to beleive that a lot of people in the UK don't actually know how to cook.

[OrmIrian]

They know how to follow recipes. And it isn't the same thing.

I am quite old. I was brought up with a mum who had been through the war and was totally intolerant of waste. So left over meat from Sunday roast was always used up - cold with salad and baked potatoes, or made into cottage pie or a stew. Whatever was left over in the fridge got made into something and if you were a half-decent cook it was delicious. For example last Sundays lamb shoulder leftover were taken off the bone and slow-cooked with some pearl barley, lentils, sweet potatoes and the remains of the red wine gravy. On Tuesday there was half a pack of sausages in the fridge - they were chopped and cooked with some chorizo, garlic, passata, basil, chilli and onions and served with pasta. Dh was about to get a load of mince out of the freezer and cook spag bol - the sausages would have stayed there till they were ready to walk out of the fridge on their own.

When my children cook at school they always seem to learn how to cook specific dishes - not the general techniques that would serve them well for general day-to-day cooking. DD loves cookery programs - when she decides to cook she comes out with a huge list of ingredients that would cost a small fortune because someone on Masterchef did it! They are learning to do it my way, but it's slow progress.

Cooking is being able to make something good out of whatever is available. Not just being able to make something good out of a trolley load of expensive ingredients.

Why thankyou business.....

I think that what you are talking about is not so much "cooking" (turning ingredients into a meal) as "feeding a family" (involving shopping and planning and trying not to waste things).

Feeding your family can be done by meal planning, or by being good at improvising with leftovers, or by buying ingredients for meals-from-a-book. The 3rd option is often more expensive and more wasteful if every meal is a "recipe".

Ha Ha, you have certainly 'opened a can' of worms here Ormirian. To be fair it must be hard to cook from scratch every day if you work FT.

I think
(a) food is nice
(b) cooking is not solely Women's Work - I would absolutely hate to provide every damn meal in the Inferiority Complex, and would despise a man who expected it to be my responsibility
(c) a lot of food is pretty straightforward to put together

I speak as someone quite happy to provide Greek salad with bought hummus for supper, and who is also going to eat home made chicken liver pate (organic, yet) on toast for lunch. My freezer has a combination of fish fingers and home made vegetable stock. And various curries I made at different points. And frozen grilled veg. Life is too short to waste one's tastebuds on ready meals, but also too short to fetishise cooking above all other activities.

My partner and I both work FT outside the house, btw.

"cooking is not solely Women's Work " Nope, DH cooks as well. He just doesn't know how to do it properly ie like what I do....

i would never ever ever cook again if that were possible

hate it

I've just been away working. Breakfast lunch dinner snacks and cocktails presented on demand, then taken away again

taken away as in cleared up, not as in Tantalus and the grapes

Were there little snacks with the cocktails, Hully?

Well... I think that a really good cook will be able to cook something really tasty and good without a recipy.
A good enough cook will be able to cook from a recipy and it will taste good too.
I am in the second category mainly. Because if I cook wo a recipy (apart from basic things like a bolognese or a white sauce), then it just doen't have this 'little' something that makes the difference (and usually it is about spicies etc...) rather than the main ingredients.

But I do not agree that that by cooking like this, you will waste food. And that's because I am planning my meals. Anything left over is then frozen and used at some point. It could be a 'single portion' used for somebody's lunch with of something added on the side. I ususally don't buy more than what I need for that week (so we have an 'empty fridge syndrome' at the end of week). And if there is something left, like the vegs, then will be used or again frozen.

What I am absolutely amazed about is that a lot of people can not and will not cook at all, whether they have a recipy at hand or not.

Oh there were MI

there were canapes of spendour, salmon wrapped round strawberries with mint...little bitey biscuits with lemon filling oh oh oh

I think you are right, yes. I hardly ever use a recipe book. I sometimes leaf through them and get an idea then go and make something similar. But I also just make stuff up all the time. And I expect it's because, during my childhood and teens I did a lot of cooking and experimenting. There weren't many recipe books in our house at all, growing up - the only ones there were very much cake/baking recipe books.

I think recipe books and celebrity chef books are so prevalent now that they've persuaded people that cooking is either a bit of a mystery, or an exact science. I myself had a revelation recently, I had always feared making jam because I thought there was this exactness to it and I'm a natural born 'riffer' when it comes to cooking generally. As it turns out, there isn't. You just throw fruit (and sometimes veg!) in a pan with some sugar and boil it up. No mystery.

Anyway, that's what I think. People think it's an exact science, instead of a thing you do as you go along, adding, experimenting, tasting. And so they are put off ever trying to cook without a recipe book to hand.

jam is a doddle anniemac. Especially if you have a microwave!

mochan - i agree with you there. I think it's part of the Accessorisation of Society. In the same way that marketing people tell you that you can't cycle without the latest lightweight model, lycra clothing and special drinks bottle, you can't walk without a specially designed waterproof map pocket, glow in the dark compass and boots that would be good enough for a moon walk, you can't cook with the latest Sleb chef cook book and overpriced Japanese knives. Because cooking is 'difficult' and must on no account be attempted without the full kit. Which is of course great when it comes to buying birthday presents but not exactly essential.

Not sure I agree about recipe books. Good ones can in fact explain that cooking is not a mystery known only to Good Housewives. I learned to cook out of books (my mum is an excellent cook but never taught me a thing); DP learned, thanks to Nigel Slater, as an adult...

What sort of cooking are you talking about? Feeding a family with good enough or really good food?
I like really good food. I cook really good food most days tbh because that's what I want to do. And when i do that I need a recipy of some sort.
When I do 'feeding the family' I don't need an instruction.

Issue with that though is that even the dcs don't enjoy goping to restaurant because 'It's not as good as yours mummy'....

And yes jam isn't difficult. A bit time consuming but easy and does better with the right equipment (eg a really big pan) but that's it.

you can't cook with the latest Sleb chef cook book and overpriced Japanese knives. Because cooking is 'difficult' and must on no account be attempted without the full kit.

very different issue imo.

That's just trying to follow the latest trend and show off.

We work FT and cook pretty much every single day - apart from the days we eat leftovers from last night's dishes. It's not difficult to do, really. I just can't stand the processed crapness of ready made meals - even the "fancy" M&S stuff, or the Waitrose jambalayas (that should be good!). So as much I don't like cooking all that much, I'd much rather cook from scratch every single day than eat anything else.

This isn't meant to be a boast - I just do, have done for years, it's about an hour in the kitchen after work. Not that big of a deal.

I am not sure that I understand you definition of 'good enough' or 'really good' food. If people enjoy it it's good. If it's healthy, it's good. If it's affordable, it's good. 'Really good' implies that there is some standard of 'goodness' that is better than good and I am not sure what that would be. There are a lot of things that lift a meal out of the ordinary but a lot of those are as much to do with the company, the occasion, the location, as the food itself.

I am not entirely sure that they are different issues. I think consumerism has changed the way we do a lot of things and cooking is one of those things.