As I was sorting through my cookbooks lately I picked up , again, a book which I bought many years ago on a whim which has in fact turned out to be one of the most thumbed and sauced books in my entire collection.

Canteen Cuisine was published in 1995 by Ebury and the credited authors are Marco Pierre White and the actor Michael Caine.
This is same Mr. White who recently sold his soul to Knorr and advertises on the tele with a posse of adoring ladies d’un certain age.
The hero I feel , of this book is the uncredited editor and indeed the test kitchen in Ebury.
The book has quite a lot of sound traditional recipes which are precisely worded , measured and timed ; the confit of duck and the bread and butter pudding are just the best I have tried and always work for me.
But the star of the show and the reason why this book has maintained it’s prominent position in my kitchen for the last 15 years is the final section of the book, about 40 pages long, which is called sauces and accompaniments.

This section contains all the traditional cookery sauces and quite a lot of modern ones.
Its Beurre Blanc , and Hollandaise variations are impeccible and I constantly use a version of his Brioche, but it is for its sweet sauces that I keep returning to it.
On one page it has Caramel Sauce, Sweet Sabayon, Créme Patissiére and Créme Anglais.
This page is now spattered with food and freely annotated where I have made various variations to the sauces, probably the only messier page in my cookbook collection is the one which opens on ragù alla bolognese in Elizabeth David’s Italian Cooking.

So compliments to the chef , but why do I feel that the entire back section which I find so valuable was never written by Mr. M.P. White in the nineties when he was busy gaining Michelin Stars for his restaurants ?

Anyway the main thing is for all of you perspiring chefs the book I have discovered is still available in Amazon and various other sources.
Give yourselves a present of a copy.