the BOOKLESS COOk philosophy

The reality for home cooks today:  'life's too short to stuff a mushroom'

For most of us juggling work, childcare and the daily commute, the idea of spending a long time in the kitchen at the end of the day is unappealing.  More than that, ever since Shirley Conran planted the notion in our collective consciousness that ‘life’s too short to stuff a mushroom’, it's simply no longer culturally acceptable.  An ever expanding roll-call of easy-to-prepare products – pasta sauces, prepared vegetables, frozen Yorkshire puddings, children’s ready meals!, a whole Mexican meal for two in a box!! – has liberated us from the daily tyranny of cooking, and freed us up for other pursuits (such as replying to emails, running children to extra-curricular activities or watching TV boxsets), which have now claimed a permanent place in our lives.

The problem with processed food

Unfortunately, the products we consume in jars and packets tend to be mere imitations of the real thing, that is, food made from scratch with natural ingredients.  They often contain cheap, refined fats, starches and sugars, processing aids, synthesised flavourings and colourings, and intensively-farmed meat and fish.  They’re not necessarily good for our pocket, our health or the environment.  And we’re missing out on all sorts of delicious, good value produce because we have no idea what to do with it.  For example, when was the last time you bought artichokes?  Or British greens/ an unpopular cut of meat/ a whole fish/ fresh mussels etc?

A few noble souls, recognising that we don’t want to be slaving away for hours over a stove each night, have come up with some recipes for meals in minutes, using a combination of time-saving techniques and fast-cooking ingredients.  The intention is good. But what the cookbook industry fails to recognise is that following a recipe is only a part of the process of getting food on the table. 

Why recipes aren't the answer

First of all, there’s a big piece of work before you even get to the cooking stage:  deciding what to cook, and making sure you have all the ingredients to hand.  If you’re recipe dependent, this can be time-consuming.  This is because recipe books are a one-way download of recipe-writers’ favourites.  They don’t take into account your personal situation, say that, on Mondays you try not to eat meat; on Tuesday, you’ll have some potatoes that need eating; and on Saturday you will need to feed 13 people, one of whom can’t have gluten. Because recipe books can’t be all things, to all people, all of the time, this means, for those with little culinary know-how, there’s another job that must be factored in to the busy week – sifting through recipes, and making sure that the contents of fridge and cupboard align.  And if you haven’t made time to do that, then, as you do the mad dash around the supermarket, you’re just going to resort to the easy option.  You'll be in good company – the average UK household has a repertoire of less than five meals, which they cook week in, week out.

Then, there’s a big piece of work after the cooking stage:  the clearing up.  Cooking from scratch involves knives and colanders and pans and chopping boards and graters, and so on.   And unfortunately, unlike the celebrity chef, we don’t have a whole team of food stylists and kitchen hands who – after we’ve prepared our 30-minute-meal – will wipe the spatters off the hob, scrape the residue off the griddle pan, scrub the pots which are too large to go in the dishwasher, hand wash the Magimix and return ingredients to their rightful places.

The Bookless Cook philosophy

This is where I come in.  I want to show you how to make the whole process easier, not just the actual cooking, but the bits at the front and at the end of the process as well.   I do this by sharing – through hands-on cookery courses, demonstrations, learning materials and written pieces – the Bookless Cook philosophy:

1.    RELY ON KNOW-HOW, NOT RECIPES
The proliferation of recipes has decreased our ability to think for ourselves.  Prospect magazine's journalist Julian Baggini puts it thus: “codification is the death of judgement. The more any kind of task or procedure is reduced to a formalised and strictly determined set of steps, the less we use and develop our judgement.” (https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-tyranny-of-recipes.)  As such, planning what to cook takes longer (recipes don't take into account our needs), shopping takes longer (recipes don't care about streamlining shopping lists) and cooking takes longer (recipes are inefficient schedulers of work:  they plod through tasks sequentially, when, in the real world, it often makes practical sense to combine steps on one day to save on another).  

I provide know-how to help you decide what to cook, and how to transform and combine ingredients without needing step-by-step instructions.

2.    KEEP A 'CAPSULE LARDER'
The ‘capsule wardrobe’ was a term invented by legendary clothing retailer, Susie Faux.  It refers to the practice of investing in a set of good quality essentials – some smart trousers; a few versatile shirts; a beautiful pair of boots, etc – from which a large range of outfits can be created with the addition of one or two season-specific pieces.  It’s a concept that works for food as well as for fashion.  I keep a small inventory of reliable, versatile ingredients in my ‘larder’ (that is to say, my fridge, freezer or cupboard), which I make sure I never run out of.  I can, if I choose to – and I often do – create meals from these items alone.  But several times a week, I nip into the supermarket (or occasionally, a fancy deli) for a handful of seasonal or perishable items with which to ring the changes.  This reduces decision fatigue and makes shopping faster.  It also cuts down waste (no more half-empty jars lurking in the back of the fridge because you needed a small amount of an obscure ingredient for a one-off recipe).

I teach using ingredients from my ‘capsule larder’ and help you understand what in the supermarket is ‘good to eat now’. 

3.    COOK IN STAGES
Cooking from scratch doesn’t mean cooking everything all at once.  For example, savvy cooks batch cook a pile of greens one day and throw them into various dishes throughout the week, minimising the amount of time spent in the kitchen at the end of the day and the washing up.

I explain which ingredients can be prepared in advance, and how to handle them, so that cooking dinner on a weeknight becomes more about assembling ingredients rather than their lengthy transformation.