A guest post by Mel Barrett

Mel Barrett writes a regular cookery column for the Wholesome Food Association. Mel 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.

To see Mel’s growing collection of cookery columns, click here.

The oldest collection of recipes in existence is a compilation named ‘Apicius’ from the Roman Empire. Modern readers might find a few things strange, for example the exotic ingredients (porpoise anyone?) and imprecise measures used, but, broadly speaking, the format of the recipe has remained largely unchanged for thousands of years. Recipe writers specify a set of ingredients, and provide some instructions for their use. We, the cooks, blindly follow, taking our oils and our vinegars, our dried goods and our stocks, and peeling, chopping, whisking, boiling and roasting our hearts out, often without really understanding why. In doing so we limit ourselves, as seen in last month’s column, because it’s rare that we can actually manage to engineer the right match between recipe, time available to cook, and ingredients to hand. And so we don’t cook from scratch, or we stick to what we know: the average household repertoire of five dishes, week in week out.

With a little practice, we can replicate certain dishes with our eyes closed: we have memorised the sequence of tasks required; know which ingredients to use and the right sorts of quantities; we may even attempt a little experimentation (even though we may not be completely sure how our changes will turn out). But between adapting what we know and the diktat of the recipe there must be some middle ground. Could it be possible to find a new way of cooking, using some key know-how, some principles, a system if you like, to help achieve some desired outcomes? Reader, I think it is possible! Recipes are required because we can’t think through for ourselves what it is we need to do to achieve the end result we need; moreover we’re often not even sure what that end result should, or could, be. The problem is complexity: there are hundreds of ingredients we could choose from, literally thousands of possible end outcomes, and seemingly lots of different things that need to be done to ingredients to get them to the desired end point. The solution is to reduce complexity.

Simplifying outcomes

The language of cookery outcomes has changed little for years. Ever since Escoffier codified modern French cuisine in the early twentieth century, and developed a way of organising restaurant kitchen activity according to a mix of skills and discrete end products – fish cooking; sauces; pastry etc – kitchen brigades, cookery schools and cookbooks have, generally speaking, been ordered along similar lines. Prue Leith’s ‘Chef School‘ book includes such chapters as ‘Frying off’; ‘Grilling’; ‘Structure of meat and carving’. Delia’s ‘How to Cook’ series covers ‘All about eggs’; ‘First steps in pastry’; Flour-based sauces and batter’. We are missing the point. For the domestic cook needing to get a meal on the table at the end of the day, the end outcome is not a stock. Or some pastry. Or even some veg. I would suggest the most useful outcome for our purposes is rather this: an appealing, balanced plate of food. By which we mean the three main nutritional building blocks should be represented (it generally being the custom in our culture – special diets notwithstanding – for a main meal to contain some protein, some carbohydrate and some vegetables), and there must be balanced sensory appeal, in other words, a high degree of ‘tastiness’; harmonious ‘flavours’; an attractive mix of colours; and a balance of textures. To simplify outcomes, we start with one foodstuff – let’s call this the STAR, be it the piece of fish picked up on the way home from work, the standby chops from the freezer, or the red cabbage languishing in the bottom of the veg box. There are then two key questions to be asked: How do I make this star appealing? And how can I achieve balance on the plate?

Simplifying the process of transforming ingredients

The cook achieves appeal and balance by doing two things. Firstly, ENHANCING ingredients. Of course, some foodstuffs may be appealing enough in their natural state – think of the perfect tomato, grown for its flavour, and only picked when fully ripe – but generally, we will have some work to do. The good news is that there are only four things we can do to a foodstuff to make it more appealing: Change its form (size and shape); change its flavour; change its texture; change its colour. We do these things using three primary tools: heat, sharp blades and other ingredients. Once the principles of how heat can change flavour, texture and colour are understood, then we can apply that know-how to any foodstuff under the sun. Similarly, once the principles of how certain types of ingredients can change flavour, texture and colour are understood, then we can apply those to any foodstuff under the sun. Our focus moves from techniques (chopping; simmering; roasting) – the current lexicon of recipes – to know-how: how to enhance flavour; how to alter texture; how to change colour.

Secondly, COMBINING ingredients. Cooking becomes a lot simpler once we realise that there are really only three ways in which ingredients can be combined: jumbled up together in a mix; layered; and kept as separate composites (and, of course, combinations thereof). All the dishes we recreate are variations of one of these types of vehicle (stews, curries and pilafs are examples of mixed dishes; lasagne, pies and gratins of layered dishes). Once the principles of how to create a mix or a layered dish are understood, then we can apply those to any mix or layered dish under the sun.

Simplifying ingredients

Understanding how to enhance foodstuffs requires a little scientific know-how; working out how to combine them requires discernment which is altogether more subjective. The challenge is two-fold: to select ingredients which work well together, so that flavour compounds don’t clash and tastes are balanced, and to work out the best way of showing them off on the plate (there’s no point in buying expensive, delicately flavoured scallops if we cut them into small pieces and hide them in a stew). Categorising our ingredients, based on their primary purpose, and who they are ‘friends’ with, will help us.

In general, ingredients selected for our evening meal have three primary purposes:

1. They provide nutritional ballast. Some ingredients (meat, fish, grains, pulses, vegetables etc) are excellent at delivering large usable quantities of the elements our bodies need to survive. Let’s call these the PRIMARY FOODSTUFFS, of which one or two STARS are the primary focus.
2. They help bring our ingredients together on the plate: they bind or lubricate. Let’s call this the LIQUID.
3. They enhance sensory appeal by adding ‘tastiness’, ‘flavour’, texture, colour to our primary foodstuff. Let’s call these the SENSE-BOOSTING INGREDIENTS. There are different types of sense-boosting ingredients – some enhance taste; some are thickeners; some add crunch.

Some ingredients are natural partners: lamb and rosemary; tomato and basil; parsnip and bacon. For our system we need to look beyond mere partners, and consider larger groupings of ingredients that work together. Let’s call these INGREDIENT CHAINS. A typical chain will consist of some primary foodstuffs, a liquid and some different types of sense-boosting ingredients which share an affinity.

Bringing it all together

Our current way of thinking about cooking constrains the cook with its outcomes based on the professional kitchen, limits the cook by focusing on techniques rather than know-how and confounds the cook with its confusing array of ingredients. In this new way of thinking, there are two key questions we need to be asking each day: not the questions answered in every cookbook in the land (how do I make stock?; how do I make pastry?; how do I roast meat?) but, rather, how do I make these foodstuffs I have available for tonight’s meal appealing? And how can I achieve balance on the plate? The way we do this is by enhancing the flavour, texture and colour of our primary foodstuffs and our liquid, and by combining chains of ingredients in three main ways, according to certain principles. The key know-how we need? Coming in subsequent columns, starting with next month’s: ‘How to Create Flavour’.

This column content (excluding images) © Mel Barrett 2011.

All images from Flickr, used under Creative Commons Attribution License. Click image to enlarge.

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