There is, so far as one can ascertain, only one Rowley Leigh. Yet this weighty curiosity gives the impression of having been written by two people of that name who hardly know each other. RL1 proposes some 140 recipes, most of them daunting, labour intensive, time consuming and demanding a level of culinary aptitude which is liable to be denied to even the most enthusiastic amateur cook. RL2 has composed the same number of brief tracts, whimsically titled, whose accretion amounts to a steely affirmation of the chef's vocation and with it the implicit counsel that daunting, labour intensive recipes are perhaps best left to the professional: you do not, after all, go to even the most enthusiastic amateur dentist for root canal treatment. The gulf in craft between an experienced, multiply gifted chef and a domestic demi-god out to boast to its friends is chasmic.
