It should be the simplest of activities; after all, Mankind managed to work out how to make fire thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years ago. In that intervening span of time, you would have thought that the uniquely human activity of taking raw ingredients and cooking them should now be so commonplace that we are masters of the kitchen, able to produce the most suptuous of meals with barely an afterthought.
Apparently, it's not that easy.
"It is 80% brown with a few soft pieces, some hard lumps and weird stringy bits."
No, this is not a description of a new life form recently discovered in a cave somewhere, but an appraisal by my son of my attempt to make a beef stew.
"But," I argued, "it was a Jamie Oliver recipe!"
My son smirked nastily and left his riposte unsaid, which would likely have been, "Well it was a Jamie Oliver recipe — until you got hold of it."
Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on myself; he did eat most of it after all. But it made me think about the lengths some of us go to in trying to produce great food, as well as the hidden dangers of not doing it properly.
In my case, I do all the cooking at home. Without exception, I produce breakfast, lunch and dinner alongside regular snacks, cauldrons of tea and even the occasional pudding.
Quite how I have managed to become the sole heir to the oven is anybody's guess, because I don't like cooking. It's a chore. It's hard work. It takes up an awful lot of my time, and my efforts are not always gratefully received. But still I persist, somehow having evolved into the role of chief meal producer. Which is not to say that I don't get help, of course. My family is forever peering over my shoulder whilst I am busy chopping, peeling and mixing and giving me helpful hints and advice.
It is not uncommon for me to hear pearls of wisdom like, "You need to simmer that, not boil it," or, "You need to chop that up a lot more," or, my personal favourite:
"Oh, you've made spaghetti carbonara/ beef wellington/ full roast dinner with all the trimmings?
I just fancied a salad."
But the thing is, despite being the archetypal anti-cook, I really want to impress. I would really like to make a meal that not only tastes divine but also looks as it is supposed to. Maybe that's a common human feature and would explain why some men and women spend hundreds of hours in hot, cramped, noisy kitchens being screamed at by a little despot in a big white hat in order to learn the art and craft of cooking — even if the result is basically a teaspoonful of prettily arranged foodstuffs that will set you back about 50 quid.
And I bet they don't have someone saying, "Oh, you've made Blanquette de Veau with a Moules Mariniers starter?
I just fancied a salad."
These cooks are so good at their job that they can, for example, serve up roasted shrimp brains on toast and not only will it taste great, but it will also look like a minor work of art, and I envy their abilities.
Having said that, I wouldn't have the time to construct elaborate creations. I can just imagine me tweezering the last rose petal and delicate slice of sashimi onto a glittering platter before hearing the inevitable, "That fish needs more grilling."
No, with two growing lads to feed, my cooking tends towards the hearty, and a scattering of brightly coloured edibles on a plate just won't do. But just once I would love to hear the words: "Dad, your presentation was a masterstroke of inventiveness and your cooking just sublime."
Alas, it is not be.
On the other hand, I have yet managed to avoid food poisoning my family. I call that a small triumph because it is a sad fact that cooking, or under-cooking, is one of the more dangerous activities we subject ourselves to.
Each year it is believed that up to 600 million people are afflicted by pathogens in food. That's alot of unhappy people who were carrying out nothing more nefarious than trying to have dinner. The cause of this unhappiness is down to just 3 species of tiny bacteria: Campylobacter, Clostridium perfringens, and norovirus who between them manage to wipe out 420,000 people each year - about half the population of a city the size of Birmingham.
And how do we manage to do this, you may wonder? Well, it is partly due to undercooking, with poultry being one of the worst contenders in this regard. Salmonella, a hardy little bacterium, is largely responsible for any number of people having a miserable time, and yet despite entreaties on consumer packaging to thoroughly cook your chicken thighs, some people just don't see the need, resulting in at best a nasty tummy bug and at worst death.
But bear in mind that it is not just poultry that harbours potential lethality: Fish, vegetables and salad are also among the many places these critters live, just waiting to provide you with a meal you will remember for a long while. Assuming you don't succumb completely, that is.
So let me take a moment to congratulate all those hard-working individuals who can take a basket of raw ingredients, do amazing things with them, avoid poisoning thousands of people, and render their audience speechless, as frequently do I, but for different reasons.
Do you have any tales of cooking disasters, or triumphs? Let me know in the comments!
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Surviving planet Earth
فكاهةLife's a beach. And just like a beach, we occasionally get stuck in the sand. When that time comes you may want to refer to this book. Alternatively, please feel free to use it as a shovel.
