Why bother cooking?

In a world of ultra-convenience, I think making the argument for home cooking is important. Because a lifestyle of takeaway delivery apps, ready meals or eating out every day is not a recipe for health and happiness, no matter how easy the modern world makes it.  

One of the downsides of the cult of the ‘foodie’ is that it can make food and cooking more intimidating than they need to be. If you’re a Londoner, invite friends over for a dinner of lasagne and garlic bread and you’ll have one guest asking if the pasta is fresh or dried and the other telling you to try roasting the garlic for 24 hours in a low oven next time to unleash its inner umami. It’s enough to put anyone off. And while clear guidance is obviously helpful, I worry that the exacting requirements of many recipes in cookbooks and newspapers can put people off trying them. In most cases (baking being the general exception) it matters not a jot whether you use two garlic cloves or three, flat-leaf parsley or curly. It will taste much the same. I like to use recipes for inspiration and general guidelines but rarely more; following a recipe slavishly is as stressful for me as anxiously digesting the instruction manual for flat-pack furniture.

The fact is that basic cooking is actually incredibly easy. And often the most delicious things to eat are the simplest to cook. Indeed, sometimes it is a case more of assembly than cookery (think the perfect niçoise salad). This is something the most accomplished experts know full well. There is good reason why every time a top chef is asked for their favourite meal it will be something of sublime simplicity: spaghetti in tomato sauce for Jamie Oliver; roast beef for Gordon Ramsay; a ham sandwich for Marco Pierre White; macaroni cheese for Heston Blumenthal. There is a well-worn path of culinary gods who ascend the pinnacle of Michelin success before coming full circle again: dispensing with all the frill and frippery to get ‘back to basics’ with the very simplest food. The good news is that we mere mortals can save ourselves the journey and enjoy the good food of everyday cookery with just a little basic know-how.

For the great thing about cooking is that, so long as you have a modicum of ability, the things you make at home genuinely can and do taste better than the things you get outside of it. Unquestionably better than ready-made supermarket food and often as good as, or even better than, restaurant food. It is something about the quality of the ingredients – you wouldn’t swap out the butter for a cheaper fat when baking at home but in most ready-made desserts they have few qualms about doing so. Of course the fact that home-cooked food is made fresh also helps tremendously: no matter how inventive the fillings in a supermarket sandwich, the flavours can never shine through the dulling effect of having been sitting in the fridge all day. And then there is the customisability: when you cook at home, the quantity of all your favourite things can be doubled and any ‘can’t stand’ ingredients simply left out. Plus the food is eaten piping hot. And you can help yourself to seconds without feeling embarrassed or out of pocket.

This ability for the vaguely talented amateur to achieve a high-quality homemade result is no small thing. The same can’t necessarily be said for other vocations such as DIY. Except for the really patient and accomplished amongst us, doing plumbing, electrical work or even a paint job never turns out as well as if we’d called in the professionals.

So, in that spirit, a recipe. It will appeal to those who like Asian food with a kick. It contains broth and veggies and smoked bacon – all the things, in other words, that you need to be healthy and happy. It uses gochujang, a Korean chilli paste, which sounds exotic but is easily available in most supermarkets (a big tub from Sainsbury’s is £2.20). If you can’t find it, any of those jars of Asian-style chilli paste would work fine. The ingredients sound like an odd mix (ginger and bacon?) but work. One of the pleasures of cooking at home is discovering that all sorts of things that violate the classical rules and pairings in fact go splendidly well together.

There are people that make the claim that it is cheaper to eat fast food than to cook at home, given the high price of groceries and gas. It’s just not true. This recipe can easily be doubled to feed a family and comes to a total of £2.10 per portion (and a generous portion too, with 95 per cent of the gochujang left over) as priced at my big local Sainsbury’s in London’s Zone 1. If you can afford it, you can use organic bacon and serve it in a non-Ikea bowl, but you don’t have to. You can also add raw prawns, thrown in just one minute before serving. You can save on washing-up by using your hands to pull the broccoli apart into florets straight into the pot. Some foodies may sneer, but what does it matter? This is not a cookery competition. This is dinner.

Inauthentic ramen

Serves 2

What you need

A little splash of flavourless oil (a teaspoon)

A heaped teaspoon of gochujang paste (the rest will keep in the fridge for ages)

4 rashers of smoked bacon (streaky or back), roughly chopped

3-4 cloves of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

A generous thumb of ginger (4-5cm), peeled and roughly chopped

1½ Oxo or equivalent chicken stock cubes (substitute veggie if preferred)

2 nests of noodles (any)

1 large head of broccoli, broken into little florets (use the stalk too, thinly sliced, if you like)

A very large handful of washed spinach, divided between the two serving bowls

1. Put a large pot on a medium-high heat and add the oil. Fry the bacon until any white liquid has evaporated off and it begins to brown. Add the garlic and ginger and fry for a couple more minutes, jostling around a bit with a spatula.
2. Boil the kettle. Add the chilli paste and again fry for a minute. Pour in about 700ml of boiling water to the pot and stir in the stock cubes/tub.
3. Add your noodle nests to the same pot and cook according to instructions.
4. Two minutes before the noodles are ready, add your broccoli. So long as it is broken into small florets and is on a rolling boil it won’t need longer (you want it to retain some bite).
5. Turn off the heat and, while still boiling hot, pour into two large soup bowls atop the spinach. Set it on the table and call for your lucky dining partner, crack open a beer etc, while waiting for the ramen to cool slightly. Eat with a fork and spoon.