BOOK REVIEW

MAX’S PICNIC BOOK

Reviewed By Despina Mina

Summer is upon us and no matter how unpredictable the British weather is, we all love to dine alfresco. Ever the optimists, we picture sitting outside with the sunlight coming through the trees, dappling our skin as the wind rustles the leaves. Ok, there’s a really good chance you forgot to bring an extra layer because there’s a nip in the air, and you’ve drunk too many cans of premixed gin and tonic and are now wondering where the public loos are - someone’s dog has trotted over and licked your sausage roll but hey, we love a picnic don’t we!

So, it seems fitting that I review Max’s Picnic Book for this latest issue of CIBARE. A little bit about the authors, Ben Benton and Max Halley - they met when Max was managing a restaurant in which Ben (a chef, a writer and consultant) was cooking and they became lifelong buddies. After working in lots of high-end, Michelin starred restaurants, Max wanted something to call his own so he opened up ‘Max’s Sandwich Shop’ in Finsbury Park. Picture an informal restaurant disguised as a cosy café serving epic sandwiches and cocktails to match. When it came to writing the first book based on his shop, Max asked Ben to get on board. The book was a success and three years later the duo have struck again with Max’s Picnic Book.

Before I even picked up this book, I’d started to scan eBay for the perfect wicker hamper and other traditional picnic paraphernalia. But then I read it and got lost in the fictional picnic stories. You know that game, “If you could invite anyone to your dinner party, living or dead, who would it be?” Max has come up with 16 bonkers picnic scenarios, with accompanying menus, each with their own fantasy guests - my personal fave is ‘An ‘Opportunity for Deliciousness’ Picnic’ hosted by Hunter

S Thompson with Mary Berry as his guest - ‘they amble hand in hand into the park like Winnie the Pooh and Piglet into the Hundred Acre Wood…’. This includes some excellent advice on creating a picnic kitbag (i.e. fly swat, lighter, sachets of salt and pepper, Swiss army knife etc), how to ease a cork out of a bottle (clue: a shoe and a wall), and marvellous ways to use up your leftovers. I won’t spoil it for you but needless to say they make me realise that a pretty hamper does not maketh the picnic, it’s the good vibes you bring to it.

Rather than select a specific menu to cook from, I thought about what I’d buy from the local supermarket en route to the park and created my own spread from the numerous recipes on offer.

The All-Day Breakfast Quiche - bacon, eggs, sausages, mushrooms and tomatoes. The traditional morning comfort foods are all smooshed together in quiche form and it tastes just as good cold as it does hot. But it’s the brown sauce that makes me do a happy dance: I’ve never been a fan of the readymade stuff so I was a bit sceptical about making a litre of it. It’s a simple enough recipe and if you have the patience and time, you’re rewarded with picnic gold. It has completely changed my opinion of brown sauce and now I’m addicted to the stuff.

Potato Samosas (vegetarian) - they really are the ideal picnic snack, because you don’t need crockery or cutlery to eat them and they taste so damn good. If you’ve never made them before, I would recommend looking up how they’re rolled. But to be honest with you, if you can manage to get the delicious filling wrapped up without any gaps for potential leaks when they’re deep fried, then does it matter what shape they are?

I love sponge, I love jam and I love marzipan. I’m a crap baker and a hopeless optimist so I gave the Battenberg cake recipe a go anyway and wasn’t too traumatised by the process. The sponge might have been a little bit dry, but covering it in jam helped and I could have rolled out the marzipan a couple of millimetres thinner, but all in all I was pretty chuffed with the results. This was all washed down with a few, magnificent ice-cold Martinis blended with marmalade, hence the name Breakfast Martini.

If you don’t have the time or the inclination to cook your favourite picnic treats from scratch, Max encourages you just to buy the ready-made version and pimp it up with various extras - it’s a no pressure cookbook full of joy and inspiration. Picnics can be whatever and wherever you want them to be, the car park of a McDonald’s drive through, at your desk, or in bed in front of the telly, as long as you make it count. And as the fictional version of Hunter S Thompson says to Mary Berry ‘Life is full of opportunities my dear, and we must grasp every one of them’.