RaveThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)In our digital age, recipes in their thousands – usually impersonal, briefly written formulas – can be found online within seconds. First, Catch – which does contain recipes, albeit in a different form to those \'neat little lists\' – is a kind of riposte to this approach, reacquainting readers with the serious business of cooking and eating by dedicating 200-odd pages to one meal alone ... Eschewing fuss and frills, Eagle’s focus is on ingredients cooked well, without overt showiness, yet with intelligence and technique, using human skills rather than modern technology. The zeitgeist is palpable ... The result is an intriguing story that touches on such esoteric subjects ... Literary references are equally wide-ranging ... What grounds the book, though, is Eagle’s deep, practical understanding of cooking, acquired through many years in countless kitchens, and his cheerfully greedy love of eating ... The physicality of cooking gives a satisfying weight to his prose ... Appropriately, Thom Eagle’s prose requires the reader to pay close attention to his words in order to appreciate the digressive, nuanced points he makes. The result is a book as rich and rewarding as the rabbit stew he spends so many chapters making.
