What’s the USP? Recipes and stories from The Angel of Dartmouth restaurant in Devon, England which has been a place of culinary pilgrimage for food lovers since the 70s.
Who’s the author? Elly Wentworth is the executive chef of The Angel and sister restaurant Embankment Bistro, both in Dartmouth and one of the country's leading female chefs. She was a Masterchef: The Professionals finalist and has appeared on the Great British Menu. She has won numerous awards and accolades including Winning a Royal Academy of Culinary Arts Award of Excellence and being listed in the Michelin Guide, Good Food Guide and AA Restaurant Guide. The Angel is her debut cookbook.
Is it good bedtime reading? The extended introductory section of the book not only includes a biography of Wentworth but also a short history of the restaurant, in particular its incarnation from 1974 to 1999 as The Carved Angel under the late Joyce Molenueax. Overall, it’s an interesting read but at times appears to have been penned by someone very close to The Holland Group, the business that now owns The Angel. You’ll be fascinated to discover that they also run a secure parking business in Dartmouth and that the upper floors of The Angel have been converted into ‘high-quality holiday apartments’. Thankfully, the recipe text seems to have been written by Wentworth herself and contains no plugs for Holland Group activities.
How annoyingly vague are the recipes? Bar the odd ‘juice of half a lemon’, these are meticulously recorded recipes. They need to be. Despite Wentworth’s claim that they are recipes that ‘any competent home cook can work through’ they are highly sophisticated, complex restaurant dishes that will mostly provide a weekend project for a hobbyist home chef with a good few hours to spare.
That said, the hobbyist home chef will be in very good hands, with detailed and comprehensive methods that ensure you know exactly what you need to do and in what order to achieve the desired result. Wentworth says that she has written the recipes ‘in such a way that they feel as if I am working in the kitchen alongside you’ and she has been successful in achieving that.
How much difficulty will I have getting hold of ingredients? As these are recipes from the restaurant, replicating them exactly is going to pose some challenges. Take ‘Carrot cream/miso/black garlic’ for example. The headline ingredients won’t pose any problems, but Sosa air bag potato which Wentworth says she gets from the wholesaler Ritters is not easily accessible for the home cook. You can track down online the Minus8 Verjus that’ll you need for a Granny Smith dressing to accompany cured Brill and Exmoor Caviar (also available online at just £14 for 10g) but it will cost you close to £50 for 100ml. You’ll need 3kg of langoustine heads and claws to make the bisque to go with red mullet and baby artichokes and 500g of ethically farmed duck livers for a dish of milk-cured duck liver, salted peaches and Sauternes.
A more practical approach to cooking from the book might be to take inspiration from what are unquestionably delicious dishes and cherry-pick the more doable elements as a basis for your own dish. For example, tomato and makrut lime sauce (which oddly doesn’t list makrut lime among its ingredients, only plain old lime) for roast turbot admittedly has a number of sub-elements but sounds very achievable and would probably go well with any white fish.
Killer recipes? Milk bread rolls; tomato and peach gazpacho, natural almond; Ruby Red beef fillet, caramelised onion, horseradish buttermilk, red wine jus; Jerusalem artichoke ravioli, Serrano ham, roasted chicken consomme; roasted coffee parfait, mascarpone, white chocolate granita; leek and potato veloute, chive gnocchi; chocolate and bitter orange, Pedro Ximenez, roasted pearl barley.
Should I buy it? Professional chefs will probably benefit most from the ideas in the book. The dessert recipes are particularly impressive and are complete and cohesive ideas, unlike many modern restaurant puddings that are often no more than an assembly of crumbs, wafers, ganache and meringue shards. Pros will also find sourcing ingredients more straightforward and will have the time and assistance to make light work of what otherwise may be onerous amounts of work. For amateurs who love browsing beautifully produced cookbooks just for the pleasure of doing so, they will find much to enjoy in the pages of The Angel along with some inspiration for their next kitchen session.
Cookbook review rating: 4 stars
Cuisine: Modern British
Suitable for: Professional chefs and very confident home cooks
Buy this book:
The Angel by Elly Wentworth (affiliate link)
£35, Ebury Press