Is it me or a late onset problem with my wooden spoon, or are recipes just becoming more complicated and less authentic?
I've eaten meals in many different countries, both in restaurants and in private homes, and because I enjoy trying new foods I have always paid attention to how people from different cultures cook and present their food. I ask questions too, and when I return home I sometimes try to replicate the recipes or incorporate a new technique into my cooking. This means that I can attempt many dishes from around the world as well as regional specialities from across the UK, and if I've been shown how or asked the right questions, I can usually produce something that is both recognisable and edible.
This is not the case with many modern recipes though. Rarely do the pictures match the final result and sometimes the list of ingredients are just plain off! Much as I like vegetables I'm never going to find spaghetti tossed in a kale and spinach sauce and topped with a fillet of white fish appealing, and the same goes for a Brussel sprout stroganoff! Why even call it a stroganoff when it doesn't have a single authentic ingredient?
Nowadays magazines and newspapers compete with one another to print recipes and there are all those food blogs out there too, many of them supposedly to save us time. The selling point is that if we follow their method we can cook supper in a jiffy without having to wonder what we can produce out of the mix of ingredients in our larder and refrigerator. Sometimes this works but more often it doesn't, either because the ingredient list is too varied and exotic or because the mix of foods is too outlandish. Cauliflower pizza anyone?
Then there are the recipes sent in by the general public. The apple cake I tried because the writer said it was a firm family favourite, where I discovered that the only authentic word was firm because it came out of the oven squat and heavy and only suitable for a doorstop. And the meatloaf turned fish loaf recipe. I couldn't even try that.
Having tried the proliferation of recipes in all forms of the media for a long time, frequently unsuccessfully, I've decided it's my own fault. I have a kitchen shelf full of perfectly good cookbooks whose recipes have been tried and tested over the years, plus the knowledge that comes with preparing family meals day after day after day for what seems like forever, so why do I even read recipes that will never see the light of day in my kitchen. I guess it's because I like food and I'm always up for trying new flavours. After all I didn't expect the fried grasshoppers I ate in China to taste so good, nor the lassi yoghurt drink and the cauliflower curry in India, or the 4 hour cooked Christmas cabbage and rollmop herrings in Denmark. In Germany it was the weisswurst which is Avery unappetising looking but delicious white sausage, in France snails, in Australia alligator, in Scotland haggis and in Wales lava bread which is a special seaweed. There have been many more but because they are culturally authentic dishes and snacks, lovingly prepared, they have all tasted good. Not so the many recipes that are now out there. Some of them work of course, but so many of them don't, so now I'm going back to basics. After all what is nicer than lemon and garlic chicken, a mushroom risotto or good old spaghetti bolognaise...and there is always steak and fries of course!
There are references to food in many of my books, and in a couple of cases actual recipes, but these are all things I've eaten and enjoyed, not suggestions plucked from a magazine, and when I wrote about them it took me right back to the pleasure of eating them. There is the cake my grandmother always made in Remembering Rose, the wonderful meal I ate in a tiny taverna at the top of a mountain in Italy in Mending Jodie's Heart and then there's the very simple early morning breakfast in a boat off Dolphin Key in Reluctant Date. Visit http://bwlpublishing.ca/authors/claydon-sheila-romance/ to find out more if, like me, you are a hopeful foodie.
