Elizabeth David was perhaps the most influential postwar cookery writer in Britain, championing good ingredients cooked simply and unpretentiously. This selection, taken from a number of her best-loved books, all of which are still published by Penguin, celebrates food in summer: from the joys of market shopping to the correct approach to dining outdoors.

For the ideal picnic there has to be water, and from that point of view, France is wonderful picnic country, so rich in magnificent rivers, waterfalls, reservoirs, that it is rare not to be able to find some delicious spot where you can sit by the water, watch dragonflies and listen to the birds or to the beguiling sound of a fast-flowing stream. As you drink wine from a tumbler, sprinkle your bread with olive oil and salt and eat it with ripe tomatoes or rough country sausage you feel better off than in even the most perfect restaurant. During one golden September in the valleys of the Corrèze, the Dordogne and the Lot, I enjoyed just such picnics, day after blazing day. The tomatoes that year and in that region were so rich and ripe and fragrant that I shall forever remember their savour. Then, one day in a pastry shop in Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, we bought a tarte aux mirabelles made with yeast pastry. Those little round golden plums of early autumn on their light brioche-like base made an unexpected and memorable end to our outdoor feast. Another year it was Normandy, early autumn again, and daily picnics in the magnificent forests of Mortagne, Brotonne and Bellˆme, in clearings where foxgloves grew high amid the bracken, and water was always within sight. Once or twice we sat by the banks of the Seine, looking at landscapes and riverscapes which Corot had surely painted.

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If you like this book, you may also like these:

Something for the Weekend - Jamie Oliver
In Defence of English Cooking - George Orwell
On Shopping - Which Gladdens The Heart - India Knight