Читать книгу A Modern Way to Cook: Over 150 quick, smart and flavour-packed recipes for every day - Anna Jones, Jamie Oliver - Страница 9

At home, I cook under the same constraints as anyone else. Even though I have a food background, when I come home from a day at work, feeling sometimes jaded with food, the last thing I want to do is spend hours at the stove. I am impatient, usually hungry, and I relish the art of cooking quickly. And that’s what I want to share with you in this book. The clever secrets that chefs and cooks use, quick ways of cooking, smart cheats and ways of working logically which have your dinner on the table in a friendly and achievable time. All of this can happen in a calm and well-choreographed manner that won’t leave your kitchen looking like a bombsite and having used every pan in the cupboard.

I know these recipes can come together in life-friendly times. I asked a kind band of brilliant friends, who aren’t cooks, to test and time them­selves, so I know they are achievable for everyone.

The recipes which take 15 minutes are quick supper recipes, delicious and simple, with just a few ingredients that come together in one pan without much chopping or fuss. The recipes that are ready in 20–30 minutes are a little more advanced, with more complex layers of flavour and texture and a few more ingredients, while those that take 40 minutes are real feasts, riots of flavour and colour that I would happily eat at any restaurant table.

In addition to these chapters, this books pivots around a chapter full of what I like to call investment cooking. It’s batch cooking that you can do once a week, or even once a month in some cases, which will mean you have a freezer or fridge full of nourishing, cheap, home-cooked beans, snacks, grains and treats. It’s this cooking that is the backbone of how I cook these days – a little time one day a week yields enough chickpeas for a week’s worth of stews and hummus, and they taste so much better. I find this type of cooking so satisfying, knowing for example that I have a homemade sweet treat to snack on when I hit a low at 4 p.m. rather than reaching for a biscuit.

There is also a chapter on my quick desserts and sweet treats, such as a 10-minute frying-pan crumble, as well as some really easy breakfasts that will make great starts to the day – interesting flavours that come together quickly and make the most of my favourite meal.

This way of cooking is all about simplifying the process, and to some of you that might sound really obvious. More often than not, when I ask people why a recipe hasn’t worked, they reply that they burnt the onions while they were digging out the coriander seeds from the back of the cupboard, or something along these lines. The only way to cook speedy dinners and stay calm is to be organised upfront. I am sure all my friends will read this and laugh, as I have a reputation for being less than well-organised, but in the kitchen I am like a general. The kitchen is my realm and I know that the only way I can cook speedily is to be ordered, organised and calm, and work through the flow of jobs.

I think of cooking in this way as a practice. It’s organised, calm and has a flow. It’s not speedy, hectic, cheffy stuff. It’s just about getting things right, so that you can enjoy every brilliant moment of the alchemy that happens as you turn a pile of ingredients into an incredible offering for you and your family.

So your kitchen needs to be ready to cook in this way. By this, I don’t mean you have to buy loads of expensive equipment. You just need to have an artillery of simple equipment which is accessible (see here–here).

I find it really useful to have my ingredients organised too, so that I can find them easily and so that getting ready to cook doesn’t mean half an hour emptying out the entire spice cupboard. I use little glass jars for my spices and keep them on a shelf within reach of the cooker, which makes things a lot simpler.

You’ll also need a bit of space to cook in. My kitchen counters, like most other people’s, can get cluttered, so before I settle down to cook something, I make sure I clear enough space to comfortably cook in. There are a few bits of equipment that can really help speed things up. You’ll be fine if you just have the basics, but if you are, for instance, a particularly slow chopper, a food processor will be a great addition to your kitchen. Equally, if you find things keep sticking or burning, maybe it’s time for some new pans. All this equipment is a massive investment in cooking from scratch, and that’s the best decision we can make for our happiness and our bodies.

When you are ready to cook, start by reading the recipe from top to bottom so that you know what happens when, and how things need to be chopped and cooked. Then put all the equipment you are going to need close by, and get all your ingredients together near your chopping board so that you have everything to hand before you start chopping. These steps are the key to quick, calm cooking and they may sound glaringly obvious, but I have to remind myself to do them every time I cook.

Other clever chef’s tricks that make my cooking more speedy are having a mixing bowl on the work surface for peelings and trimmings, so you don’t have to keep running back and forth to the bin, as well as making sure as much as possible that the area you are working in is close to the stove, so you can do a few jobs at once.

I’m going to ask you to cook on a high heat, but don’t be afraid of it. Just keep checking. I am also going to ask you to preheat your pans to get some serious heat on things that need it, and to speed things up with your kettle. It’s my best friend in the kitchen, and working with boiling water rather than cold from the tap makes everything that bit quicker.

This might all sound somewhat hectic, but I believe that making these changes in your kitchen will actually have the opposite effect. You will learn to cook in a way that is calm and choreographed, moving quickly but smoothly through recipes.

And that’s what cooking is for me – food that is flavour-packed, nourishing and not too fussy, that can be on your table in a life-friendly time and manner. It’s about using the time you have, however short, to make the tastiest and most delicious dinners possible, and, in making the most of your time, the incredible ingredients that are in season and the foods that make you feel good, you can live vibrantly and eat well.

annajones.co.uk @we_are_food