My most annoying cookbook (and a recipe for grilled salsa)

Supper tonight consisted of cucumber, yoghurt and dill salad, grilled tomato salsa and an improvised version of a vegetarian recipe that I had previously tried more faithfully and more successfully.
The original version is artichoke paste, spinach and Coolea cheese grilled sandwich – tonight I forgot the artichoke paste (blend artichokes, garlic and olive oil – simple and delicious!) and added grilled bacon. My first attempt had used Staffordshire oatcakes but there were none available tonight, so tortillas had to stand in.
Without the artichoke paste, and with tortillas being less moist than the oatcakes, the baked wraps were dry enough that the salsa was absolutely necessary.
The salsa was simplicity itself:

4 medium tomatoes
¼ onion
1 green chilli
1 or 2 cloves garlic
8 sprigs coriander
juice of ½ lemon
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

Char the first four ingredients under the grill, then peel the tomatoes and chilli. Put everything in the blender at high speed for thirty seconds, then stick it in the fridge until you’re ready to eat. Apparently it has to be eaten within a couple of hours, but the recipe book didn’t say why.
The grilling gives it a wonderful smokey flavour – you’ll never need to buy barbecue sauce again!
The (non) vegetarian wraps were inspired by the most annoying cookbook I own.
A couple of years ago, a friend gave me a cookbook called ‘Paradiso Season’, by an Irish chef called Dennis Cotter, whose vegetarian Café Paradiso in Cork is the Mecca for all Irish non-meat-eaters. Even devoted omnivores like myself can be persuaded to forego animal protein for a meal from the restaurant.
The book is beautifully produced, with mouthwatering pictures that give the lie to the idea that vegetarianism is perforce dull, and everything I have cooked from it has been delicious, but it is has occasionally provoked me into slamming it across the table in frustration and fury.
Not only does Cotter have a similar style to Nigel Slater (deceptively airy, but actually quite patronising and controlling), but the recipes are incredibly elaborate. This is a frequent problem with restaurant cookbooks – if you are cooking for large numbers and have sous-chefs, it may be no problem to prepare two sauces, pre-cook your pulses and spices, steam the vegetables, assemble the plated meal and garnish it beautifully, but if you’re cooking a simple meal for two, this seems like a lot of work. However, sometimes it’s worth making the effort for a grand meal, sometimes it turns out that the dish is improved by simplification (there’s a delicious hazelnut and squash gratin that really doesn’t need the Gabriel cheese and cream sauce he suggests) and sometimes it’s possible to work out a shortcut.
More annoying than the elaborateness is that the recipes are very slapdash. Whoever tests the recipes must be so used to cooking with Cotter that they forget that we mere mortals need to be told boring details like temperature and approximate cooking time. This means that one rarely gets the dish right first time, although it is usually nice enough even when done experimentally that one is prepared to spend another evening peeling roasted hazel nuts and reducing vegetable stock (don’t tell, but I usually use chicken stock.)
Other successful recipes I have tried from the book include a beetroot soup that is served with a shot of vodka floating in it and gratin of asparagus and blue cheese. The recipes are always mouthwatering to read and usually as good to eat, but the wear and tear on the cook’s spirits is incalculable.