Does everyone have a practiced dish?

"Do they even want to have a practiced dish?"

Browsing through my blog ideas from here and there - mostly quotes from various people, I came across this one from the website Nigella Eats Everything.

“Everyone has a repertoire. Even if cooking simply isn’t your thing or you pay a private chef to cook for you, everyone has a practiced dish up their sleeve.  Whether it’s a spaghetti bolognese, the Sunday roast, or a secret family recipe, it’s the dish you return to like a well-worn pair of slippers."

So of course, I immediately thought of my own practiced dish - spaghetti and meatballs - originally Robert Carrier, now still his basic recipe but with a few tweaks here and there over the years. I cann do it in my sleep.

However, think a little more carefully about what she is saying there, and it's really not that simple - because of her opening statement - "Everyone has a repertoire." Everyone?

Which reminded me of a conversation I had with my friend Monika over our lunch on Saturday. The food that I made - see the Postscript in yesterday's post for a rundown - was pretty delicious though I say it myself, and also, most notably, pretty easy. It was lunch - three courses - and all made in the morning. So fast, and nothing very complicated, although I suppose a beginner might not have thought that. At some point late in the meal, we pondered on why everyone didn't cook, because of the sheer doability of such a meal. My lunch all came out of recipe books. I had not made any of it up.

Although I did add one thing from Hugh FearnleyWhittingstall, to Nigel's recipe for the plums - which actually did indeed just take a few moments to put together and just a little longer to cook. I made it whilst my companions were starting the cheese course and it was ready by the time we finished. Maybe 10 minutes or so to put together and the same to cook. So a complete beginner could have made it. The most difficult thing about it was shopping for mascarpone and demerera sugar (although any sugar would have done), and removing the stones from the plums.

Monika and I decided that the real problem is not that you can't find ridiculously easy things to cook these days from a number of different sources, but that people just don't want to cook. Children love to cook and to help mum in the kitchen - it's fun, it's togetherness and it's confidence building.

Witness the look on my young son's face, many, many years ago as he was photographed with his apple pie. But then somehow they lose it. Maybe it's because the teenage years often coincide with a period when mum is working and doesn't have the time to spend cooking with her kids. Maybe it's just their whole life is focussed on friends and relationships, and getting the required results at school, or in sport. Food is something that appears on the table at dinnertime and they have no interest really in where it came from. Or how. Their tastes tend not to be very adventurous either.

Eventually, later and later it seems today, they leave home, and then they have to eat. And alas, here they either resort to takeaway if they can afford it, or maybe just have baked beans on toast, or whatever the modern equivalent is. Later still when they have children of their own for whom they have to provide food, they may indeed, at least feel that they have to try to make something. But not always. Sometimes they resort to the readymade - be it from a takeaway source or the supermarket.

It's a dilemma to which I don't really have an answer. Should we make schools, in those teenage years, put aside a moment in a busy curriculum to teach children how to, not just cook, but enjoy cooking? I know that a few people have said, and I've quoted them here and there, that if you can read, you can cook. Which is sort of true, but if you don't like reading, and many don't, why would you? Somebody - was it Robert Carrier, Julia Child, Jane Grigson? also said that if you liked to eat then you could cook. Which I think may be a truer way to look at the problem, and something on which it is easier to build. Which led me to a reddit discussion coming from a longish question from someone calling themselves dgaldeus, more or less summed up with these words:

"I know that I have to learn it which is unfortunate because I have pretty much zero interest in doing so. It's not that I don't enjoy eating good food, but I just don't have the motivation to cook for myself. I'd rather spend my time doing stuff I enjoy more. ... I've browsed through cooking/food related subreddits, and while there definitely are things that I would like to eat there isn't really anything I'd want to cook." dgaldeus

Various people responded with solutions, some of which were pretty useless, but some of which were really quite insightful, as this one from WizrdNeedsFoodBadly:

"Choose 3 to 5 dishes you really enjoy eating. (Better yet, find someone who loves to eat to cook for! Enjoyment and sharing are perhaps the most important parts of a meal.)

Get recipes from a reputable source (internet searches are notoriously disappointing).

Keep making those dishes until you have memorized the processes and can make them from memory. (Realize you'll fail sometimes and it's okay.)

Once you can make them from memory, try improvising on those dishes.

Choose 3 to 5 new dishes and repeat the steps above."

And interestingly of all the other, what I consider good advice, that I saw here and there, the words in brackets about making them for somebody else, and the practicing part of the process were the most often repeated - witness Gordon Ramsay, no less who said:

"In order to create a little bit of confidence, start cooking with pasta. Pasta is phenomenal. Once you've cooked pasta properly for the first time it becomes second nature."

Gordon Ramsay

When I was looking for a photograph to illustrate this I found several that I could not use, because of watermarks all over them, of very happy groups of teenagers making pasta together. Which did indeed illustrate the words of that reddit responder who said "Enjoyment and sharing are perhaps the most important parts of a meal" - and the cooking thereof. So maybe teenagers should be encouraged to get together with their friends and cook a meal either just for them or for their families.

And to Gordon Ramsay's pasta I would add - tray bakes, stews and stir fries. Maybe a Spanish style omelette as well. All hugely adaptable. It's really just the process that you need to learn, although in Britain where the Co-op retail chain did a survey into the cooking habits of millenials, finding that basically at least half of them didn't, they also found that:

"ignorance about ingredients and how flavours work together as the two biggest skills gaps within this age group."

And I'm not quite sure how you deal with that, other than encouraging them to notice what is in the food they like.

I won't go into the whole question of recipes, how to find them and choose them. Maybe another post. Other than this rather good piece of advice, which probably applies to all of us:

"The test ... should be: How badly can you mangle the recipe and still get something incredible?” Tim Ferriss

I think my original impetus for this post - that quote from Nigella Eats Everything, is aimed at an audience that is further along the cooking adventure than our very reluctant teenagers and millenials. Only slightly though - at the point when you have mastered our reddit responder's suggestion of mastering three new dishes at a time. She advises her readers to:

"take to your kitchen and concoct your specialty dish. Food you make with confidence and love is a comfort and will be enjoyed by all who eat it." Nigella Eats Everything

Fear of failure is a dreadful thing. So yes, you should quietly practice in hiding, unless you can do it with somebody else who needs to learn as well or a friendly teacher - like your mum who won't criticise. There's nothing more bonding than overcoming obstacles, and achieving something - something edible when it comes to cooking - even failing together. And when you actually master that one signature dish:

"Its comfort is quietly confidence-boosting and you’re soon bouncing around the kitchen, tea towel nonchalantly slung over one shoulder like the kitchen is your stage and you are the act cheered by thousands. All it takes is the knowledge it will be delicious and you are the next Gordon Ramsay.”  Nigella Eats Everything 

And I could definitely apply those sentiments to my other practiced dish - I will call it Robert Carrier's kebabs, because he had a few different names for them. I have made these countless times, modifying them slightly over the years. The taste is divine, but it is so simple - just cut your beef into strips and marinade in a very simple mix of olive oil, lemon juice, soy suace, ground cumin, garlic and chopped onions, feed onto skewers, and barbecue or grill. It's a family favourite, sometimes served to others and it never fails to impress. A child could make it although mum might have to cut up the meat and the onions.

That said - honestly I don't know how you convince someone that it's easy to cook, and that it will give you an enormous sense of satisfaction when you see the delight on the faces of your 'customers'.

When looking for quotes about practice I also found this which is rather dispiriting:

"If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it." Ray Bradbury

Alas we have to eat. Robert Carrier may be aiming too high, but in some ways he is much more practical when he says:

"Each of us eats about one thousand meals each year. It is my belief that we should try and make as many of these meals as we can truly memorable."

'Truly memorable' is too much to hope for perhaps, 'eatable' too low, but somewhere in between is achievable by anyone - even millenials. And make it fun. He was very much into fun.

YEARS GONE BY

March 24

2024 - Noodle burgers

2023 - Breaking my own rules

2022 - Something with mushrooms - and pastry

2021 - Celebrate with lunch

2020 - Deleted

2019 - Spain in Ballarat - Picasso, tapas and viura wine

2018 - Lucky dip - Meissen china

2017 - Lebanese delights at Maroush in Eltham - alas no longer there