Making sense of cooking
By Tom Browne
Every so often, when pondering ideas for articles, I consider writing something entitled ‘Recipes Or Cookbooks From People You Wouldn’t Expect.’
Of course, with Jamie Oliver selling over 14 million books, it’s no wonder that other would-be chefs want a piece of this action. But all the same, some truly surprising people have emerged from the woodwork.
I’m thinking here of The Negotiators Cookbook by Gerry Adams, which features this priceless non sequitur: “The Good Friday Agreement brought peace to Ireland that has lasted to this day. During the long days of the negotiations, the Sinn Fein team had to be fed.” Here’s Adams himself in the kitchen, while the recipes include such questionable puns as Long Quiche (a play on Long Kesh Detention Centre, at the risk of spoiling the joke).
At the other end of the political and dietary spectrum is ex-Tory MP Norman Tebbit. While Adams dishes up such down-to-earth fare as cottage pie and apple crumble, Tebbit is every inch the tweedy gent, as The Game Cook makes clear. “Tasteless, rubbery chicken” is not for Tebbit. Instead, his book delights in partridge, duck, deer and rabbit. I can certainly recommend his pheasant with apples and cream, although it’s difficult to imagine Adams tucking into it.
Anyway, I’ve never written this mooted article. This is partly because I couldn’t find enough bizarre examples (or couldn’t be bothered to look hard enough), and partly because the subject has limited appeal (“Hey guys, you’ll never guess who enjoys cooking!”) So it has to serve as an intro to this blog instead—an amuse-bouche, if you will.
Nonetheless, it does provide some lessons for the amateur cook. Firstly, as mentioned above, the most unlikely people turn out to be foodies. And secondly, there shouldn’t be any barriers when it comes to cuisine. If anything, cooking needs to be democratised, stripped of its pretensions and opened up to everyone.
There’s no reason why you shouldn’t serve prawn cocktail, followed by roast grouse, followed by sherry trifle. Who’s to say some of these foods are ‘posh’ and some are ‘common’? No, the only real barrier is knowing how to cook these bloody things in the first place. And unfortunately, that’s a barrier too many people fail to navigate.
Slouching towards mediocrity
My own cooking journey has followed a decidedly twisted path. For most of my life, I was content to dish up conventional cuisine: stews, spag bol, meat and two veg, the occasional apple pie. All perfectly respectable, of course, but there was no flair, no individuality, in my kitchen. I specialised only in the mundane.
I could cook in the sense that I could follow a recipe. If you wanted a lemon drizzle cake, I could make you a lemon drizzle cake. It would probably take an hour longer than the specified time (what is it about cooking times?), and the kitchen would be a riot of flour and discarded pots and pans. But rest assured, you would get your cake eventually.
During this period, I envied two categories of people in particular.
The first was the person who could throw together meals on the basis of what was in the fridge or cupboard, like an episode of Ready Steady Cook. You know the type. “OK, we’ve got some quinoa, 100g marzipan and a dead pigeon. Give me ten minutes.” Ten minutes elapse, et voila: a tasty meal appears in front of you, seemingly without effort
The second was ‘the improviser’, the kind of person that wasn’t constrained by convention. These guys often lurked in the comments sections of online recipes, constantly suggesting tweaks to already great dishes. “Delicious recipe! Not too keen on celery, so I swapped in some spinach and doubled the amount of coriander. My family loved it!”
I hated these people’s casual confidence, their devil-may-care attitude, their instinctive feel for food and flavours. There was an air of arrogance about their pronouncements. “Oh, I substituted a banana for a marrow and it worked perfectly.” Who the hell did they think they were?
Jealousy, of course, is a green-eyed monster—it needs to be conquered. It was no good resenting these boastful amateurs; I had to compete on their own turf.
The first step was assembling my tools. The same base ingredients, I realised, came up again and again: essential herbs and spices, oils, sauces, stock cubes, flour, sugar, raisins, almonds, desiccated coconut, tinned goods (beans, chickpeas, fish) and dried goods (lentils, rice, couscous). The best I had were various random jars purchased for one recipe only and left to moulder in the cupboard for years on end.
In neglecting this armoury, however, I was striding into the battlefield unarmed. This needed to change pronto.
Having stocked my kitchen, the next step was to master combinations. In other words, making a note of what ingredients and flavours went together, then using this knowledge to elevate otherwise basic dishes. This wasn’t exactly rocket science; initially, it was no more than mixing herbs or basil into a bolognese sauce. But the effect was revelatory.
Suddenly, things I’d eaten for years (roast chicken, veggie curry, chilli con carne) took on a whole new life. Simply by adding a dash of this and that, the near-sublime emerged from the borderline bland. Amazingly, people started describing me as a ‘good cook’.
Eggnog, a recent experiment in sickly indulgence
Reaching the foothills (and beyond)
It’s only when this stage is reached, I believe, that you really begin to enjoy cooking. It stops being a chore and starts feeling like a creative challenge. And once the foundations are in place, the decorative work can commence.
You begin to see the possibilities in foodstuffs, to fantasise about the dishes you could make. Suddenly, ingredients aren’t just ingredients—they contain a world of possibilities. You start carrying plastic bags with you, in case you come across fruit or berries (or even mushrooms) on country walks. Before you know it, you’re giving out jars of chutney or jam as presents, adorned with homemade labels.
Of course, I don’t want to exaggerate my skills. Despite my girlfriend’s urgings, I’m not going to cut it as a contestant on The Great British Bake Off. Unlike like these artists, I’m still very much in the culinary foothills. Haute cuisine is not on the menu. To quote Blackadder’s Baldrick, “I offer simple home cooking.”
Still, home cooking goes a long way in a hungry household. If I had one piece of advice to the budding chef, it’s to master the basics. Get really good at straightforward dishes. There are no shortcuts. Someone who can’t play Chopsticks is unlikely to bash out the Moonlight Sonata, so don’t run before you can walk.
However, be assured that persistence pays off. Once you’ve got those transferable skills in place, you’ll be mastering cheese soufflé and beef wellington in no time.
Just keep the cookbook to yourself.