Felicity Cloake

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Associate: Eli Keren

Books

Felicity is a freelance writer and editor based in London and specialising in food, drink and travel. Formerly Deputy Editor at fresh magazine, she now writes a weekly food column in the Guardian‘s G2 and regularly for the Daily Mail and Metro, as well as the Spectator’s Scoff! magazine and Tim Hayward’s quarterly Fire & Knives.

For more information about Felicity please visit her website www.felicitycloake.com

 

Forthcoming publication

RED SAUCE BROWN SAUCE: A BRITISH BREAKFAST ODYSSEY – Mudlark – June 2022

If there’s one thing that truly unites this country from Aberdeen to Abernethy, St Ives to St Pancras, it’s an obsession with breakfast. We all have an opinion on the merits of brown sauce versus ketchup on our morning sandwich. No other country’s culinary identity is so bound up with breakfast – the French may love their croissants, the Chinese their congee, but they’re rarely held up as national symbols in the same way as a Full English, an Ulster fry or a bowl of porridge. A good breakfast is our birth right, eaten with as much relish in the Wolsey on Piccadilly as in Terry’s Caff in Borough.

In this eagerly anticipated follow up to One More Croissant for the Road, Felicity Cloake sets off on an epic bike ride round Britain to celebrate and investigate the legendary Great British Breakfast. She rates fry-ups on criteria from the crispness of the bacon to how long they keep her pedalling and stops for fact-based tea-breaks in place of last time’s pause cafe. And a woman cannot live by All Day Breakfast alone, so as well as recipes for things like Omelette Arnold Bennett or proper porridge, she will report back on the delights of regional specialities she encounters along the way, from Lancashire hotpot to Welsh cakes, Balti to boxty and everything else that takes her fancy en route. All washed down with tea, naturally.

From the less celebrated breakfast items that often cause puzzlement to visitors abroad – baked beans on toast, for example, or Marmite or Weetabix – to the homely foods of different communities, the halwa puris and Polish rye breads, grilled plantain and century eggs, Felicity will take them all in. Her mission is to eat all the best breakfasts of Britain – whether a crumpet hot from the factory production line in Enfield or a desi breakfast in Birmingham or even a pease pudding stottie cake from the original Greggs in Gosforth, this will be a true tour of Britain. And Britain is a country that runs on breakfast.

 

Previous publication

ONE MORE CROISSANT FOR THE ROAD - HarperCollins - Jun 2019

The nation’s ‘taster in chief’ cycles 3,500km across France in search of the definitive versions of classic French dishes.

One of the chief pleasures of cycling, apart from the thrill of freedom it gives you, is stopping for lunch, so ravenous you inhale the bread basket before they’ve even had time to bring over your beer. And France is a country whose roads, so straight and smooth and quiet, seem designed for cycling, and whose hearty provincial cooking, whether that’s Moules Frites or Boeuf Bourguignon, makes the perfect fuel for it. To be hungry in France is to be fortunate indeed.

One More Croissant for the Road sees ‘the nation’s taster in chief’ Felicity Cloake embark on the trip of a lifetime, cycling 3,500km across France in search of the definitive versions of classic French dishes. Felicity has long established herself as an absolute authority on everything that is important about food. This lively and charming account of her search for the ultimate Quiche Lorraine, la meilleure Tarte Tatin and a Cassoulet par excellence, culminates in a triumphant two-wheeled tour of Paris’s boulangeries in pursuit of France’s finest croissant. Accompanied by charming line illustrations, each chapter concludes with Felicity putting this new-found knowledge to good use in a new ‘perfect’ recipe for each dish, the conclusion of her rigorous and thorough investigative work on behalf of all our taste buds.

 

Praise for ONE MORE CROISSANT FOR THE ROAD - HarperCollins - Jun 2019

"Joyful, life-affirming, greedy. I loved it." (Diana Henry) 

"Whether you are an avid cyclist, a Francophile, a greedy gut, or simply an appreciator of impeccable writing – this book will get you hooked. Felicity Cloake’s Tour de France is a triumph. It is full of greed and wit, jam-packed with priceless practical information, peppered with a sense of adventure and wonder. I love it." (Yotam Ottolenghi)

"Such a brilliant book, funny, captivating and wonderfully written. I feel like I was packed up in Felicity's pannier for the ride." (Anna Jones)

"An evocative, infectious, and at times utterly hilarious adventure that will make every food lover, and even the most lapsed of cyclists, want to jump on their bike, and on a ferry to France, immediately." (Rosie Birkett)

"Cloake imbues [One More Croissant] with such personality and wit that it makes you wonder if the rest of us have forgotten that writing about food should be fun." (FT Weekend)

"Her bluffer’s guide to French bread told me more on one page than I’ve learnt frequenting boulangeries in the six years I’ve lived [in France]." (Country Life)

"Funny, entertaining and informative, this is a book that makes you hungry, both for a good meal and for a visit across the Channel." (Delicious Magazine)

"A gastronomic grand tour." (Red Magazine)

"Pure delight from first page to last, as if Elizabeth David was whispering one ear and MFK Fisher in the other. Felicity Cloake is the perfect travelling companion – curious, funny, philosophical, and, best of all, imperishably greedy. She writes with self-deprecating humour and evocative grace. This is the best kind of travel and food book – It makes you dream of doing the same." (Matthew Fort)

Non-Fiction

Publication DetailsNotes
2019

HarperCollins

One More Croissant for the Road sees ‘the nation’s taster in chief’ Felicity Cloake embark on the trip of a lifetime, cycling 3,500km across France in search of the definitive versions of classic French dishes. Felicity has long established herself as an absolute authority on everything that is important about food. This lively and charming account of her search for the ultimate Quiche Lorraine, la meilleure Tarte Tatin and a Cassoulet par excellence, culminates in a triumphant two-wheeled tour of Paris’s boulangeries in pursuit of France’s finest croissant. Accompanied by charming line illustrations, each chapter concludes with Felicity putting this new-found knowledge to good use in a new ‘perfect’ recipe for each dish, the conclusion of her rigorous and thorough investigative work on behalf of all our taste buds.
Felicity Cloake is the author of the Guardian’s long-running weekly column, How to Cook the Perfect…as well as having been the New Statesman’s food columnist since 2011 and the author of four books with Fig Tree. She was named Cookery Journalists of the Year at the 2016 Fortnum & Mason awards, and won the Cookery Journalist of the Year and New Media trophies at the 2011 Guild of Food Writers awards.

2016

Fig Tree

This is a cookbook for people who are looking for inspiration rather than instruction; one that will make you look at familiar ingredients in a new light, and welcome new ones with open arms.

Here Felicity Cloake offers an ingredient for each letter of the alphabet - twenty-six of her favourite things to eat, and recipes using them which will change the way that you think about these ingredients forever. In the Blue Cheese chapter, a Roquefort and honey cheesecake with walnut and pear; in Caramel, roast duck with miso caramel and in Rhubarb, rhubarb gin granita.

Yet there are also more straightforward dishes, no less original or delicious: beetroot noodles with goat's cheese, toasted walnuts and baby kale; chorizo baked potatoes with avocado crema; slow roast tomato pasta with lemon salt, ricotta and basil. And there are many more playful takes on favourite dishes: salted peanut caramel crispy cakes, aloo tikki scotch eggs, jelly cherry jubilee, buttermilk onion rings.

This is a book to shake you out of your recipe rut and make you start to think about food, and cook it in an entirely new way.

2014

Fig Tree

The follow up to Perfect: 92 more invaluable recipes and tips from Felicity Cloake.

Having rigorously tried and tested recipes from all the greats - from Elizabeth David and Delia Smith to Nigel Slater and Simon Hopkinson - Felicity Cloake has pulled together the best points from each to create the perfect version of 91 more classic dishes, from perfect crème brulee to the perfect fried chicken.

Never again will you have to rifle through countless different books to find your perfect pulled pork recipe, Thai curry paste method or failsafe chocolate fondants - it's all here in this book, based on Felicity's popular Guardian columns, along with dozens of practical, time-saving invaluable prepping and cooking tips that no discerning cook should live without.

2013

Fig Tree

The complete guide to dinner parties - for people who think they don't do dinner parties. Forget fish knives and boy-girl-boy-girl: modern entertaining sweeps away all the rules. These days, we're far more relaxed about inviting people round on the spur of the moment for sofa suppers and big, loud Sunday lunches, but there are still a few secrets to mastering the art of feeding people and having fun. In Perfect Host, Felicity Cloake ensures that you have every base covered. Whether it's having a few friends round for an impromptu after-work supper (lamb, harissa and courgette kebabs with jewelled couscous), knocking up a feast to accompany a DVD boxset (pulled pork and black bean chilli and tex mex slaw) packing a basket for that perfect picnic (Scandinavian picnic loaf), planning the menu for a seductive dinner (pollack en papillotte with basil and tomatoes, and my last Rolo) or deciding what will wow at a raucous birthday party (chocolate and rose layer cake), Perfect Host is packed with delicious recipes (and helpful hints) for all occasions.

2011

Fig Tree

The Guardian's 'How to Make' food columnist Felicity Cloake is on a mission to find the perfect recipes for staple dishes, from spag bol to apple pie and from brownies to fish pie, in her first cookbook Perfect - 68 essential recipes for every cook's repertoire.