River Cottage Good Comfort: Best-Loved Favourites Made Better for You

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During lockdown, a lot of people began reaching back to those favourite family recipes, those reliable cockle-warmers - the things that make us feel good, and make us feel that family is close by," he reflects. Recipes in his new book, River Cottage Good Comfort, might have a less tooth-rotting amount of sugar in them, but you won't necessarily miss anything. I've got a slightly highfalutin answer to that, I hope you'll bear with me," says Fearnley-Whittingstall. Gelf Alderson has spent years serving up original, veg-centric meals to delight the guests at River Cottage. After a "strange few years", it made sense for Fearnley-Whittingstall to dedicate his latest book to comforting, nostalgic recipes.

For him, the challenge was being able to 'healthify' classic comfort dishes - like spag bol, shepherd's pie or crumble - without compromising on the taste. If you're adding garlic and/or curry paste/powder, stir them into the onions now and cook for a minute or two. We can have all those things and they can be truly delicious - and yet better for us than perhaps some of the old-school or conventional versions of those recipes.If they aren't already mashed, crush them roughly with a fork or masher, but keep the texture quite chunky. As the colder weather rolls in, there is nothing better than some home cooked comfort food to warm the cockles and that is exactly what you can expect from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's new River Cottage Comfort recipe book. The concept of this book - healthy comfort food with plenty of vegan options - is a perfect fit for the sort of cakes and puddings I want to make: heavy on fruit, lower added sugar, but not full of niche American vegan ingredients.

Take off the foil, give the rice a gentle stir and finish in the oven for a final 15 minutes, or until everything is bubbling nicely and the chicken is cooked through. But what I found is even my sweet tooth is completely satisfied by much less sugar than conventional recipes, and certainly industrially produced biscuits, cakes, sweets and puddings tend to include. Yet among people I know who are veggie and vegan, all 40+, there's one couple who love the junkfood, and everyone else is, to one degree of strictness or another, into the wholefood and healthy eating side and not keen on ultraprocessed and sugary.Minimally processed is ok, so he includes dairy foods such as yoghurt and cheese, and some tinned vegetables (such as low-salt tomatoes canned with just water and a little salt. From hearty beef winter stews that are packed with fresh vegetables to leafy curries, lentil soups and so much more Hugh makes our favourite food healthier, not by taking stuff out of them but by putting more in. Ultimately, Hugh leads us on a journey to tweak our taste buds and pamper our palates so that we can take as much pleasure - and ultimately more - from dishes that we know will do us good. But as HFW and River Cottage have already produced a fully vegan book ( Much More Veg), and even early Nigella books happen to contain a few more dairy free or even accidentally-vegan cakes than this one does, I definitely think they could do better in this area.

Let the heat penetrate the potatoes for a minute or two then add all the other veg, and any herbs or flavour bombs, with a little more seasoning.He has just finished filming his most recent series, which accompanies his most recent book, River Cottage Every Day. HFW's other mission is to encourage cooks to use a variety of good ingredients, which is my culinary mission too. Even as I say that, I'm aware that is a notion that's under challenge at the moment from the really tough times we're having. But so far as I can tell, there still isn't a high-quality, trustworthy book focused on vegan baking with the sort of fruit and veg grown in the UK and on vegan versions of traditional British sweet recipes.

Fast-forward a few thousand years, and going back down the generations of the comfort foods we eat, those ones represent those moments of family togetherness, plenty, we're not too short of everything, we've got what we need, and we're content," he explains. Using a stand mixer or hand-held electric whisk on full speed, this should only take a few minutes, but whisking by hand with a rotary or balloon whisk will take a lot longer. There are also cookbooks pitched at those for whom nutrition or ideological principles take priority i.And Good Comfort is in every way generous, as Hugh makes our favourite foods healthier, not by taking stuff out of them, but by putting more in: the best whole ingredients, celebrated in all their colourful and seasonal diversity. Vegans, you could have sold me a meal if you were serving more than chocolate brownies and Impossible Burgers stacked with sheeze and relish. His key principle is 'Go Whole: The more whole, unrefined ingredients we can get on to our plates, the better. It's an early-autumn colour scheme, with lots of green and brown: the start of my favourite time of year, and also when keen cooks are gearing up to make exactly this kind of food.