First, the good news. According to a recent survey, the British can cook. Now the bad news. According to the same survey, a quarter of them have only three “recipes” in their repertoire. Of these, the most popular is sausage and mash, followed by beans on toast and spaghetti bolognese; a boiled egg and soldiers, in case you’re wondering, is at number four, while shepherd’s pie is way down at number 12.
The main problem seems to be an absence of basic skills. Of the 2,000 people surveyed, 73% have perfect faith in their ability to chop an onion, but only half feel they could competently cook a steak, and even fewer know how to butterfly a chicken. Seven out of 10 people admitted they cheat, relying on pre-crushed garlic and ready-cooked rice in the rush to get dinner on the table.
All this sounds a bit depressing to my ears, a conveyor belt of boringness that may only ever be stopped with a takeaway or a trip out. But I wouldn’t want to be too judgmental. It’s so easy to get in a rut in the kitchen. Sometimes, sitting at my computer before I do my supermarket order, my mind goes completely blank, as if the whole exercise is an exam for which I haven’t revised – and perhaps it is, in a way.
There is, I think, no greater test of even the competent and enthusiastic home cook than the demands of the day-to-day, the need to produce something good to eat when tired, or busy, or a bit less flush than usual. No wonder we fall back on failsafes. Only now, in middle age, do I realise how awful it was of us to groan at our mum on finding out it was macaroni cheese for tea again (a dish, incidentally, that came in at a lowly number 20 in the survey). What ingrates!
I’m preoccupied with ruts generally. The back-to-school new term feeling induced by September demands that I clamber out of several, whether cultural or culinary. But how to do it? In the kitchen, I’ve set myself a target of cooking one new (or newish) dish a fortnight, and in order not to wriggle out of this, my mantra is: buy now, worry about the recipe later.
This is how I happened to come home from the fishmonger the other day with a bag of clams in my arms – I’d gone in for a piece of tuna – though with shellfish, you hardly need a recipe. Garlic, a splash of wine, a hot pan with a tight lid: that’ll do it. I like clams at the best of times (they’re so intensely sweet), but what I loved about this unexpected Friday night was how daring it made me feel, and how glamorous – as if I lived, not in north London, but in Brest or Biarritz.
I don’t want to sound like some awful self-help guru – I’m for oozing cheese, not oozing platitudes – but one of the great things about food is that you can use it to spark joy at relatively low cost. A new winter coat may be far out of reach, or that holiday you are hankering after. But the pleasure to be gained from a small piece of smoked salmon or ham, some good bread, or some-flashier-than usual olives is wildly disproportionate to the outlay; nectarines, I think every time I eat one, juice running down my chin, should cost four times what they do.
On Friday lunchtimes, I’ve started going to a new class because of my bad back, and the walk to it takes me, by happy chance, past one of the stops of the old 70s milk float operated by the excellent and purposeful the Dusty Knuckle (this East End bakery makes fantastic croissants, but it also strives to help at risk young people with training and mentorships). I always stop, and I always come away with some little thing: a salted chocolate chip cookie for T, a fruit custard for me, a piece of delicious focaccia for us both. Not to sound smug, but it’s become one of the happiest moments in my week: the walk and the class make me feel I’ve earned a treat, and I like the fact I’m supporting a small business that does some good in the world. I may sometimes be, as we all are, deep in a rut, but do it right, and routine can be good as well as bad.
Kitchen Person: Notes on Cooking and Eating by Rachel Cooke will be published on 9 November (W&N, £20).
