Recipes of The Times

Media Cookery Writers are silly.

Daily they demand that you make meals with ingredients you have never heard of and do not know what they i) look like, ii) taste of, iii) are, or iv) may be sourced from. Doubtless these are all REALLY expensive - of that at least you may be sure. Also cookery writers think you have nothing else to do and can therefore spend valuable drinking time shelling micro-peas / spreading pesto onto individual cashew nuts / assembling intricate insalate out of tiny fronds of rocket (which they call arugula, because that's more exclusive).

Ingredients. All your ingredients have to be obscure if you are a media cook. Here are some of the items they have called for in recent months:

Dukkah. Used as a dusting on chicken, as far as I can make out.

Freekeh. If your freekeh is cracked, you can get away with simmering it for a mere 15 minutes. Uncracked freekeh takes much longer, as does farro. Even so, you must buy your farro UNCOOKED : Never buy cooked farro or freekeh: come on, what sort of a lightweight are you? However, I remain none the wiser as to what these things are for, regardless of whether they are cracked, cooked or in any other form.

Buddha's Hand. A kind of citrus fruit which has no juice or pulp - just pith and skin. Sounds useful, doesn't it? I have no idea what desperate straits one might need to be in, to use any Buddha's hand.

Maftoul. Dear Lord! For once the cookery writer, realising that no-one would know what maftoul is, helpfully revealed that it is "similar to Sardinian fregola (Sardinian, mind. Not any old fregola) and is made of toasted semolina dough." Great. Thanks, Cookery Writer. I might have bought non-Sardinian fregola if you hadn't mentioned it. Toasted semolina dough of course is every housewife's fallback, isn't it. ('No, it isn't actually. We have never encountered it,' say the housewives)

Za’atar "Written history lacks an early definitive reference to za'atar as a spice mixture, though unidentified terms in the Yale Babylonian Collection may be references to spice blends," says Wikipedia, helpfully.

Some ingredients are Superfoods which are a deluded idea and quite wrong. Celebrities often promote these sort of crackpot manias. Superfoods are supposed to do all manner of miraculous cures if you eat them instead of proper food; but they do not. Scientists have proved it. The celebrities want you to eat prickly cactus juice, Maca powder (ground-up Peruvian radishes) and chaga fungus as these will rebalance your pH, stabilise your BP, reduce depression and PTSD, make your skin lovely and other wild and unsubstantiated claims eg. chaga fungus will cause you to be immortal, says Katy Perry, who ever she is. We have only just finished being told we must have drinks made out of blenderised kale, and THAT was bad enough. And now they say that the blendered kale was in vain. Look, health freaks, the radish powder will soon turn out to be just as useless, mark my words.

How do you even pronounce half these stupid ingredients? I mean "chorizo" FPS (for Pity's sake) is that Cheritzoh, or Korr-eye-zo, or chorrizzoh or korrizzo or WHAT? quinoa? za'atar? Come ON people. Actually I have been told many times, how to pronounce chorizo but I can never remember. It is information which the human brain can not be bothered to retain.

Even ordinary things like tomatoes are required to be rare-breed or of fanciful provenance.

This leads to preposterous announcements such as :

"Tomatoes must be heritage, and mozzarella must be buffalo." I have no idea what that means. The most desirable tomatoes are in fact heirloom but these are virtually unobtainable. Heirloom (adj.) means so scarce and expensive that they have to be inherited rather than purchased. 

"Note: if your limes are not Goan you had better leave them out altogether."

"It is imperative that any tuna be yellow-fin and longline-caught" - or you might as well forget it.

"Hand-roll the sushi" if you do not wish to suffer instant social death.

The things they expect you to do to figs are nobody's business. Really in this country if you get a decent fig you are so happy you would not dream of doing anything to it. You just eat it, and be jolly grateful. You do not fashion it at considerable length into Sweet Spiced Freekeh with Grilled Figs. Have SOME sense.

Media cooks inhabit a different gastronomic planet from normal people. Normal people need to eat cheaply and quickly without infringing on their other activities unnecessarily. Media cooks sit around thinking up ridiculous ideas and making a lot of work for their underlings and any readers foolish enough to try one of their recipes. Here are some examples:

Hangover Hash. 

Cooking time 2 hours. The writer has failed to grasp the fundamental fact about hangovers which is That They Are An EMERGENCY. One cannot simply wait TWO HOURS for help. Also the sight of a raw egg (see picture) is not beneficial.
Persons suffering from a hangover would NOT appreciate this revolting looking dish being presented to them 2 hours after their suffering began. Plenty of ibuprofen, some orange juice and a bacon sandwich, taken with a glass of claret, prescribes Dr Mel, and dose to be taken STAT immediately, not in 2 hours' time.

Friday Night Pizza. 

All you need to know about this is that the recipe begins "Make the cauliflower base". Yes! Can you imagine how nasty a pizza with a base made out of cauliflower must be? UGH. If you read further (not recommended) you will see that it also contains chia seeds, whatever they may be, and almond meal; and the finished pizza is served sprinkled with nutritional yeast flakes. Absolute purgatory.

Fresh Blueberry Fudge. 

When you peruse the recipe, you will realise this is definitely not fudge. Fudge is made of sugar, butter and milk and has to be boiled to Fudge Point. Not "place cashews in a bowl" or do anything with "rice malt syrup" as is suggested here. Good Lord. Discard.






Poached Quince and Winter Fruit in Spiced Wine. 
I hardly know where to start in describing what is wrong with this recipe. You must acquire "2 Quince". (Not quinces.) How ridiculous. The plural of quince is quinces and to suggest otherwise is to be an affected poser. I'd be jolly surprised if a quartered quince cooked in 29 mins' poaching as claimed here. What the devil kind of quinces were they using? You add some Cox's apples and some ripe pears for the last 4 minutes of poaching. This chef has never cooked Cox's apples before has he? You can tell. Then you put in some blackberries and prunes. You serve this concoction ice cold with some red wine sorbet. It sounds most unsuitable for a chilly winter evening when everyone would much rather have blackberry and apple crumble which would have been a far better use of the ingredients. N.B. Quinces and blackberries are not ripe both at the same time so this recipe was not going to work anyway. Media cooks never have a clue about what is ripe at any particular season so they are always writing recipes that are completely impossible to do.

Here is a recipe from my own recipe book. When this was invented there was MUCH derision I can tell you. My husband's contribution to world nutrition. I think it is well within the spirit of Media Cookery.

Lunatics' Beetroot.

Method:

Mix together beetroot, hardboiled egg and tomatoes (chopped). Place in a teapot. (Don't ask.)

Fry bread.

Spread the mixture from the teapot over the fried bread.

Traditionally served in the Lunatic Asylums of Gothenburg when the full moon is at perigee. 

Variations suggested by jeering members of the family : throw some muesli and plenty of salt over the dish. Aniseed balls may also be added, and shavings of hazelnut.

Actually Lunatics' Beetroot is quite good, as long as you don't add any of those toppings. Better than Friday Night Pizza anyway.