TABLE OF CONTENTS

Your Old Man Cooks is a combination of thoughts, tips, recipes, and utilities to help you cook. There are chapters that you can follow sequentially, as if you are reading a book, or not. Feel free to rummage about, comment, copy, suggest, opine. Just type in a word into the search function and you will see what comes up. Like much of cooking, or indeed life, I am pretty much making it up as I go along, so join me.


Eating is one of those things in life, along with s****ing and sleeping, that you know you are going to be doing up until the day you pack it in, so don't be in a hurry to become a good cook. Take a little bit of knowledge here and a little bit there. Sample the goods. Go away. Come back. Try something new. Fail. Realise that every day is going to be a little different, every ingredient going to behave a little bit differently than the last time you tried. Don't follow recipes other than as a general guide. Learn how to do, not how to follow. Most of all, have fun, and learn. Cooking is one of the few things in life that you get to enjoy the benefits the very second you finish. It will, quite literally, keep you alive in more ways than one.

D Eric Pettigrew

An introduction to the difference between the sexes

Start before the beginning with the right tools

Chapter 2-TOOLS OF THE TRADE

You wouldn't go out to play golf without a good set of golf clubs, would you? And you know, as if by combination of instinct and vanity, that if you buy crap equipment, you will get crap results. Of course, none of us will ever be Tiger Woods (unless he happens to be reading this) but one of the most important requisites of a craftsman, whether it be a carpenter or a golf or a desk jockey with a computer, or a budding cook, are his tools.

And if you are doing something for the first time, how the hell do you know what you need? The answer is that you don't, and you certainly don't need to get the latest gizmo. A poll was done to see what the most important cooking utensil was, and the surprise winner wasn't a Cuisinart or a special griddle...it was a wooden spoon.

That just shows you don't have to wear fancy jodphurs to ride a horse, but you do need a saddle. Keep things simple, but buy smart, and start before the beginning.

The process of any craft involves a few necessary steps, steps I call THINGINGS. The list is exhaustive. In general these are the following:

Thinking or Dreaming
Provisioning

Preparing

Executing

Monitoring

Adjusting

Presenting

Enjoying

Cleaning Up

Reviewing

Thinking or Dreaming (again)

The purpose of cooking, you would think, is to get to the step called enjoying or doing. At least this would seem to be the point of the whole exercise.

You might be surprised though, that the other parts of the process: the thinking, the dreaming, the choosing, the chopping, the samling, the screwing-up, the painting of a plate, and yes, even the cleaning-up, might all become just as enjoyable.

But only if you have the right tools.

So what is the very first thing you should get if you are starting off?

The most important step, or at least one of the first steps which matter is preparation, and a good deal of preparation involves sharp implements. So in my opinion, the very first thing you should invest in is a fine knife, and you might as well go for the best. Believe me, it will be worth it. Don't namby pamby around. Buy yourself a 9" Global Chef's Knife, a chopping board, and a whetstone to keep the thing sharp sharp sharp.

Check them out here: http://www.globalknives.uk.com/

You may thing that the outlay of £60 or so is a little excessive for what might only be a hobby to start with, but hey, a new driver will cost you north of £250. Nuff said. And what happens if you decide not to be a chef? So what, you can also use it to defend your property, or cut off your fingertips if you get frostbite (see Sir Ranulph Fiennes). What are you going to do with a 5-yr old Calloway.

While you are at it , buy yourself a couple of other knives: a paring knife and a breadknife (serrated). These will be cheaper, but still buy the best. So now that you have a knife (knives) the next thing to do is learn how to use them, for learning the correst way will save time, reap rewards, and make you feel like a samurai master.

Your chef's knife will be used for a variety of jobs, including chopping, dicing, slicing, cubing, julienning, crushing, mincing,filetting, trimming, peeling, coring, deboning, hacking,shaving etc.. (but NOT stabbing, prying, or screwing. Would ou use your drive as a crowbar? Not likely).

If these uses seem a bit excessive, rest assured you will be doing them all. They are part of the vast universe of THINGINGS. Cooking is no more than the cumulative product of each ING.

Learn the fundamentals, or else you will feel like you have just wandered onto the first tee at St. Andrews, never having seen a golf club or ball, much less swung one.