Cooking Easy Food

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E N J O Y

I don't believe that people don't like cooking, I think there are a lot of people who do love good food but do not have the basic knowledge and skills to begin to cook.

If somebody gave me a plank of wood, saw, hammer and nails and told me to make and fit a shelf, I couldn't and neither could I plumb in a dishwasher, I'd feel bewildered - I wouldn't know where to start.

Cooking requires a basic knowledge so that you can gradually build your skills and confidence when putting food together and tackling new ways of cooking - it's important to get acquainted with the BASICS before you begin.

There is nothing complicated in this cooking website, all you need is a love and enthusiasm for delicious good food.

I was very fortunate that both my parents could cook. My father was a butcher by trade and he rented an allotment and grew a variety of vegetables for us, so we ate well, despite growing up in the 50's, and as we didn't have ready-mades or takeaways, I grew up with the advantage of watching and helping my parents cook.

Although we have all fallen back on processed fast food at different times, there is no substitute for home cooking. You can eat well and you don't have to cook for hours. It's best to stick to delicious home-cooked fast meals in the week and choose the dishes that require a bit more time to excite your family and friends taste buds at the weekend, when you can spend a bit more time cooking - with a glass of wine of course!

Recipe hopping

Recipe hopping is an unnecessary waste of time, energy and money - this is where we get incredibly enthusiastic, buy several different cook books, dash to the shops only to get frustrated and disappointed because the ingredients are not in season, the cuts of meat or fish are not available and you are unsure how to substitute the missing ingredients. I have done this in the past myself several times and new cooks should be aware of how time wasting this is.

If you have never cooked before, you need to think about planning and organisation and I hope to show you the need for both and how efficient thinking can help you on the road to organised, enjoyable cooking with all the ingredients to hand when you need them. I will also help you to choose substitute ingredients.

There is a need to have a good stock of herbs, ingredients and cupboard stuff. If you hop from English, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Indian, French recipe books you will find it extremely expensive trying to stock up all the necessary ingredients, muddling because you will have to sit with your recipe books, write down all the new ingredients and run around several times trying to find them and, complicated because you haven't planned how to fit these new dishes in with your existing meals. If you are a complete beginner, you will be learning to cook several different types of dishes that take years for natives in those countries to learn and perfect themselves. I am not saying that cooking various continental dishes are necessarily complicated, but I am saying that you are juggling rather a lot of balls in the air at any one time and you will drop a few in the process. This is when cooking becomes frustrating and disheartening and your cookbooks go in long-term storage until you muster up the enthusiasm again.

It is important that you become confident with your recipes and by cooking them a few times, you will perfect them. Unfortunately this is something that we are not taught. If you plan your cooking properly and choose a few delicious recipes and practice them, you will soon learn the method and in doing so, you will become faster at choosing, assessing ingredients and cooking them.

(I would just like to say that if you are a person who takes time to do things and moves slowly - great - but be aware that cooking will take you longer than if you are a fast mover. There are times when cooking sauces that you need to stir quickly to stop the sauce from getting lumpy and timing is important in the preparation of ingredients in between cooking your main dish. If you have plenty of time to cook at a leisurely pace - great enjoy - but sometimes you will need to speed up).

There are three things that you must take into account before you begin cooking and once you clock these, you will be free to begin to cook properly

1. Stay with your cooking

It is important to stay with your cooking and try not to get called away too many times - if friends or family ring, ask if you can call then back. This sounds obvious but so many times we spoil cooking or burn food because we have been sidetracked - not to mention frying pan fires caused by pans of hot fat left forgotten on the hob.

2. Get to know your oven

You should be proactive with your cooking - don't let the oven burn it. Now this sounds as though we are blaming our tools for our misfortune of having to eat burnt food. Do not trust oven temperatures - the heat settings on new cookers should give a true temperature but with older ovens, the temperature settings can be unpredictable. You should also assess whether you have a large or small oven. Those of us with a grilling facility inside the oven (electric rods at the top of the oven) will have less oven space, in which case, despite what recipes books say, you might find that you usually need to place food in the middle of your oven. I currently have a fan-assisted oven which is deep but small and being an older model, the temperature is not true and it cooks rather faster than it should, which means, that I have to use the middle part of the oven more and also assess the cooking times. There is only one way to find out how your oven cooks and that is to use it.

Whether you have sussed your oven or not, you do need to check your delightful dish to see if it is cooking too quickly especially if you still have quite a lot of time to go or perhaps it is not cooking fast enough. You may also need to baste (spoon fat or cooking sauce over the meat, vegetables or fish that you are cooking).

As there is usually only a slight difference with oven temperatures, you should turn the oven up a bit (for undercooking) or you can turn the oven temperature down a bit (if overcooking is a problem) and you can also move the food to the next runner down in the oven. Remember - the hottest part of the oven is the top. If you want to slow cook, use the lower position in the oven.

3. Do not take recipe books as gospel

Recipe books do not always get it right. Firstly, they will sometimes tell you which oven position to use but you must remember that only you will know your oven and how it performs. I have also been convinced over the years that people who write cookery books have not always cooked the recipes themselves. You will find that you can have varying results from the weight/measure of ingredients or the method is patchy and not clear. Some cookbook authors state that the recipes are tried and tested, so it might be better to stick to these books.

Just for example, I have recently tried three different bread recipes, one of which was on the back of a bread-flour packet. Another was in a cookbook for a quick pizza base. Both these recipes were rubbish, one was too dry and the other didn't rise properly. I went back to my tried and tested bread recipe which has always worked. If you get a recipe that works, stick to it and adapt it for different tastes.

Please don't feel put off from cooking because I have shaken your trust in ovens and recipe books - think of this as an enlightening process to help you avoid mishaps with your cooking. By being aware that you cannot just trust recipe books or oven temperatures, you will become proactive with your cooking - which is what you should be. If you just follow the recipe, put your dish in the oven and leave the oven to get on with it, there is a good chance that you will have an undercooked or overcooked meal. If you spend money and time making the dish, why not follow this through and care about how it is cooking in the oven?

One of my father's favourite sayings was 'God provides the food and the devil provides the cooks'.

Don't be a devil with your cooking.

Quick and easy

I commute to London and work a full day. When I get home, I give myself 'me time' which means, I allow half an hour (or an hour) to cook. You owe it to yourself to put together something nutritious and tasty and while your food is cooking you can prepare a quick side salad or steam vegetables. Then you flake out in front of the television and enjoy some decent food with a nice glass of wine.

This may sound as though it will take ages but there are plenty of quickies that you can cook - they don't have to be difficult or time-consuming and even the humble jacket potato is nutritious and tasty if you take the time to put a good topping on it or pasta with a delicious quick sauce and side salad is far better than ready-mades and you get decent portions too.

If you go to the Quickies section, you will see easy, tasty and nutritious food for the week. Quickies

Planning and Organisation

Planning - plan your meals in advance for the week. Now you don't have to stick with this, you can alter the sequence or miss out a meal and have a takeaway or meal out - whatever. BUT, if you want chicken stock for a recipe that you would like to cook later in the week and you would rather make your own stock, you had better include a roast chicken earlier that week so that you can boil up the bones of the chicken carcass to give you the chicken stock. Common sense really but I was never taught this or have never seen this in any cookery courses that I have attended or read. No cooking books lead you methodically into an organised cooking frame where your leftovers can be planned into another dish later that weekend. How about you have potato and peas and other vegetables left over from a dinner earlier in the week - freeze the leftovers and turn it into bubble and squeak for Saturday lunch (recipe on 'Quickies').

When you plan meals, you are less likely to ruin your food. You will be able to shop effectively and more cheaply because you won't waste money on food that goes off in the fridge or sits in the freezer lost and you will be expecting X amount of preparation and cooking time for each dish. Get into the habit of planning your meals according to the time that you have available and be realistic about this.

Look at what is in season - meat, fish, vegetables and fruit. Once you are familiar with this, you can choose dishes according to what you can easily lay your hands on. If you are going to cook something really special that has unusual or hard to find ingredients, find out where you can get these first and then give yourself plenty of time to shop and be realistic about how much time you will have to cook it. Enthusiasm to impress can lead to disasters.

Take the stress out of food shopping, save money - plan your meals

Organisation - before cooking anything wash your hands, wash meat, fish, vegetables and fruit under cold running water. Weigh and measure ingredients and prepare the food ready for cooking according to the recipe. It's a good idea to do this first because cooking requires tight timing and if you have to prepare vegetables and weight ingredients in the middle of your cooking, you could end up overcooking what is already in the pan.
Preparation in advance - some foods can be prepared in advance and stored in the fridge. The general rule is that if you do this, remember that food normally stored in the fridge should go back there once it has been dressed ready for cooking. Perishable goods should always be stored in the fridge or freezer e.g. meat, fish, cold meats, cheese, butter, milk, yogurts and anything that has already been cooked or prepared for cooking.

It does help to pre-cook food in advance if you are short of time but remember to balance out whether pre-cooking will spoil the ingredients and whether your dish will store well in the fridge and not go soft or soggy. Always try to marianade meat and fish in advance because the marianade has more time to flavour and then you only have to take this out of the fridge and cook it, saving you a lot of time. (Meat should be left at room temperature for an hour before cooking if it has been refrigerated, this helps to stop it sticking if frying and helps prevent it shrinking). Please note, offal (kidneys, hearts, liver) must always be cooked straight from the fridge.

(A marianade is a mix of herbs, spices or fruits which are prepared in advance and meat or fish is left to soak up this mixture from half an hour to 12 hours - in a fridge. When oranges, lemons or kiwis are used they not only add taste, they also tenderise meat).

What not to prepare in advance - vegetables, fruit and frozen foods. Vegetables and fruit should be prepared just before you begin to cook e.g. fresh fruit salad and summer salads will spoil if prepared too early and the level of vitamins are known to drop as soon as fruit and vegetables are peeled and chopped. Although if you are preparing vegetables to go into a meat stew for example, you should cut up the vegetables before you begin cooking so that you can have all the ingredients ready. Frozen foods might need to stay frozen until you use them, read the label on the package to make sure. See Fruit & Veg for preparation and cooking.

Organisation will help you to relax and enjoy cooking

To begin, I am going to introduce you to a few basics (Basics) which is useful information to help fill in the gaps of knowledge for new cooks. As you will see on the Meat, Fish and Fruit & Veg sections, I have set out different methods of cooking and some delicious recipes to get you started e.g. Italian, Indian, French cooking The dishes that I have chosen have been well tried and tested,. I recommend them for their simplicity and taste but also because this will be a rewarding route if you are new to cooking. You will naturally build up a stock cupboard of ingredients that you need for this particular type of food and you will soon get used to the method and ingredients used. (Are you beginning to see how this type of planned thinking can make your early cooking experience relaxed, pleasurable and simplified?).