Jaded or just spoilt?

"A person who searches for 'chicken wings' on the Google mobile app is now given options such as 'crispy' 'honey mustard' and 'slow cooker”'.

Bee Wilson/The Guardian

I'm looking at today's picture and recipe on my New York Times desk calendar. It's called Slow-cooker kofte in tomato-lime broth, by Ali Slagle - which at least is a name I recognise. So there's one of those key Google words - 'slow-cooker' - but Bee Wilson might just as well have included, as slightly lesser options, kofte, lime and broth. Broth in particular seems to be a word I see more and more often these days. 'Broth', not 'stock'. It looks rather lovely, but I was not tempted, partly because I don't have a slow-cooker - but then I'm sure you don't have to - but mostly because it just wasn't, dare I say, different enough for me. Almost but not quite.

It was actually the most interesting of the last three recipes that have cropped up - Savoury bread pudding with artichokes, cheddar and scallions; Hot mustard and honey glazed chicken and Blackberry fool - yesterday's offering.

As you know I'm a bit over obsessed with cooking, recipes and cookbooks. Why have a desk calendar of recipes? Why else would I spend so much time sitting in front of a computer typing repetitive things that sometimes only have a remote connection to food? Although food, and in particular what can I cook that excites are possibly the main focusses. Of late though I have been feeling increasingly uninspired by recipes that I come across here and there, in a been there done that kind of way. I returned the current Woolworths Fresh Ideas magazine because, for me, it had absolutely nothing of interest - not even as a topic for a blog. And the Woolworths magazine in particular has been very uninspiring to me for some time. So much so that I am not that disappointed when I don't get one.

I even wonder whether it is, in fact the pictures. Are they not beautiful enough? I read recently, well reread really, somebody saying that "we eat with our eyes", which is certainly true, and many a-time I have commented on the importance of pictures of what you might cook. Take for example the three pictures below of the same dish - all taken professionally. The dish is Mum's cashew nut pilau rice from Rukmini Iyer - yet another example of a key word - 'mum's' - or 'mother's' 'grandmother's', 'nonna's' ... to establish a sense of nostalgia, comfort, familiarity ...

Now which one of those would tempt you to make it? If any of course, but that might be something to do with the actual dish. Maybe you don't like a simple pilau of nuts and rice. Maybe you don't like eggs, although you obviously don't have to have eggs. Of course we all have our own preferences - both for the food and the pictures. For me I think I might lean to the poached egg - and that would be because of the picture, but I know for a fact that David would be repulsed by that.

However, I look at those beautifully photographed dishes from The New York Times and wonder what is wrong with me. I love fruit fools - for me they are a divine dessert, whose wonder is doubled by their simplicity. Except really gooseberries are best and you just can't get them here. I'm not a fan of artichokes - another trendy vegetable by the way - but I have successfully tried savoury bread puddings - also very trendy. The chicken - gorgeous but such a cliché. And there is the crux of the matter in my use of the word 'cliché. So snobby, so jaded. I have lived too long, been to so many special places, eaten so many special meals, cooked from so many special cookbooks, watched so many special cooking shows, that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find something to excite.

Although that said, it might also depend on my mood. That fool for example. On another day, when looking for a quick and easy, yet sumptuous dessert I might well be tempted by a blackberry version. I don't think I've ever tried it with blackberries. And when you could find gooseberries, if you were quick, then I would always try to make a gooseberry fool at least once a year. And if I was inviting the family around to eat, the chicken might well be tempting - if I happened to notice it on that particular day. If, on the other hand, I was doing a major trawl through my cookbooks, then it might well have been knocked out of contention by other more exciting possibilities.

Or am I asking for too much? Sometimes I think I definitely am, but other days - like today for example I am perfectly happy to construct a frittata style omelette with odds and ends from my fridge. Or it might be lasagne on another day - quick and easy for me, and not taking hours, like this version from Giorgio Locatelli, who is used by Bee Wilson in her article to demonstrate one aspect of our hesitancy over using recipes with lower credentials:

"The person who buys a ready-made lasagne may never have cooked lasagne at home, but maybe they have seen Giorgio Locatelli cook one on TV and this “changes the benchmark” for what they expect from a recipe." Bee Wilson/The Guardian

Because, of course, these days, those younger than I are more likely to be using recipes from social media of all kinds, from TikTok to Jamie's food videos. There's just too much to choose from and so we give up:

"For many people, recipes have become not a means to better cooking but a way of filling our heads with fantasy food, even as we order in Deliveroo. It’s one of the strange ironies of modern eating that recipes have never been so powerful or so pervasive, even as large segments of the population never pick up a wooden spoon." Bee Wilson/The Guardian

And that's a whole other topic for another day.

YEARS GONE BY

April 9

2024 - Nothing

2023 - Unhealthily delicious

2022 - Cooking made us brainy

2021 - Solving a dilemma with cheese and onions

2020 - Deleted

2019 - Nothing

2018 - A word from Maggie Beer

2017 - Nothing