This book is about how to avoid being intimidated by recipes, how to understand and have fun cooking and everything that goes with it. With chapters on why we cook, how to shop for good food without the hassle, how to experiment, and put it all together, and finally just a few tips on health and safety.
Contents
Why bother?
1 Health and Safety
Some basic points about working in the kitchen
2 The purpose of cooking
Why do we cook at all?
– Cooking Veggies, meat, fish and fruit
3 Hassle free shopping
How to shop the easy way
4 Experimenting
Some ways of experimenting without too many disasters.
5 Putting it all together
How to cook a delicious meal from whatever you have in the cupboard.
6 Having fun with parties
Now you can invent using the resources of all the people you know and things from their cupboards.
Epilogue and bits and pieces
Not-a-bibliography
-------------------
Why bother ?
Why bother writing yet another cookbook? There are plenty of cookbooks aren’t there?
This book started out from the idea that most cookbooks don’t satisfy most people. At least they don’t satisfy me. I get given more than I buy, because people know I like cooking; but I hardly ever use them. So I asked myself, “why?”
And I asked other people, and they gave a number of reasons:
1. You don’t like being told what to do (me too.) If you want a book which will tell you precisely what to do this is not the book for you. This is a book for people who like to choose.
2. There are always some parts of the recipe which leave you still wondering ‘how’, or ‘why’, things that are not explained, so it might go wrong anyway (me too.)
3. You don’t have the stuff in the recipes, at least, not all of it, and when you try to go shopping for the things you need the shops don’t have them, and you are not sure what to do, so you just go home and make something up (me too.)
4. You start following the recipe and miss an important bit out or get the timing wrong or the sequence wrong so it goes wrong anyway (me too.)
5. You might get it wrong and poison themselves (not my worry, but read the book to find out why.)
So even with all these cookbooks out there, people aren’t cooking for themselves and therefore not eating as healthily as they could. And not having much fun with food.
I think I am quite good at making recipes up, and so I started applying some thinking about how to do this in a systematic but creative way. Finally I decided that if I was going to do this for myself, why not make it a book?
When I told my sons that I was going to write a cookbook they immediately said: “For cooking whatever you have left over in the cupboard.”
They know me well.
So here is my rationale for this cookbook:
1. I like to buy and eat fresh food, so that rules out most cans and frozen and dried foods.
Fresh food tastes better and is better for you.
2. I don’t want to shop everyday so I have to store some food but I can’t store too much or it won’t be fresh.
3. If I don’t know how to make something from what I have in my fridge/cupboard then it gets older and older, so this book is about how to use what you want to use when you want to use it.
4. I don’t like planning what I want to eat the next day. It kind of spoils the fun and excitement and how do I know what I want the next day? It’s hard enough when you are shopping for the next meal you are planning.
5. I don’t like having to remember what I bought and when, so I want to keep it turning it around naturally, creating almost empty cupboards before I shop.
That way I can go into the shop and buy whatever I want and it feels great.
'All the cookery books I've seen (even Delia's How to Cook) are very specific - here you'll pick up the fundamentals of cookery and of designing a recipe, something everyone from a reluctant amateur like me to a budding chef would find irresistible.'
Brian Clegg, Author of Ecologic, The truth and lies of green economics.
Contents
Why bother?
1 Health and Safety
Some basic points about working in the kitchen
2 The purpose of cooking
Why do we cook at all?
– Cooking Veggies, meat, fish and fruit
3 Hassle free shopping
How to shop the easy way
4 Experimenting
Some ways of experimenting without too many disasters.
5 Putting it all together
How to cook a delicious meal from whatever you have in the cupboard.
6 Having fun with parties
Now you can invent using the resources of all the people you know and things from their cupboards.
Epilogue and bits and pieces
Not-a-bibliography
-------------------
Why bother ?
Why bother writing yet another cookbook? There are plenty of cookbooks aren’t there?
This book started out from the idea that most cookbooks don’t satisfy most people. At least they don’t satisfy me. I get given more than I buy, because people know I like cooking; but I hardly ever use them. So I asked myself, “why?”
And I asked other people, and they gave a number of reasons:
1. You don’t like being told what to do (me too.) If you want a book which will tell you precisely what to do this is not the book for you. This is a book for people who like to choose.
2. There are always some parts of the recipe which leave you still wondering ‘how’, or ‘why’, things that are not explained, so it might go wrong anyway (me too.)
3. You don’t have the stuff in the recipes, at least, not all of it, and when you try to go shopping for the things you need the shops don’t have them, and you are not sure what to do, so you just go home and make something up (me too.)
4. You start following the recipe and miss an important bit out or get the timing wrong or the sequence wrong so it goes wrong anyway (me too.)
5. You might get it wrong and poison themselves (not my worry, but read the book to find out why.)
So even with all these cookbooks out there, people aren’t cooking for themselves and therefore not eating as healthily as they could. And not having much fun with food.
I think I am quite good at making recipes up, and so I started applying some thinking about how to do this in a systematic but creative way. Finally I decided that if I was going to do this for myself, why not make it a book?
When I told my sons that I was going to write a cookbook they immediately said: “For cooking whatever you have left over in the cupboard.”
They know me well.
So here is my rationale for this cookbook:
1. I like to buy and eat fresh food, so that rules out most cans and frozen and dried foods.
Fresh food tastes better and is better for you.
2. I don’t want to shop everyday so I have to store some food but I can’t store too much or it won’t be fresh.
3. If I don’t know how to make something from what I have in my fridge/cupboard then it gets older and older, so this book is about how to use what you want to use when you want to use it.
4. I don’t like planning what I want to eat the next day. It kind of spoils the fun and excitement and how do I know what I want the next day? It’s hard enough when you are shopping for the next meal you are planning.
5. I don’t like having to remember what I bought and when, so I want to keep it turning it around naturally, creating almost empty cupboards before I shop.
That way I can go into the shop and buy whatever I want and it feels great.
'All the cookery books I've seen (even Delia's How to Cook) are very specific - here you'll pick up the fundamentals of cookery and of designing a recipe, something everyone from a reluctant amateur like me to a budding chef would find irresistible.'
Brian Clegg, Author of Ecologic, The truth and lies of green economics.
