A PLEA for family recipes for inclusion in a new Jersey cookbook has been made by retired Hotel L’Horizon manager John Wileman.

He says now that he has more time on his hands, he would like to make progress on a project that he first considered when he arrived in the Island 40 years ago to manage the hotel.

At that time he wrote to the Evening Post, as it was then, appealing for readers’ family recipes for a cookbook.

‘Two things happened,’ he recalled.

‘First of all, a knowledgeable Jerseyman turned up on my doorstep and convinced me that there was no Jersey cuisine to speak of – and that I should abandon the idea.

Secondly, running L’Horizon seemed never to allow me the time to sit down and write a book anyway.’ There was actually a wonderful Jersey cuisine, he said.

‘The most popular dinners we ever staged at L’Horizon were those that featured conger soup, bean crock, des bourdélots, and so on, often Clos de la Mare wine and sometimes local cider.

Every one of those dinners, designed over the years by my management team, Yvonne Simmons and then David Le Gresley, was an absolute sell-out.

Clearly local people have a keen interest in Island dishes.’ He appreciates that several Jersey cookbooks have appeared over the years, but said that none of them seemed to have been written in depth – although he knew many people had put in a lot of care into compiling them.