A few weeks ago, as part of the British Library’s food season, the novelist Michèle Roberts, biographer Francesca Wade, writer Eli Davies and food writer Rebecca May Johnson were brought together for a discussion on women’s culinary lives, and on the kitchen as a space of creativity, resistance and intellectual life. I couldn’t be there, but by all accounts it was a brilliant discussion, which I hope was recorded.

I have, though, read all four authors’ recent books. Davies’ perceptive and funny The Spinster Cookbook, which explores what it means to shop, cook (or not) for one in a society designed for couples and families; Wade’s tremendous and deeply researched exploration of the making and remaking of Gertrude Stein in Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife (was Stein a genius or the high priestess of the cult of unintelligibility? We are left to decide); May Johnson’s welcoming, challenging and tomato sauce-filled Small Fires; and Roberts’ slim, second cookbook, French Cooking for Two.

Food, cooking and feminism are constant themes for Roberts, the French-British author of numerous critically acclaimed novels, including the Booker prize-shortlisted Daughters of the House. Much to the delight of her readers, her first cookbook, French Cooking for One, was published in 2024, and this follow-up was published last year. It is a slim volume containing 170 short and uncomplicated recipes adapted from historical (in particular La Bonne Cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange of 1929) and personal recipes (her aunt, Brigette, ran a domestic science college in Isigny-sur-Mer, and kept kitchen notebooks, which inspired many of the recipes). Arranged by season, the recipes offer a no-nonsense introduction to French cooking and the art of eating well: herb soup, green beans with peppers and almonds, braised mussels, chicken with tarragon and capers, lamb Normandy-style, baked eggs with cheese, redcurrants with soft cheese, leek and tomato soup, coffee ice-cream … The message throughout is: cooking shouldn’t be complicated, but fun and self-nourishing.

Roberts’ writing is fun and nourishing, too, and while the recipe instructions are as swift and unfussy as the recipes themselves, there is enough of her witty observation to satisfy. French Cooking for Two is also about friendship. Indeed, its opening line is: “Friendship is my oxygen.” Roberts continues: “Friends delight, surprise and sustain me. Spending time with them fills me with warmth and happiness.” On another occasion, she noted that “sex and poetry and anchovies and friendship and pasta = delight”. And her recipe for chicken saute with tomatoes and mushrooms also equals delight.

The dish was confected for Napoleon, apparently, “after a victorious battle, when supplies had been left behind, but not the chef, who put together an impromptu dinner for the boss with what he requisitioned from a local farmer. Subsequent generations of chefs overcomplicated the recipe. This is a simplified version, with which to celebrate friendship not war.”

The last words come from Roberts, who suggests buying pudding from a shop, because it is more fun to lay the table, polish the glasses and light the candles. Then you are ready to open the door and welcome your friend.

Michèle Roberts’ chicken saute with tomatoes and mushrooms

Serves 4

Olive oil
8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
4 large tomatoes
100g mushroom
Salt and black pepper
Dry white wine

1 tbsp minced flat-leaf parsley
1 garlic clove, peeled
Stale bread

Working in large, deep frying pan or casserole, add a thin layer of olive oil, then lay in the chicken thighs skin side down and put the pan on a medium-low heat. Leave to fry until the skin is golden, then turn over the chicken pieces and brown the other side – this should take about 20 minutes in all.

Meanwhile, nick the tomato skins, plunge them into boiling water for three minutes, then lift the tomatoes into cold water, at which point the skins should slip off easily. Halve the tomatoes, scoop out and discard the seeds and cut away any tough bits, then roughly chop the flesh. Wipe the mushrooms and quarter them.

Season the chicken with salt and pepper, then add the mushrooms and toss for a minute. Pour in a glass of the white wine, let it whoosh, then add the tomatoes and minced garlic, and leave to simmer for 20 minutes. Towards the end of the cooking, stir-in the parsley.

In the last minutes of the cooking time, fry the cubed bread in olive oil with a little salt to make croutons, then serve the chicken with a few croutons on each plate.