Are you pondering what I’m pondering?
Reading about cooking doesn’t always get the creative juices flowing. Rather, it can be downright disheartening to read about the adventures fellow cooks have had in the kitchen, because it often happens that they have had the same ideas and executed them better. When I think of some ‘daring’ way to combine a number of ingredients, I only have to enter them in Google to discover that others have beaten me to it: all I have to do is follow their recipe. This also goes for writing about food and cooking on this blog. When I finally read Michael Ruhlman’s ‘Elements of Cooking’ during my summer holiday, I wanted to cry with frustration: he said exactly what I wanted to say, only so much more eloquent! But I decided that instead of sulking, I can turn this frustration into something more worthwhile: it offers me a chance to share with you my intentions with this blog. Why, if I’m so easily daunted by other cooks and food writers, do I bother to blog at all? What do I want to add to the plethora of food blogs in existence?
Well, first of all, I want to show my readers how easy and rewarding cooking can be. Gone are the days where we would boil all life from vegetables and herbs were regarded as exotic frills, something those darn hippies would probably try to smoke. There’s no need to spend hours in the kitchen if you’re not inspired, with some simple standbys you can have your dinner ready in a matter of minutes. If you’re feeling particularly uninspired after a hard day at work, there’s nothing wrong with opening a few cans and tossing those together, if that makes you happy (in fact, I’ve been known to veg out on the couch with a bowl of popcorn for dinner on more than a few occasions). But I want to show you that it doesn’t have to be hard work to cook for yourself.
Apart from showing you how easy cooking can be, I want to take you by the hand and show you that recipes which are usually regarded as ‘daunting’ can be quite simple to execute. There’s no need to be awed by the list of ingredients, and there’s no reason to give up when some ingredients can be difficult to come by. A substitution or two doesn’t always mean that you’re compromising on flavour! Even though the authors of the River Cafe Cookbooks would probably have you flogged if you admitted to using canned beans instead of fresh ones, there’s really nothing wrong with being inventive. And I’ve ejected so many rotting ginger roots from my freezer to realize that the stuff from a jar probably is a better solution in terms of waste.
But apart from the ingredients, I also want to explore techniques and methods most people find very intimidating, such as stuffing sausage, home-made pasta, soufflés, flambéing, and many others. How did I fare in the kitchen? How can you avoid mistakes that I made? Will my eyebrows ever grow back? Etc. I also want to clear up myths you often encounter in recipes, such as: ‘put the potatoes in the oven for 20 minutes at 190 degrees Celcius and take them out when they are golden brown’. Believe me, I’ve tried this many times and it would take some thorough experimenting with nuclear energy to achieve this. 50 minutes at 230 degrees would be appropiate, but somehow all cookbook authors include the former recipe… Will they ever learn?
Anyway, I hope it is clear from this that I want you to come along for the ride and learn with me about everything cooking entails (we’ll make fun of ridiculous notions on the way! It’ll be such fun!). So, get your knives out and be fearless in the kitchen!
