Book Review: National Trust Family Cookbook by Claire Thomson

Book Review: National Trust Family Cookbook by Claire Thomson

Claire Thomson is a chef, a food writer and the Family Food Ambassador for the National Trust. She’s also a mother of three, a regular contributor to the Guardian Cook section, the author of The Five O Clock Apron (check out that book here) and runs an interactive food website for kids called The Table of Delights.

The National Trust Family Cookbook is Claire’s new book and it’s full of beautiful and delicious family dishes with easy to follow recipes. They’re all family friendly and there are over 100 ideas for breakfasts, lunches at home, lunchboxes and evening meals plus desserts and bakes.

“I am determined that when my children leave home, we will have spend more hours together eating, talking, and laughing around the kitchen table than on my sofa. I also hope that they will all cook well. In their cooking, I’d like them to be generous with vegetables, able to cook thrifty, wholesome ingredients with a punch and panache, and be confident in using a variety of spices and herbs… and what I would like the most is for them to have a relationship with food that is completely and utterly normal!”

— Claire Thomson

The chapters are divided into different time frames with recipes that take just a few minutes to more slow and relaxed cooking sessions. That’s how the rhythm of family life and cooking is — often you need to be quick, other days you have a bit more time to enjoy the process of cooking (at the weekends usually!) and sometimes it’s somewhere in between. This beautiful book covers all of those situations with lovely, well laid out recipes.

I’m really pleased that the book has so many vegetarian recipes too as I’m vegetarian and my family eats mainly vegetarian food. There are lots of yummy sounding recipes in here for me to try out. The photography is beautiful too and I love that there’s a mix of food photography and photos of the actual family cooking and kids enjoying the finished result. The only thing I would change is to include photos of all the dishes as that is something that I look for in a cookbook. Other than that, it’s pretty perfect!

It’s available to buy from Amazon.co.uk.

Book provided to me for this review. As always, all my reviews are 100% honest and all thoughts and opinions are my own.