Chapter 1- PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE

Most great chefs are men. Most great cooks are women. Why do you suppose that is? In both cases there is no less passion, and probably no less talent. But traditionally, perhaps the greatest difference is that most women cook because they have to; and the men who cook do because they want to. Great chefs don't follow recipes; they create them, just as great artists don't paint by numbers. Now before you get all feminist on me, this is not some savage attack on women, nor is it an hommage to male superiority, which God knows is an oxymoron. It is merely a statistical observation. Are Delia Smith and Julie Child or Elizabeth David any lesser than l'Escoffier or Paul Bocuse or Jamie Oliver? No, of course not.

In any case, the point of this book is not to debate the relative merits of one sex vs. another, or even to consider the human condition. Nothing as grand or noble or high falutin' as that. Nope.

The point of this exercise is to approach cooking from a male perspective, the same perspective as a man who decides to take up golf, or do some carpentry, or I dunno, change the oil in his car or put together an IKEA bookshelf.

Men and women are profoundly different (no shit Sherlock!) but the way a woman approaches cooking is entirely different from how a man approaches the same subject. Let me illustrate this by referring to a principle which I call percussive maintenance.

Imagine if you will sticking some change into a vending machine and having nothing come out. Your reaction will no doubt stem from whether you are a man or a woman. Think I am wrong? You tell me.

If you are a woman, your first reaction will be frustration. You will press buttons. You will read the instructions. You will look for the telephone number of the company who owns or services the machine. You will formulate plans to get your money back. You might even put more money into it as if it was your fault and you may have inserted it incorrectly.


If you are a man, however, that first similar reaction of frustration will last no more than a millisecond, no longer than the expression of blank incomprehension which will come over you face. This will immediately be replaced by blind rage and an almost guaranteed reaction. You will feel like beating the shit out of the machine, and then you will proceed to do so. Bam! Bam! Bam!

This is what as known as percussive maintenance, and this is why there are generalissmos instead of generalissimas, wars instead of peaceful and rational discussions over tea, and Aussie rules, ice hockey, Thai kick boxing, or American football instead of competitive ballet.

The difference between the sexes is as old as the hills. For documentary proof, you need look no further than that accurate chronicler of prehistoric Stone Age life: The Flintstones. It was no accident that Fred and Wilma's offspring were called Pebbles and Bam Bam: Pebbles, the sweet little girl who was happy to play with her stones (read jewels) and Bam Bam, who loved to go around busting things up, ie. practising percussive maintenance, right from the get-go.

Now, what has this difference got to do with cooking?

Men, as a general rule, are impulsive doers who value learning by doing (or even messing up) over learning first, then doing. They are more like watered down versions of Thomas Edison, who said he never failed, he just tried 1000 ways that didn't work. They are much more likely to to follow the adage: Ready Shoot Aim, rather than Ready Aim Shoot. And men are notoriously poor at following (or indeed even asking for) directions.

These characteristics extend to cooking. Until recently, the standard books for teaching people how to cook were done by women (The Joy of Cooking in the US in the 50s and 60s, Delia Smith in the UK). These were books written by women for women, bringing a generation of young wives up to scratch from scratch,, if you catch my drift.

However, the paradigm has shifted. You are just as likely now to peer into a house and find the same person whose hands moments before were scraping grass out of the lawnmower now in the kitchen preparing dinner.

This book is an attempt to help that person along the way to be a competent and creative cook, without sacrificing any of the impulsiveness, the experimentation, and the competitiveness which characterises those on the male side of the Great Sex Divide.

Of course anyone might benefit from it. Even those women who have read this, shaken their heads, and muttered under their breath: Men!