Tin Can Magic, cookbook review: 'Its recipes have injected my kitchen with creativity'
Food writer Jessica Elliott Dennison serves seasonal produce and natural wines at her café, 27 Elliott’s, in Edinburgh (pop in for warm-buttered Arbroath smokies, or pickles and fermented potato flatbreads).
In her first book, Salad Feasts, she transformed ordinary salads into occasion-worthy spreads; returning with Tin Can Magic (Hardie Grant, available to pre-order for £15 from Telegraph Books), she elevates humble, tinned staples.
THE APPROACH
Each chapter is dedicated to a tin: green lentils, tomatoes, coconut milk, anchovies, butter beans, sweetcorn, chickpeas, cherries and condensed milk (hello, miso salted caramel).
Every one is a masterclass in how to transform this trusty tinned ingredient – alongside fresh ones – into an array of dishes (lentils are used for everything from gyozas to fritters).
Recipes are accompanied by simply-styled, gorgeous photography and substitute suggestions, encouraging intuitive cooking: you might use dark beer, cider or white wine in lieu of red, for the slow-cooked anchovy lamb shanks with lemony greens.
THE RECIPES
I attempted a sugo (an Italian tomato sauce to eat with pasta) for a weeknight supper, and treated friends to za’atar chicken with a butter bean dip – followed by chocolate mousse to sate post-prandial sugar cravings.
Tomato butter sugo with fettuccine and feta
There’s nothing difficult about this rich, buttery sugo – made with a 35p tin of tomatoes – but it’s sheer alchemy. Simmered for half an hour, the chilli and garlic infused beautifully, and since it’s cooked with half an onion, unchopped and later discarded, it’s very smooth.
Simple indulgence, served with olives and a bottle of red. You could substitute ricotta for the feta, and use any pasta you have to hand.
Za’atar roasted chicken and whipped butter bean dip
This all came together with less effort than I anticipated, resulting in crispy roast chicken legs coated in herby, woody za’atar spice with caramelised garlic.
There was lightly-charred gem lettuce and Elliott Dennison’s trademark silky, lemony butter bean dip (it requires a blender). The crispy-fried herbs were a master stroke.
Dark chocolate mousse with pickled cherries
Who knew tins of cherries could be so useful? I loved the makeshift salt-and-pepper cherry crumble with toasted rolled oats on its own for a quick dessert, but the fluffy mousse, too, wasn’t difficult to make ahead and refrigerate for something a little special.
Adding red, white or cider vinegar added a pleasing tang to the cherries, and I saved the drained cherry syrup to make the suggested cherry and tarragon soda.
THE VERDICT
The range of recipes for each tin cleverly illustrates their versatility – Elliott Dennison shows how a dust-gathering can of coconut milk could be the hero of either a squash and fenugreek curry, or a salted coconut sorbet.
Tips and ideas to make each dish go further are scattered throughout. Tin Can Magic is now my go-to contemporary cookbook and its recipes have injected my kitchen with creativity.
