The gentle art of cooking
Now, I know that everyone likes to eat. And I suppose that a lot of people like to cook (or don’t mind it too much). But what of those who like to eat but are not really sure of their cooking skills? I’m not talking of those who burn the cornflakes, they are beyond help.
I’m talking of those of us who want to cook well but can’t quite get it right. The meat comes out raw or overcooked, or you try a new recipe and it’s a disaster due to the oven being the wrong temperature or the pudding doesn’t set or the oil’s not hot enough or any one of the hundred and more reasons we’ve all had for things going wrong in the kitchen.
Help is at hand. Actually, it might be more accurate to say that help is in your head or your body. All you have to do is (altogether now, after me, 1-2-3..) TRUST IT!
I give you the perfect example.
At my in-laws for a meal, I get given the job of using the grill to cook the meat on. I suppose it’s because I’m male or something, but the upshot is I have the task of making the main part of the meal taste good. Now, I don’t have much history of grilling and in any case that wouldn’t help because we’re talking of a rotisserie anyway, which I have NO experience of.
So, I’m given the rib-roast and I put it on the metal spike thing and away it goes. Now, the neat thing is that, although I’ve never cooked this way before, it doesn’t matter. I’ll repeat that.. IT DOESN’T MATTER!
I knew that everyone liked their meat pink and that’s the goal had in mind. I dowsed (using blinking, if you’re interested) to find the right temperature to start it off, dowsed to find the length of time I should leave it before altering temperature, and dowsed how long it would take before it would be in the state which would appeal to everyone and be the best it could be.
I kept an eye on it every now and then and brought it in (after dowsing that it was good and needed to rest prior to carving) and lo and behold, it was a really great meal. The beef was absolutely superb. Everyone said so and much was eaten.
I would like to say that this was normal. Actually it is more normal than having it go wrong. The next time I did this, I was given a thermometer to take the temperature of the meat and find out when it had reached the ‘correct’ temperature according to the cookbook. I did that, instead of dowsing, and it ended up nowhere near as tender and as pink as we all liked it.
I relied on the gadget, not on my intuition. That’s the key. Trust yourself (where have you heard that before?!) and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the results. I regularly get different steaks to the way different people like them (well-done, rare, medium etc), simply through dowsing.
I’ve used the same technique on roasting chickens, cooking pizza, cooking rice and pasta, boiling vegetables and making hamburgers (amongst other things). I’m not trying to toot my horn as being a great chef (I’m not, although I like to cook), but simply trying to say that there are any number of ways you can use your intuition in the gentle art of cooking.
Get out in the kitchen and start listening to yourself as well as reading the recipe! Enjoy!!
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