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Action in the Kitchen
By Matthew Christian
When I moved out of my parent’s home, I wanted my collection of old family recipes to begin with my mother’s minestrone soup. As a child, nothing comforted me more. As an adult, nothing reminds me more of my youth. When a recent search through her recipe cards uncovered no evidence of its existence, she shocked me by handing me a copy of Len Deighton’s Action Cookbook.
This pocket-sized manual by the notorious English spy novelist turned out to be the source of many of her culinary inspirations. Len Deighton? As the preface says: “Serious food enthusiasts seized upon [his recipes] without being sure that this was the same man who spoke over the Soviet radio, talked with Hollywood lawyers and wrote the sort of spy thrillers that had to be submitted to the War Office before publication. It is.”
The cover shows Deighton stirring a pot of spaghetti while a woman runs her hands suggestively through his hair. He’s got a gun hanging loosely by his side and is looking out at the reader with the kind of knowing glance that’s usually accompanied by a wink.
Open the book, and you discover that Len Deighton the spy novelist is very, very serious about food. He writes with passion and is a forward-thinking cook with a great interest in seasonal foods and regional cuisine.
The recipes are illustrated by short little cartoons—“cookstrips” he calls them. At a time (1969) when cookbooks rarely featured photos or drawings, these were ground-breaking. For author and historian Simon Schama, they were a revelation. “They showed the idiot novice male how to dice an onion without it falling apart; how to fine-cut parsley by rocking the blade rather than chopping it; how to sauté mushrooms without them yielding the water that would turn them into a gelatinous glop.”
Some of the chapters are amusing to a 21st century reader — “Who needs a refrigerator?” for example. Who indeed? He is also a great advocate for the electric blender, which he suggests might just be your very own secret weapon in the kitchen. “The Blender is a set of whirling knives in a heat-proof glass goblet.” Who can argue with that description?
The recipes are classics, however, some of which are now coming back into vogue. While a chapter entitled “Bachelor Foods: (The Quick Cook)” contains two pages on sandwich-making, he also thinks that a vol-au-vent or a Potage Saint Germain should be well within any novice’s grasp. All of the recipes are easy to follow and all, amazingly, work.
My mother was devoted to his minestrone soup, and looking at the tomato-stained page, I can see why. It is confident, sophisticated and a little exotic. Just like those spies Len Deighton used to write so well about.
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