The cookery column is dead! Long live the cookery column!

A guest post by Mel Barrett

I’m delighted to introduce the WFA’s very own new food writer, Mel Barrett. Mel will be writing a regular column for us, of which this is the first.

Mel Barrett is a former management consultant who, since leaving the corporate world, has worked with butchers, bakers and canapé-makers (and many others too!) who share her passion for food produced with integrity. She has authored/co-authored publications for Sustain (the alliance for better food and farming) on bread and London’s food economy, and is currently developing a new kind of cookery course. She has two young daughters.

When the managing director of the Wholesome Food Association asks you to write a cookery column, it can only be with one objective in mind: to get people cooking. And not just any old cooking, but the sort using the kind of produce sold by members of the WFA. The idea is that the reader, convinced of the benefits of various foodstuffs produced according to WFA principles, and armed with some ideas for their use, is thus inspired to seek out their nearest beekeeper, mould-ripened cheese or local box scheme.

If only it were that simple. The jobs of those in the business of behaviour change – health chiefs, environmentalists and criminologists to name just a few – would be a lot easier if all it took were some inspiring words and a few glossy photos to turn motivation into action. Proof of this surrounds us: more words on cooking are published and broadcast each year than ever before, yet, when it comes to the daily chore of feeding the family, fewer households are cooking from scratch. The cookery column has failed.

What do cookery publications do?

Cookery publications in general answer two questions: what to cook, and how to cook it. They help overcome two barriers to action – lack of skills and lack of confidence – by providing step-by-step instructions (some more successfully than others), and by adopting encouraging tones that chime with their audience (that bloke from Essex who didn’t go to university can knock out a roast, so maybe I can too). But, in the real world, where we have competing demands on our time and our energies, recipes – even ‘foolproof’ ones – are simply not enough to help the willing cook overcome the following stumbling blocks.

What are the problems?

1. Lack of time available to prepare and cook ingredients. For most of us juggling the pressures of modern living – stressful jobs; caring for dependants without the support of extended family living nearby; long commutes – the notion of spending hours toiling away in the kitchen at the end of the day is undesirable. More than that, it is simply no longer culturally acceptable. An ever expanding roll-call of products (pesto; ready-made pastry; prepared vegetables; fresh gravy; children’s ready meals!; cooked onions!; 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 (e.g. training for 10k runs; watching DVD box-sets) which have now claimed a permanent place in our lives. ‘Proper cooking’ has largely become a hobby, to be enjoyed at the weekend, when we can operate at a more leisurely pace. The cookery column looking to address this issue must provide know-how which makes time spent in the kitchen more productive.

2. Effort required to procure ingredients. The physical act of shopping is generally becoming easier (it is now technically possible to spend five minutes sliding one’s fingers over a small mobile phone screen one day, and for a van full of groceries to appear at one’s doorstep the next). The difficult part is deciding what to purchase, for the best recipe in the world is worthless if we don’t have the ingredients in place when it’s time to start cooking. Those with some culinary know-how may be able to dash round the supermarket or stroll round a farmer’s market without a list and ensure they return with all they need for one or more meals; for most this requires setting aside a chunk of time each week to consult recipes, check the contents of cupboards and write out shopping lists. Does anyone have the time nowadays – or the inclination – for such rigour, week in, week out? It’s another reason why processed food is such an attractive option for many, and explains why the average repertoire for those UK households who are cooking from scratch is only five meals: people stick to what they know. The cookery column looking to address this issue must provide know-how which helps us stock our larders and fridges more effectively.

3. Effort required to find the right recipe for the ingredients we have. Making sure we have the right ingredients for the recipe we want to cook is one challenge; working out what to do with ingredients that need using up can be equally taxing. There always seem to be items lurking in the fridge or cupboard whose purpose in life is not entirely clear to us: perhaps they were left over from another meal, or bought mistakenly when we shopped without a list, or made redundant when plans changed (a dinner guest cancelled; a quiet night in turned into an impromptu night out). Often included in this category are items from the veg box, as one comment on a BBC website highlights: “I like to cook, and I even like the challenge of planning meals around a surprise box, but it was just too hard to keep up”. Without the time in the week to sift through the stacks of cookbooks and piles of magazine-torn pages that adorn our shelves and clutter our surfaces, all too often these items end up in the bin, as statistics on household waste attest. The cookery column looking to address this issue must provide know-how which reduces our dependence on recipes.

What next?

Cookery publications educate us on the merits and characteristics of certain ingredients, inspire us with culinary customs from foreign lands, and guide us, like a trusted friend, through the process of transforming a few ingredients from their raw, bland state to an edible, flavoursome whole. However, they will never help us succeed with our onerous mission of getting a meal on the table night in, night out until they address the above problems.

That is the not inconsequential challenge this column aims to take on over the coming months.

by Mel Barrett