"I rarely write them down, assuming that no one else will be interested in something that simply filled a hole with whatever happened to be around at the time." Nigel Slater
This is what I am faced with in my fridge this week. Lots of leftovers - not to mention all those jars of condiments and other things - some of them mysterious. The aim of the week as far as cooking goes therefore, is to at least tackle the obvious leftovers before attempting something entirely new.
Some - like the piece of quiche at the bottom, perched on the apples because there was nowhere else for it to easily go - will just get eaten for my lunch. But the rest will need work.
So this is my inspiration for today's post, but coupled with that quote at the top from Nigel Slater, in his book Tender volume 1 which I treated myself to as a birthday present. Well David never knows what to give me and it was just staring at me on the shelf in Readings. It's wonderful and I shall be saying more about it before too long.
The quote was in the brief introduction to A simple salad of celeriac and sausage - a dish that fits into:
"Many of my most pleasing suppers have been one-off, chucked-together affairs made with whatever was to hand"
And then he claims he doesn't write them down. Surely not! He's a writer who cooks with endless notebooks of ideas. Indeed one of the things that makes him so popular is that so many of his recipes are barely recipes really. Indeed his first book Real Fast Food, was virtually all two or three lines of mini recipes. So I suspect there might be a bit of obfuscation going on there.
At this point I almost got sucked into a piece on sausage and celeriac as I searched for an online copy of it - found with the link above but no picture. And there below the original recipe in my book - dated 2009 was another and later (2019) version - Sausage and celeriac, not to mention recipes from various other cooks who had made use of the combination - possibly because of Nigel Slater, possibly their own inspiration.
But I decided not to wander any further down that track because I've done a few such posts of late and you're probably fed up with that.
The thing that really got me, however was that he didn't write it down. Well of course, in this instance he did, but on other occasions he hasn't - or so he says. And neither, of course, do I. Well I'm not Nigel Slater or even a TikTok influencer so why would anyone be interested in what I did?
Well frankly they're not, but I am. If I make something off the cuff like that, and it turns out well then shouldn't I write it down, so that I can make it again some time? I mean I'm certainly not going to remember what I did, and even if it cannot be reproduced because the ingredients are just not available, surely a close imitation could be made. Or is part of the fun of the fridge raid dinner its unrepeatability? It's unique. I'm certainly not running a test kitchen in my house by refining and tweaking a one-off idea to perfection for publication to the world. No, I have fun playing around with what I've got, and hopefully have pleasure eating it, but then it's on to the next experiment.
The third thing that got me going on this was one of my side projects. Cleaning up my collection of folders that contain recipes from here and there. Today I started on another one and there - second in the folder was a recipe I devised a long, long, time ago that I called Yoghurt and tarragon chicken pieces. I wrote it down for a cookbook I was making for my younger son - with these provisory words, because I was already not sure what I had done:
"This is one of those recipes that I made up in an inspired moment. I don't guarantee that what is reproduced below is exactly what I did, because I didn't write it down. ... Actually I think I might have also added chopped and puréed onion to the marinade."
Basically it was just marinaded chicken breast strips which were then baked in the oven, sprinkled with oil and garnished with more chopped tarragon. The marinade consisted of yoghurt, preserved lemon, lemon juice, crushed chilli from a jar, crushed garlic and tarragon. Nothing very complicated at all but obviously I thought it good enough to pass on. And, of course, it can be elaborated upon or made with different herbs. I was trying to get my sons to cook at the time by keeping it simple. I think it's the only fridge raid experiment of mine that has ever been written down.
Then there were the pumpkin gnocchi that I made the other day. I was really pleased with them but didn't write it down and so the memory is fading. The gnocchi consisted of roasted mashed butternut and some leftover potatoes, plus Parmesan. The sauce though was marginally inspired in that I had these wrinkled mushrooms that I revived a bit in some boiling water, then sliced and cooked with garlic - was there garlic? - in butter. Was there thyme? Maybe some stock and definitely some cream and peas - poured over the gnocchi and baked in the oven for a bit with Parmesan on top. Too late to write it down now, and no photos were taken, so it's consigned to history, although I guess I learnt that mushrooms and peas with pumpkin gnocchi were a good combination that will lurk in my brain to reappear sometime in the future perhaps.
However, if I had written them down what would have happened to them? Where would I have put them? In one of those folders which mostly languish at the bottom of my cookbook bookshelves? In a file on my computer? What will happen to them when I die? And anyway does it matter?
Then there's the other category of recipes that don't get written down - the things your mother used to make, the things that friends have made - all those fabulous things that Madame Perruque made in the Jura. Lost because, as Madhur Jaffrey says of her collecting recipes from here, there and everywhere:
""always see the dish being cooked in front of your eyes," or else that knowledge will be lost forever."
It's not enough to take the cook's word for it apparently because they may forget something, be vague about quantities or simply deliberately withold something.
Tonight I'm making Shepherd's pie with the remains of David's slow-roast lamb as the base. There are other leftovers that will go in as well perhaps - roast onions and carrots - maybe a bit of the grated tomatoes that adorned my sort of pane con tomate appetiser. I shall probably just make it up when I do it. Shepherd's pie is a classic leftover dish and so surely nobody can argue over authenticity. I won't be writing it down.
POSTSCRIPT
Tuesday is the day I get my Smitten Kitchen newsletter which often gives me ideas for posts. And - a new project. At the foot of the newsletter she has links to articles she wrote on the same day in years gone by - so I thought I might give that a go for a while. You might like to look at some of them - and it will remind me as well. So here is my first list:
One year ago - Watermelon radish - Tastes of Cape Schanck
Two years ago - Too many Italian cookbooks
Three years ago - Takeaway food - a brief history
Four years ago - I was on holiday in France and Italy
Five years ago - Is ignorance bliss?
Six years ago - Pomegranates - blood red jewels
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