Tessa Bramley is the picture of everyone’s favourite country aunt. She is cuddly and plump; her cheeks glisten like a pair of ripe peaches and when she laughs her eyes close and crinkle merrily. But Mrs Bramley’s bosomy warmth and kindliness disguise a grittier side to her nature – and if she had not rebelled as a teenager, England might have lost one of the most indigenously inspired cooks of her generation and possibly one of the last to draw directly from a tradition rooted in the principles of Cobbett’s Cottage Economy and the practices of the landed classes of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
