Live For Food

Many people claim not to be able to cook these days and that always bemuses me. I don’t cook much from memory, I don’t make much up from scratch, but I find it very straightforward to follow a simple recipe.  Most of the dinners I cook started off as me reading a recipe, having a go, and making improvements next time I tried it. Every now and again there is a disaster that doesn’t get repeated.

There are also many different levels of cooking these days.  Say you want to eat a lasagne. You could buy a ready meal. You could buy fresh lasagne sheets, fresh meat sauce, and fresh cheese sauce and stick it all together. Or you could cook one or both sauces from scratch, or use various sauces in jars to assist. Cooking a meal can be as difficult as you want to make it.

I think that if you do cook meals from scratch its the best option. It will probably taste better, have fresher ingredients and less artificial additives. But I appreciate that the nature of busy lives mean that sometimes a halfway house is the best option.

So if you’re not used to following recipes these few tips might be helpful to give you a kickstart:

• Don’t pick anything too difficult to start with. Read the ingredients list, make sure you know what everything is and that you have it in.
• If its an internet recipe read other peoples comments on it to get an idea of how good it is.
• If its a sweet recipe, a cake or something, do not divert from the ingredients or recipe unless you are confident about what you doing.
• If its a savory recipe certain ingredients will be easily interchangeable. You can for example substitute different kinds of vegetables, or items such as yoghurt can be used instead of high calorie cream, turkey can be used instead of chicken, and different herbs and spices can be substituted for each other.  If you are not familiar with the recipe though, stick to it as written the first time.
• If it is a soup recipe, whilst you can swap different kinds of vegetables or meat, be careful to keep the same weight of vegetables or meat compared to liquid.
• Read the method all the way through before starting. Its not good to get half way and then see the instruction to marinade overnight if you want dinner in half an hour.
• Set the oven to warm up before you start, and grease or line any tins before you start as well.
• If you have vegetables to chop, do them all first. Otherwise you will find yourself rushing to chop things to get them in the pan at the right stage.
• After you have tried the recipe, write on it pencil what you thought of it and what changes you would make next time – otherwise you will have forgotten by the time you decide to make it again.
• Get to know your oven. Gas ovens cook quickest at the back on the top and dishes may need to be moved around during cooking to ensure things cook evenly.  Fan assisted ovens tend to need a slightly lower cooking time and temperature as they are more efficient. But each oven is individual and may take trial and error to get the best results.
• Keep a small set of electronic scales in your kitchen, they will come in useful.
• Work out what style of cooking suits your lifestyle. 15 minutes to cook dinner? Try stirfrys or fajitas. Free in the morning but busy in the afternoon? Try a slow cooker recipe or 3 hour casserole.
• Try not to be scared of or revolted by touching raw meat!  I found it really offputting for years.  Just use a separate chopping board and sharp knife for it and wash your hands afterwards.  You will get used to it and after a while you wont even notice the texture.
• And just in case it doesn’t work out always keep some fishfingers or something in the freezer for emergencies!
• Need an easy recipe book? Check out the BBC Good Food series of books – they tend to be straightforward with not too many ingredients, or buy a cooking magazine for a couple of pounds, to see if you like it.

For good measure my recipe disasters include:

• Making a sauce with pureed tomato and onion and after cooking it, it tasted like mushy raw onion.
• Reheating a turkey casserole in the microwave quickly instead of slowly heating on the hob – it was inedible, nasty and gelatinous.
• Mashed potato and chorizo soup. don’t ask.
• Yule log that turned into a pudding instead of a cake.

My consolation is that you learn from your mistakes!