What's cooking?

Supposedly, in any couple, there is one who packs the dishwasher with the precision of a Scandinavian architect, and the other like a monkey on crack cocaine.

In Tweddley Manor we have something similar going on with cooking. One of us approaches the whole thing with as many rigorous guidelines as a nuclear scientist. And the other is the one who actually cooks.

I won’t tell you what one I am, but I figure you could guess.

Cooking is an interesting old thing because though we all need to eat, we don’t see the making of food in the same way: Some people follow recipes to the letter. Some see recipes as guidance. Some people are terrified of cooking, or find it bewildering or boring. And there are those who enter the kitchen with the expectation that something edible will happen somehow.

That last one is me. I’m not completely recipe averse, but I've never met a recipe yet I haven't wanted to adjust, and some I’ve even openly argued with.

I don't mean to. It's just sometimes I don't have exactly the right thing the recipe says, so I'll go for something roughly in the same direction. Like if it says brown sugar and you put in white or vice versa, that's not a war crime, is it? And sometimes they want you to put in stuff that's blatantly ridiculous. (Like honestly, does anybody genuinely like shrimp, or do they just pretend to?)

I love recipe books. I like stories of what other people have made. But when it comes to actual cooking, ingredients are specific to the here and now. Nothing that is natural is ever completely identical to anything else. There are always variants.

Also in my house, everybody has their own wee idiosyncrasies: Gluten is like arsenic to me, so anything even remotely pastry-based has to be adapted. Fergus won't eat fruit, Lachlan doesn't like vegetables, and Mark has attitudes about anything that's “too chewy” (don't even ask). But every day we each need to be fed. So usually I pick up a notion of what I could make and head off in that direction.

I did once follow a recipe to the letter and it was an unmitigated disaster. Many years ago, when the kids were small, I used a Nigella recipe for steak pie. Now, I’m sure when Nigella makes it, it's lovely, but my kids still talk about it. It has become a thing of legend, like some cruel and unusual torture from Game Of Thrones. Even the mere whisper of ‘steak pie’ in my house can bring on a communal shudder.

I freely admit my own methods don't always work out. Recently, a friend who is going through some stuff came round for dinner. I thought I could make a big comforting lasagne. But lasagne should not be like a big soup that's crunchy in the middle - even we Cumbernauldian, non-Italians know that. Still, I like to think that the meal may have been comforting in that it clearly showed that everybody on the planet is completely capable of a shit show.

Mostly though, it works out fine. Nobody complains and plates are cleaned. Also, we’re that house where people come round for dinner most weekends, so if my food was truly awful, I'm guessing that wouldn't happen.

Occasionally people who have come round will ask for the recipe for something I've made, and Mark will blurt out that no such thing exists. And when a couple of friends suggested I ought to write a cookery book, he literally choked with laughter at the idea of it. “A wee skoosh of that…. A wee shimmy of this… A dollop of thingmy.”

He explains that his main problem with my form of cooking is that it's both brilliant and frustrating because he might get the best meal he's ever tasted, and know that there’s no chance in hell he’ll ever get to taste exactly that same meal again.

(You know, for a guy who gets his dinner cooked for him most nights, Mark can be remarkably free with his opinions.)

I generally respond by saying that he can’t have that meal again, but we can’t have this moment, this day, this life again either, so go with whatever the flavor.

(Nothing like a bit of smug philosophy to win an argument)

Anyway, I have the same problem with all sorts of recipes - not just food ones. Anything that says it’s an instant recipe for success, I know I'm going to disagree with.

Because ingredients are specific to the here and now. And nothing that is natural is ever completely identical to anything else. In food and in people. So there can never be only one singular, one-size-fits-all way to move forward.

I like to hear of other’s experience, I'm happy to take advice, and open to instruction. But I long ago gave up the idea that anyone else had the exact recipe as to how to run my life, or that I had the correct recipe for running anyone else's.

So I go my own way. Following as the notion takes me. I go through periods of life where I make a pretty good job of it, and other times when I’m a complete disaster. In the end though, it seems to work out.

I know it's not for everybody. We are each of us are different people. And if ever I forget that, I just have to watch Mark in the kitchen, packing the dishwasher with the precision of a Scandinavian Architect, and know that I could not love him more.

So here’s my recipe advice - for what it’s worth. Go with your gut. In all things. Add a big dollop of confidence, and only a tiny wee skoosh of doubt. Marinade in a big bucket of ‘life is for living’, sprinkle it all with a proper shimmy of gratitude, and bake at a temperature of everything generally works out just fine in the end.

You don't have to follow it to the letter. You don't have to follow it at all. But that's what works for me.

Till next week

Xo

xo

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