The War On Cookbooks
I remember a scene quite a few years ago whilst trying to
follow a recipe for a simple brie soufflé, where I ended up throwing hard
rocks of brie in to the bin over and over again. I never even got around to
beating the egg whites and in the end gave up and decided to do some brownies
instead. It was years before I attempted the recipe again and unfortunately
when I did I came out with similar results. My recipe had been written by a very
famous and much respected chef and so despite my continuous failure I
persisted, assuming that this was in some way my fault. How could I be getting
this wrong, time after time, or how could this decorated chef be fallible on
such a simple recipe?
Looking back I wasn’t alone. I remember my mother’s frustration
at following recipe after recipe to the absolute letter. I remember her
excitement before hand and her mild disappointment when serving her children or
her dinner party something which was a distant cousin, twice removed from that
which had appeared on the pages of her cookbook. Still she persisted, unwilling to change that which was
written in stone in the pages of her Delia smith cookbook. Still clinging to the promise
of that gastronomic eureka moment that was almost certainly on its way, courtesy
of the new hardback revised edition.
My Girlfriend Helen has also been victim to the post recipe comedown, only with her slightly temperamental nature this can sometimes result in me having bowls of pasta or stew flying past my head and going straight to telephone to order a takeaway.
This had to stop.
Things are better in our house these days. Not just because Helen is a better cook and I now work full time with food and work in professional kitchens, but mainly
because instead of reading recipes and cookbooks I now read about the food itself.
What it is, how it cooks, why it cooks, how long it takes to cook at any
temperature and in what way. To understand the nature of what your cooking and
the science behind the method, means that rather than having to read recipes
every time you want to cook something, you can almost work it out for yourself.
And whilst you will almost certainly have to refer from time to time to books
for inspiration and advice, you will take that advice for what it’s worth and
not for what it says it is worth.
Learning to cook by copying Gordon
Ramsey recipes will not make you the next Gordon Ramsey, just like
learning to play the guitar by copying Jimi Hendrix songs will not make you the
next Jimi Hendrix.
So I'm going to look at some basic
cooking techniques and recipes, but in little more detail than
normal. I promise to never give you exact measurements, timings or temperatures
for any recipes, except where absolutely necessary. But instead
tell you about why the food should be cooked that way and so hopefully you can
work that out for yourself, for your own oven and for your own ingredients. We
all have different ovens, different environments and different farms
on which different food grows and lives, so why the hell we all expect our
different chickens to cook for the same amount of time is beyond comprehension.
Food is cooked when it's done and not when it’s supposed to be.
I hope you enjoy some of what I write and if you have
any suggestions of your own please send them in.
