Different ways of cooking

"experience a dish through the person most intimate with it."

Genevieve Ko/New York times via Smitten Kitchen

Now who might that be? Well it probably depends on where your meal has come from. Has it come from an actual recipe - and where did that come from anyway? And how closely did you stick to it? Did it come from your own head as you stared into the fridge and then as you started cooking? Or did it come into your head from somewhere else - something you fancied, something you saw in the supermarket, an ingredient in your pantry you thought you should use ...? Or was it something you know how to make by heart and you needed to make for the comfort and familiarity of it all? Or last of all was it something that you made to please your partner or your family or even a friend, even though you were not particularly fond of it yourself.

As we know there is no one source for what we might cook for dinner - there are many more than those I listed above. However, I am pondering on this question today because of a series of happenings, readings, thoughts that have knocked against each other over the last week or so. I'm probably repeating myself somewhat, but hopefully in a way that sometimes resembles the way I cook - same thing but slightly different.

Maybe the first thing was that article I wrote recently called Does everyone have a practiced dish? inspired by a found long ago quote from Nigella Eats Everything, which largely became a post about why some people didn't cook. Thta was about the style of cooking which consists of making the same thing over and over again so that you know it by heart.

Then, in my Smitten Kitchen newsletter there was a link to an article in The New York Times that was written by Genevieve Ko a professional cook who had made a New Year's resolution to

"follow recipes exactly as written, to get to know their creators without altering the dishes to match my own experiences or tastes."

Now all throughout last year and for a while this year as well, I have been trying to follow a series of challenges each week - something vegetarian, fish, legumes, and something rescued from the freezer. In addition I alternated each week by vowing to cook something from an actual recipe which was either from a relatively new source, or from a long ago guru. I very rarely managed all of those things, so I no longer write them down only to see a disappointing lack of ticks in my diary against all of those aims. So now I just keep them in my head - and I do try - but I don't really know how I'm going. Which is fine. The guru/new thing is what is relevant here. For yesterday I made a Robert Carrier dish which was the conclusion to a line of thinking about this post.

There's a lot of somewhat romantic and high-minded prose about cooking isn't there? And I have to admit that I am mostly a sucker for it all. Nigel Slater is nothing if not a bit precious and romantic. However, today I am feeling a little cynical about some of the things that Genevieve Ko said.

"To truly embrace another person’s background and culture, I need to suspend my own assumptions, culinary and otherwise. It requires a conscious effort that feels unnatural. ... By inserting my known likes and dislikes, I miss the opportunity to get to know another person, to see (and taste) her history and culture through her perspective. I want to experience a dish through the person most intimate with it." Genevieve Ko/New York Times via Smitten Kitchen

Which is, for her, a completely different feeling from her everyday cooking which:

"doesn’t make my heart race a little, doesn’t make me forget that I’m standing over my own stove because I’m tasting a place, a passion from somewhere far more thrilling than my kitchen."

Somewhat over the top I think, but then again ... Let me apply this to my cooking of last night's dinner - a recipe which came from this book - an ode to Provence and the people Robert Carrier spent time with there. It's a beautiful book and I have made several things from it. Not last night's dish however - which he calls Poulet sauté Pont du Gard. Now there is no picture in the book and so I searched the net to see if (a) it existed as an actual Provençal dish and (b) if anybody else had made it. No is the answer to both questions. In a post back in 2023 that I called Brown but so much more I talked a little about the same things - why Robert Carrier is not represented much on the internet, and whether his recipes were collected or created. A bit of both of course, but this particular one is a creation I feel, in the spirit of Provence.

Why the Pont du Gard though? And here I digress slightly, because, in fact the mention of the Pont du Gard was one thing I did get from this recipe in a non-cooking way - "tasting a place, a passion from somewhere far more thrilling than my kitchen." Pont du Gard. Every time I hear the mention of the Pont du Gard I think of a trip that David and I made to France sometime in the late 80s, early 90s. Back then the French in their carefree way allowed people to walk across the top of the bridge - no safety rails on the side - well that would spoil the look. So David of course, had to do it. Witness the picture on the left below. The edge he is closest to is the edge of the water tunnel through which I was walking - as far as he could get from the edge of the bridge itself, which is not very far as you can see. Foolhardy. It was windy up there, and there were others doing it as well, so you had to pass them. I don't know who was more scared - he or I. And he insisted on doing the walk both ways. I think he took a video as he went, which we have somehow on unreadable VHS. I know that he sees it as one of the great moments of his life. It was one of my most terrifying. The picture on the right was taken on a later trip. By then, walking across was no longer possible. Maybe too many people had fallen off. David was very disappointed. I was relieved.

But since this memory had been revived by the title of a recipe and because I had read that article, it also made me remember a food memory - of quite possibly the very worst meal I have ever eaten in France - possibly anywhere. We were staying nearby on a Sunday in a small hotel which had no restaurant and so we had to go into Remoulins for a meal. Not much was open and so we had no choice but to pick a small café. I can't remember who had which but we had a hamburger - heated in the microwave and worse than a McDonald's and an omelette, which may also have been heated in the microwave, was rubbery and swimming in grease. I have never forgotten that meal - the great irony being that it was in France.

So yes the recipe transported me to another place and another time, but I am not at all sure that I see the recipe through the eyes of Robert Carrier. Although maybe the whole book does that. The photographs in the book certainly do, as in the photo below of the other dish on the same page - Poulet aux olives - a fairly straightforward roasted chicken which is served with a kind of tapenade. A deconstructed one. Or - at the end of each chapter there is a meal prepared by some very well-known chef of Provence. This chapter featured Roger Vergé, so you could have a go at his Malfatis de St Moret, sauce à la créme de basilic - which are a kind of gnocchi made with a cream cheese. And actually it doesn't look that difficult. Maybe I should try it sometime.

Genevieve Ko talked about the difficulty she had when cooking from a recipe of sticking exactly to the recipe, and not tweaking it here and there to suit her own tastes. Caused by a mild unwillingness, I guess, of travelling outside one's comfort zone. Here is my version of Robert Carrier's recipe - apologies for the photo. You were supposed to wrap the chicken in bacon - which was supposed to be unsmoked. I had no unsmoked bacon, and so that's one thing that is not exact. I also had difficulty wrapping the bacon, because I think it was too thick. I should have rolled it out. But I did deseed the tomatoes - something I don't generally do - perhaps under the influence of Genevieve Ko - and I do think that it made a difference. In spite of it looking so awful it actually was pretty delicious - a very simple sauce of those tomatoes, with chopped onion, garlic and wine, finished off with halved black olives - which came out of a jar and not from a market in Provence. So no it was not exact, but I didn't stray that far away from the recipe.

These days lots of recipe writers actively encourage you to stray from the recipe, to put your own twist to it, whether it's a conscious attempt to improve or to adapt to your own taste, or because you can't find or don't have to hand a particular ingredient. Back in the days of Robert Carrier they didn't, although Robert Carrier in particular often talked about throwing together a meal for unexpected guests from what you had in the pantry. He was into fun. Elizabeth, Jane, and Claudia were much more serious. Genevieve Ko tells us to "choose recipes that will work as published", which is a little difficult because you don't know whether it will work until you have finished do you? Unless you go to someone who rarely lets you down - like Robert Carrier or Delia, Ottolenghi or Jamie. Nigel and Elizabeth David sometimes do - as does Stephanie.

In complete contrast, the meal we had the night before was one of those fridge raid meals. Completely made up on the spot from whatever I had in the fridge and had to use up - plus pasta. I think there was red capsicum, broccolini - chopped up - zucchini, garlic of course, cherry tomatoes halved, pesto, cream, lemon zest and lots of parsley, crisp slices of salami to finish it off with pangrattato. I may have forgotten something but the end result was delicious - really delicious and I didn't take a picture. Genevieve Ko says that this kind of cooking doesn't make her heart race a little. But I have to say that it does mine. If it works that is. Well it makes me really satisfied and just a little bit proud. And on this occasion it did, though I do think it's really difficult to stuff up pasta. So I was subsequently relieved to find that it isn't just me who feels like this about a successful made up dinner. Nigel thinks like that too:

"The art of crafting something by hand – a sandwich even- for others to enjoy is something I can always find time for. Making a dish over and over again till it is how you want it, whether a loaf of bread or a pasta supper for friends, gives me a great deal of pleasure…[i]f we follow a recipe word for word we don’t really learn anything, we just end up with a finished dish. Fine, if that’s all you want. Does it really matter how you get somewhere? I don’t think it does. Short cuts are fine, rule breaking is fine. What matters is that the food we end up with is lick-the-plate delicious.

Let us never forget that we are only making something to eat. And yet, it can be so much more than that, too. So very much more.’(Nigel Slater, Notes From The Larder)

I think Robert Carrier would have been on the same wavelength.

Tonight? I'm completely winging it again. Some pork steaks, some mushrooms past their best - probably some of the other suspects - mustard, sage, lemon, cream, wine. Not all - a selection. With the leftover potato gratin from last night.

I will try for an actual recipe during the week though. It is a very useful exercise. Indeed it's largely the way I learned to cook. Other than watching others, recipes were how I discovered what worked and what didn't, how I learnt to cook things I had tasted in France, what ingredients I needed to always have to hand. So this week I cooked from a guru - next week somebody new.

YEARS GONE BY

March 30

2024 - Cake for the lumberjacks or a queen?

2023 - Cooking for two

2022 - Nothing

2021 - Bring a plate

2020 - Deleted

2019 - Nothing

2018 - Looking for a steak recipe

2017 - Free range eggs - you can't win