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"  England has a trinity of famous food personalities: Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver, and Tamasin Day-Lewis. While the first two have become successful U.S. imports, the latter, despite being the sister of actor Daniel Day-Lewis and a close friend of celebs such as Julia Roberts (who you might recall was linked to the There Will Be Blood actor back in the &amp;#039;90s), is known here mainly to insiders. This might have something to do with the fact that, although Day-Lewis&amp;#039; ethos is similar to Lawson and Oliver&amp;#039;s\u2014we ought to mostly eat delicious food using fresh, humanely sourced ingredients\u2014her delivery is not as user-friendly as Nigella&amp;#039;s (you too can be a domestic goddess) or the Naked Chef&amp;#039;s (throw some arugula in, mate\u2014that&amp;#039;s the secret, innit?). The demystification of cooking is not her primary concern; the poetry of the palate is.  But her latest book, Supper for a Song, may be what expands her U.S. reputation. The title alludes both to getting something for nothing and to the always-out-of-pocket bohemian who pays her way by providing good conversation. While in it she sets high expectations (for instance, that you might have all Saturday to bake), she also teaches, accessibly, how to transform and stretch basics into magical meals without feeling like a sacrificial, shop-your-pantry pessimist. For ELLE, for March, when we desperately need a lift but expensive ingredients aren&amp;#039;t worth the cost because nothing local is its best, she created a doable, deliriously beautiful, guest-worthy feast out of little more than root vegetables, stale bread, chicken, and citrus fruit. The only splurge is Marcona almonds, the smoky-sweet Spanish nuts that, once you try them, will ruin you for the usual kind.  Day-Lewis&amp;#039; father was the Anglo-Irish poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, a key figure in post-World War II London literary circles. Tamasin grew up surrounded by culturally significant personalities. Before becoming a cookery-book maven (as the English say), she was one of the first women to read English at King&amp;#039;s College Cambridge (in the &amp;#039;70s); then she toiled for years at a successful but unremunerative documentary filmmaking career under the shadow of her brother&amp;#039;s rising star. While her proximity to the intriguingly famous makes her a bit prickly, it&amp;#039;s also made her determinedly herself. In fact, with her masses of pond-fairy black hair and plunging necklines, age be damned, she&amp;#039;s ever so slightly (and I say this with feminist appreciation) like a sexy, mysterious witch.  She&amp;#039;s unflinchingly judgmental of those who eat mass-produced food, insisting she would rather go hungry for a few hours than eat a &amp;quot;grotty&amp;quot; Pret A Manger sandwich or airport fare. &amp;quot;People are obsessed, they&amp;#039;ve got to cram food into themselves wherever they go,&amp;quot; she tells me over the phone from Somerset. Here in her fifteenth-century house, three hours from London, in the land of hunts, garden orchards, and prize hens, she films her television show, writes for the Daily Telegraph, and takes firm stands on how to live. She endorses rabbit: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s free round here\u2014the price of a cartridge. It&amp;#039;s better to eat than fish that is not sustainable.&amp;quot; She also cooks roadkill pheasants she spots while out running rather than see them go to waste. She brushes away the working mother&amp;#039;s angst about her children&amp;#039;s meals in her absence: &amp;quot;I had a nanny [for my three]. A fantastic cook. What&amp;#039;s the point of employing someone to look after your children if they don&amp;#039;t put good food in their stomachs?&amp;quot; Her occupation never compromises her style: &amp;quot;Oh please!&amp;quot; she declares, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t wear aprons.&amp;quot; She cooks in one of her 200 pairs of Manolo Blahniks (the designer is a close friend).  Be her positions refreshing or wildly out of touch, those in the U.S. who have discovered Day-Lewis&amp;#039; oeuvre find in her combo of aristo-Brit pragmatism and memoiristic dreaminess an unparalleled kitchen arsenal. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s inspirational to me,&amp;quot; says Ruth Reichl, ex-editor-in-chief of Gourmet. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s instinctive and forgiving. There&amp;#039;s a joy. Americans are used to a certain kind of precision. She more talks out her recipes, but they really work.&amp;quot; Rouse yourself from your February cocoon to host with this end-of-winter menu, and you&amp;#039;ll find that the intoxicating flavors sorceried out of everyday ingredients, the heady colors, and the surprises (pureed rye bread in soup?) provide the succor of art while we wait for ripe plums and the return of more decadent seasons. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/travel-food/a10941/fresh-take-tamasin-day-lewis-426324/>