Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1591 in DVD
• Released on: 2009-11-16
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Formats: Box set, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 10

Synopsis
British celebrity chef and "real food" campaigner, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall is back in this amazing 10 DVD River Cottage Collection.

Well known for his back-to-basics philosophy on cooking, Hugh has resided at River Cottage for a number of years now, cultivating his vegetable garden, raising chickens, pigs and even cattle for his table. He is an ambassador for local, seasonal produce which he cooks to perfection. Whether it be from the wild, the garden or even off the shelf, Hugh offers a variety of remarkable recipes to enthuse & salivate over.

This specialRiver Cottage Collection is a delightful feast and follows Hugh on his wonderful investigative culinary journey as he showcases the very principles he stands for; self-sufficiency, food integrity, and the consumption of local and seasonal produce.

7 Series including:
- A Cook on the Wild Side
- Beyond River Cottage
- River Cottage Road Trip
- River Cottage Gone Fishing
- River Cottage Spring
- River Cottage Autumn
- The River Cottage Treatment

Customer Reviews

A welcome collection of Hugh's more recent series
Following on from 2007's River Cottage collection comprising Escape to River Cottage, Return to River Cottage and River Cottage Forever, in which Hugh chronicles his trials and tribulations at the original Dorset site, this collection of 7 series picks up the story of his life on a new site. They comprise:

River Cottage: Spring, River Cottage: Autumn, Gone Fishing, Road Trip, A cook on the Wild Side, Beyond River Cottage and The River Cottage Treatment.

Beyond RC chronicles the move from Dorset to Devon. The RC Treatment details Hugh's attempts to convert lovers of junk food into fans of real food. Gone Fishing devotes itself to the fishing world and starts to up the campaigning nature of the franchise as it considers how a sustainable fishing industry could operate. Spring and Autumn looks at both seasonal recipes while also covering the lives of inexperienced gardeners as they attempt to grow on their first plot of land. A Cook on the Wild Side seeks to make recipes only from produce found in the wild, and Road Trip's title sums up that one.

After the original adventures, in which watching someone going self-sufficient felt as if it were a genuine venture into the unknown, the later ones are more stage-managed and less assured. They lack focus and direction with it being unsure if they're trying to be cookery programs, campaigning food programs, reality tv featuring odd foodie people, or programs detailing the triumphs and disasters of Hugh's business ventures. But that mixture of styles often works well as there's always something for everyone, and the breadth of subject matters gives the franchise its charm.

Beyond is perhaps the most entertaining, being the series that is most like the first three series. Cook on the Wild side revels in the bizarre delights on offer in hedgerows, moors and beaches, and is a lot of fun. Gone Fishing also finds a good angle for looking at the subject of fish, which has been done a lot by other shows. Less successful is Treatment, which feels contrived and laboured and also feels like something I've seen too often before. Road Trip is a bit of an after-thought, feeling like Hugh didn't know what kind of show to make that year and opting for a Rick Stein Food Heroes type wander around scenic Britain. Autumn and Spring are a welcome return to form with a good balance of the reality of self-sufficiency and recipes.

So overall this is a fine retrospective collection of the last 7 years or so of RC ventures.