Before Elizabeth David died in 1992 she & her editor, Jill Norman, had begun work on a volume of ” The Best of” but then her health deteriorated & the project was shelved. The idea was revived in 1996 when chefs & writers & Elizabeth`s many friends, were invited to select their favourite articles & recipes. Some sent notes explaining their choice, others provided an anecdote or a recollection about her, others sent lists of recipes they had been using for years. This book is the fruit of that harvest of recommendations & the names of the contributors, who number among them some of our finest food writers such as Simon Hopkinson, Alice Waters, Sally Clarke, Richard Olney, Paul Levy & Anne Willan, appear after the pieces they had chosen along with their notes. The extracts & recipes which make up ” South Wind Through the Kitchen” are drawn from all Elizabeth David`s books, namely ”A Book of Mediterranean Food”, ” French Country Cooking”, ” Italian Food”, ” Sumer Cooking”, ” French Provincial Cooking”, ” Spices, Salt & Aromatics in the English Kitchen”, ” English Bread & Yeast Cookery”, ” An Omelette & a Glass of Wine”, & ” Harvest of the Cold Months”. There are over 200 recipes in the book organised around courses & ingredients such as eggs & cheese, fish & shellfish, meat, poultry & game, vegetables, pasta, pulses & grains, sauces, sweet dishes & cakes, preserves, & bread, all interspersed with extracts & articles making it a delightful compendium to dip into as well as cook from.