Jess Elliott Dennison is known for her easy, fuss-free and utterly delicious recipes. Her books have long been firm favourites at Mainstreet, with her previous books Tin Can Magic and Lazy Baking being our go-to recommendations in the cookery section. Her new book Midweek Recipes was fully written, tested, photographed and published from Elliott’s (her Studio) in Edinburgh. It has been produced solely by Jess herself and this makes it that bit more special, allowing you to have a little bit of Elliott’s with you in your kitchen as you make your meals.

To choose Midweek Recipes as our next Cookbook of the Moment was an easy decision. As soon as we found out Jess was publishing another cookbook, we knew it was going to be up on our blackboard. We did not even have to glance at it’s pages to know this. It is filled with comforting dishes like juicy tomato sugo with fennel seed and white wine for tossing through your favourite pasta. Or toasted almond chicken korma, which she recommends pairing with an order of poppadoms and peshwari naan breads from your favourite local curry house.

One of the many beauties of Midweek Recipes is the margin size. Jess is a firm believer of making a recipe suit your personal tastes. The margins are deliberately wide to “encourage readers to scribble on their notes about each recipe as they work through the book”.  Our kitchen has already made our copy appear well-thumbed. As soon as we received our copies, they began making their way through the book. They have made lunch specials inspired by recipes, including baked sweet potato with tomato butter beans, and a few sweeter recipes for our cake cabinet.

When Jess and her Mum delivered our order of books, Jess recommended we make the Treacle Fig Tea Loaf. She suggested we serve it in the café with some cheese for our Deli. Sceptical at first, we went along with it and had Sue make a loaf or two for us. Kim also selected some cheese from the counter to pair with it. Well…it is delicious! The staff all tried some and as a result can now highly recommend it to customers when they visit. We paired it with Cornish Kern but you could also pair it with an Alp Blossom.

What Jess has created is a simple guide of how to cook from Monday through to Friday.  Covering everything from crispy kimchi and cheddar fritters to the easiest lemon-cream linguine. In the final section you will even find a self-saucing chocolate pudding. The perfect dessert to flop onto the sofa with at the end of a long day. If you consider yourself an experience home cook but are looking for something to help you try new ideas then Jess’s recipes could be for you. Similarly, if are a little less confident in the kitchen, it could be a great place to start. This book keeps things simple and delicious and the result is ‘easy, joy-filled’ Midweek Recipes.

We were lucky to host Jess at Mainstreet to launch the cookbook. You can read about the event HERE. 

If you would like to order a copy of the cookbook, please get in touch with us.