Sardinian lemon macaroons. Illustrated with Elisabeth's own sketches, Squirrel Pie will appeal to anyone with a taste for travel, and an affinity for that most universal of languages, food.
Tapas Classic small dishes from Spain
Tapas are the wonderfully tempting little dishes of food that are traditionally served with sherry in southern Spain. Beautifully simple, tantalisingly delicious and easy to prepare, they are perfect for all kinds of occasions. The recipes and suggestions in this book demonstrate how simple ingredients can be quickly transformed into mini feasts designed to delight the senses. Among the recipes are salted almonds, bread with olive oil and garlic, salt cod, asparagus with 2 sauces, chicory and blue cheese, mushrooms with garlic and rosemary, aubergine puree, broad beans with ham, tortilla, pickled sardines, spiced mackerel, lamb ribs with paprika, beef in red wine, potted game, croquettes, empanadas and many, many more. In addition there is plenty of helpful advice including a selection of menus that show how to combine tapas to provide meals for every occasion such as spring, summer, autumn and winter parties, children's tapas party, vegetarian tapas party and a no-cook tapas menu. The wealth of background information and the superb collection of recipes vividly evokes the spirit of a country where food is the essence of the community. Elisabeth Luard is an award-winning food writer and a winner of the much coveted Glenfiddich Trophy and is one of the most highly respected cookery writers in Britain today. She is one of the leading authorities on European food and cooking. Her fifteen years spent living in Spain provided the experience and inspiration for this book. Her acclaimed writings are often cited as an inspiration by many of today's leading chefs, as well as home cooks, and are essential to any serious cookery book collection. Elisabeth's seemingly effortless style of writing, self-drawn illustrations and understanding of the way in which ordinary people's cooking reflects their history, culture and everyday life, makes her one of the most individual and distinctive food writers of all time. She is the food columnist for The Oldie and a contributing editor to Waitrose Food Illustrated as well as many national newspapers such as The Scotsman.
Family Life Birth, Death and the Whole Damn Thing
Not everyone keeps an eagle owl in the spare bedroom cupboard, plays chess for the French Foreign Legion, or goes to school on an obstinate donkey. But this was all just a day in the life of the four Luard children. For the Luards, growing up as their family travelled across Europe, life was a series of adventures. Yet no family is immune to tragedy, and in Francesca, the eldest of three daughters, we find a true heroine. Honest, perceptive and passionate, she tells her own story - until she can tell it no more. Full of anecdotes and peppered with their favourite recipes, Family Life is an extraordinary story of joy, grief and, above all - love. Elisabeth Luard gives a truthful and moving mother's account of their unconventional, unforgettable tale.
Still Life Klipfisk, Cloudberries and Life After Kids
When her children flew the nest, Elisabeth Luard decided it was time to discover new worlds, beyond the family. As a prize-winning food writer, she chose to explore through her cookery. Guided by a trail of enticing aromas and flavours, Luard travels from kitchen to field to restaurant, taking us on a journey that criss-crosses the globe, from the gastronomic delights of the Bosphorus to life in the Arctic circle and the glitzy cuisine of Hollywood. Full of the sparkling anecdotes of the people she meets, and scattered with exotic recipes picked up along the way, Elisabeth Luard provides a window into fragile, often vanishing, ways of life as she explores new countries through the kitchens, market places and traditions of the locals. Funny, uplifting and insightful, Still Life offers a fresh look at the world outside the family.
My Life as a Wife Love, Liquor and What to Do About Other Women
Born in London during the Blitz, Elisabeth Luard - step-daughter of a British diplomat and reluctant debutante in her teens - was working as an office typist at Private Eye when she fell for the `King of Satire' Nicholas Luard. At just twenty-one years old, she married him. As the pioneer of Britain's satire movement, Nicholas was intelligent, handsome and charismatic, yet he was also unreliable, a philanderer and very often only just ahead of the bank. Their life together may not always have been easy, but it was certainly never dull. Tracing the fascinating years they spent together in London to their years in Spain, France, the Hebrides and Wales with their four children, Luard's frank and bittersweet memoir takes us through the best and the worst of their marriage, and chronicles Nicholas's devastating descent into alcoholism. Yet this is also a story of hope as well as sadness - the healing power of children, the comfort and pleasure of good food and the simple joy of making life work. Both honest and tender, it is an account of a life shared and, above all, of a love story with flaws.
Seasonal European Dishes
From all over Europe from Scotland to the Mediterranean, from Hungary to Cornwall, Elisabeth Luard has collected descriptions of traditional feasts and festivals -- many of which she has experienced first hand -- and hundreds of recipes for the dishes appropriate to them. As well as being a unique and wonderfully readable cookery book, Seasonal European Dishes (originally published under the title of European Festival Food) is written with the scrupulous attention to detail and authenticity that is the hallmark of Elisabeth Luards cookery writing, the recipes are peppered with hundreds of fascinating anecdotes and little known facts about local history and folklore. Starting with December the book is organized according to the months of the year and so it importantly also reminds us of the cycle of seasonality that is now once again regarded as the natural and much more enjoyable way to shop and eat. Elisabeth Luard is an award-winning food-writer and a winner of the much coveted Glenfiddich Trophy. In the 90s she covered regional cooking in Britain for Country Living and was the food-columnist of The Scotsman and The Telegraph. She is the food columnist for The Oldie and a contributing editor to Waitrose Food Illustrated as well as many national newspapers.
European Peasant Cookery
There are over 500 recipes in this classic work from one of the country's most respected food writers. First published in the 1980 and twenty years in the making but unavailable for many years Elisabeth Luard has now revisited the work for the first time since publication to revise, expand and update it.
