DEIGHTON, Len [256] pp.Penguin Books19675 1/8" x 7 3/4"Cover design by Raymond Hawkey VGThe Action Cook Book was once an instructional book for the bachelor male – a guide to sophisticated cooking for the would-be Harry Palmer. It now has a great following as a fabulous piece of nostalgia as well as retaining real credibility as a genuinely useful cook book.If you need to create the basic wine cellar (basic to Len Deighton – decidedly aspirational to the rest of us), or to learn how to cook full-bodied meals with a seductive touch (how could you resist brain soufflé? – ‘brains are a very good constituent for a souffle. They are delicious fried, or in any of the piquant wine sauces’), then this is the book for you. Two aspects of Len Deighton's writing - cookery and spy novels - combine in the Action Cook Book. Between 1962 and 1966 Deighton published a weekly "cook-strip" in the Observer. The cook-strip was a cartoon-strip style recipe, where illustration replaced words. The cook-strips are reproduced here, with additional notes, as well as chapters such as 'The Secret Weapon in the Kitchen: the Blender' and 'Bachelor Foods (The Quick Cook)'.
