In the grumpiness stakes there is nothing that annoys me quite as much as not calling things what they actually are, for fear of upsetting someone.
Listener has easily achieved the ringing of the annoying bell with the following page, from the March 21-27 edition of the “current affairs magazine”.
The list purports to display 25 “Secrets and Shortcuts of good cooks”.
The trouble is, only a few are actually for cooks, and the majority of these things are actually secrets of good husbandry, or what they call in the vernacular, house-wifery.
But instead of getting picky about why or why not this is husbandry and not cooking, I thought I’d run over a few secret of cooks.
- Keep your knives are sharp as possible. Dull knives are more dangerous, and will give worse cuts
- Keep your implements handy. If you’re freaking out looking for a spatula in the drawer while something starts to burn, you’ll end up with no spatula and no dish
- Read a recipe before you start cooking. You should only be referring to it to remember the tricky bits while you cook
- Practice new or strange recipes on willing victims before plating it up for guests (god knows how many times I haven’t followed my own advice on this one). Hungry dishwashers are easy to replace if you poison one
- Switch on the oven as a first step. If you’re waiting for that thing to get to 180 while your batter starts to split, you’re sunk
- No kitchen is ever too small. If you’ve run out of space you’re either too ambitious, or too messy
- Speaking of which, clean up after yourself as you go. That way, when things fall to pieces at least you know which bits of the meal you can actually save (and not have to decide if the mess the roast has fallen into has made it inedible)
- Plan how you’re going to assemble a meal before you even start. There will be a sequence you need to follow to make it efficient, hassle-free, and delicious
- Too many cooks spoil the broth, unless you have rapport
- Mise en Place, or “Prep”, is the most important thing you’ll ever do. Carefully lay out each part of the meal as you intend to cook it. Cut vegetables and keep them in separate bowls for example. DO NOT start cutting or peeling garlic after you’ve put the onion in the pan…
- Fresh is always best
- Chopping boards, keep them wood. Wooden boards have the right amount of give, and hardly ever turn a knife like those awful plastic ones
- Chopping boards, never ever wash them in detergent. A strong blast of very hot water and a metal scrubber (like a goldilocks) is all you’ll need. Plastic boards are proven to harbour all kinds of bacteria, while a good wooden board, treated right, is relatively sterile
- There is a difference between social, and obsessive or gourmet cooking. Make sure you own up to which you’re practising.
And that is the world according to Che (will add more when I remember them…, or when people point them out.)
12 May, 2009 at 2:39 am
No kitchen is too small? Maybe, especially if there are just one or two sensible adults working in it. But I tell you, Che, that when you have three daughters lined up at the bench “assisting” you, then more bench space would be a real blessing.
12 May, 2009 at 4:15 am
#9.
12 May, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Yeah, but how else are you going to teach the kids to cook, eh?
12 May, 2009 at 11:19 am
Deborah – agreed. I have a tiny kitchen now and family baking is not how it was. I find I can only produce reasonable meals if everyone stays out of my way. eith 3 kids under six – tricky.
Apart from that great list Che. Makes me feel better about people coming for dinner this week
12 May, 2009 at 11:34 am
well… i think i can now safely say you’re conflating ‘parenting’ and ‘cooking’.
i was trying to cut pumpkin the other day while CDP howled from a bouncinette.
neither is stress-reducing.
12 May, 2009 at 12:56 pm
“Practice new or strange recipes on willing victims before plating it up for guests”
Nah look I’m sorry, it’s the element of danger that makes the enterprise fun. There’s always fish and chips if there’s a complete disaster.
Apropos having a plan – yep. This basically means knowing how long things take, and knowing which things can be left unattended. Then you can figure out what order tasks need to be done in, and do them one at a time.
Apropos bench-space – I have a lot of chopping boards. Clean chopping board = fresh bench.
12 May, 2009 at 1:20 pm
i think i can now safely say you’re conflating ‘parenting’ and ‘cooking’
Maybe… but teaching children to cook is very important. And family life often revolves around kitchens. So really, more bench space is better, and even desirable.
12 May, 2009 at 9:15 pm
of course teaching is important. but please refer to the new #14
12 May, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Regarding #3, this also means having a look to see that you’ve got the required ingredients.
Regarding #1, at a certain point you realise that the knife you have is never going to be sharp – maybe it was of poor quality, maybe its at the end of its life. Time to go out and buy a new one, which will dramatically improve your time in the kitchen. This isn’t an excuse for not sharpening knives before you get to that point, however.
A good chopping board is also essential.
12 May, 2009 at 7:30 pm
12. Mis en place. Any ambitious cooking I do gets as much prep as possible. It makes the cooking easier (two pots and a wok on the stove and something under the grill, I don’t want to be cutting up onion), makes sure I have all the ingredients or have decided on my substitutions, and makes me notice unfortunate repetition (every dish starts with sautéing onions? or every course has tomatoes? fix the menu!).
I think it also makes me better when I’m not doing set up. I know that my favourite Indian curries should be ghee, whole spices, wet spices, ground dense spices, tart/wet vege/fruit, tart spices, other ingredients, but having done it with good set up often enough means I know what each group will include without conscious thought.
–
I disagree with your 9 – I love group cooking efforts. With a couple of my friends one of our common dinner/evening plans is pick a cuisine we’ve never cooked before, plan a complex menu, spread all the ingredients out on one bench, photocopy recipes, and cook like maniacs wih lots of laughter, lots of “do you think it should look like that?!” and “Can you keep an eye on my eggplant while you fry your spring rolls and I’ll get started on the chutney for your appetiser”.
13 May, 2009 at 10:50 am
Ah ha #14 – Agreed. While pre-children I was prone to ‘gourmet cooking’, its all social now
15 May, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Does anyone know a good place to get knives sharpened professionally in Wellington? I’ve used House of Knives in Petone before but it’s not very convenient.
15 May, 2009 at 12:26 pm
that might be it. i’ve looked for a decent place myself, and my knives are becoming blunt because i can’t be arsed hauling all the way out there…
29 April, 2010 at 1:44 am
[...] is only 140cm long, and some of that space is taken up by the kettle and the coffee grinder. Yes, I know well organised cooks ought to be able to manage in very small spaces, and indeed, I can, but I also have three children who are all learning to cook, and there is [...]