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This is my personal tribute to Katharine Whitehorn the former @guardian (Observer) columnist who has died aged 92. She taught me how to write and how to cook. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jan/08/pioneering-observer-columnist-katharine-whitehorn-dies-aged-93
Aged just 16 I left a small Clydeside town (Gourock) in the late 70s & washed up in a dingy bedside off Kensington Church St with a single ring gas stove, purple cord carpet & Whitehorn’s “Cooking in a Bedsitter” for company (not counting the Boyfriend) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cooking-Bedsitter-Katharine-Whitehorn/dp/1844085686/ref=asc_df_1844085686/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310823491886&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13173688749681697792&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9046884&hvtargid=pla-755852970712&psc=1&th=1&psc=1
Her recipes in that book helped us survive ( I was a temp, he carried a hod). We discovered marinading our meat for survival (no fridge!) & some amazing stews, the most memorable involving kidney beans, tomatoes and nutmeg...and Spanish omelettes which I make to this day
Katharine Whitehorn helped us save money when we were absolutely skint. Every Sat we went to Brixton Market for chicken livers and bacon “off cuts” that she recommended sautéing with apples for various amazing cheap but quality recipes.
But this wasn’t just about cooking. Bent over my single gas ring with her paperback in one hand, I absorbed clipped, clear, witty prose. It influenced and inspired me to become a journalist after I when to uni years later
I felt a particularly affinity with her veneration of women who reject domesticity - in praise of “sluts” as she put it.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2013/oct/09/katharine-whitehorn-sluts-observer-1963
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2013/oct/09/katharine-whitehorn-sluts-observer-1963
So farewell Katharine Whitehorn. A fantastic, pioneering journalist who I later discovered spent formative years in Glasgow like all the best folk I will seek out chicken livers in your honour tomorrow https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/17/british.vegetablesrecipes
