Saturday 19 November 2011

Cooking For Pleasure

There has been a great change in the way people eat and the range of foods available that I have seen in my lifetime. I am a couple of years older than god so I have seen these changes. Some have alarmed me while others have delighted me. One of the aspects that has delighted me has been the rise in people cooking for pleasure.

While the aspect that has most alarmed me is the way that food is treated by big business, made into high calorie fuel with little regard for quality or health effects. While this subject is a whole other posting, I find it distasteful the way that far to many people will then criticise the poor who often have to rely upon this type of product to feed their kith and kin. However, its about the growth of home cooking that this post is concerned with.

Before the banking collapse and the recession, many of the cookery programmes were chefs showing off creating food that very few people ever could or would try and cook at home. While its very true that good looking, well presented food makes us want to eat, the pretentious over fussed food may be good in a Michelin stared restaurant, but has nothing to do with the food that the majority of us cook and eat.

The recession though brought people back to reality and there are now programmes that reflect the way people really cook. There is nothing wrong with people creating fancy dishes, especially for special occasions. But it is via simple cooking and understanding how flavours work together that classic good food is created.

People are relearning these skills for themselves. Discovering that the secret ingredient in every dish is the love of cooking for the people we care about.

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