Boys Don't Cook

  Three's a party! One of the things I was very surprised to find when I started learning to cook, mad scientist style (throw things together, and inflict them on my long suffering wife/friends/family) is that behind a lot of global cuisine is a base of three basic ingredients, and that once you get started with these as a base, they drive almost everything you're cooking, from British stews, Italian ragu, Mexican Chili, even Indian cooking.  Most cultures have evolved some version of what I call the Holy Trinity (pardon my blasphemy vicar!) but is actually called --in French cuisine-- a Mirepoix (“mear-pwoh”, is how I say it, but don’t take my word for it). This is a base of three* (sometimes more) diced vegetables that can form the starter for a huge range of dishes and sauces, and more interestingly; every culture has their own take on this principle (even if they don't have their roots in Cordon Bleu ideas), usually in a ratio as: twice as much of part A as parts B and ...

Lets get saucy!  A lot of common 'white' sauces derive from a technique of combining liquid fats, with flour to form a Roux - then gradually stirring in liquid, to form a thick sauce. Lets start with the Béchamel sauce, the jumping off point for a host of classic (read: French) sauces

Ahhh B... Gravy!  Gravy is a staple of English cooking, but the basics aren't so much different from a "Roux" - you'll use to make the base of 'White' sauces, This method can even be adapted to make US style 'Biscuit' Gravy Everyone told me I needed it, but no one showed me how to make gravy...  If you believe the adverts you put a popular stock cube into hot water and a 3-piece dinner appears by magic.  Surprisingly, it's not that simple, but it’s also not as hard as you’re made to think, as it turns out.  Gravy (at least as I understand it, and I'm a boy who doesn’t cook),  is a rich meat sauce, served with a lot of British dishes, made of meat and vegetable juices.  My favourite way to make gravy is to make it AS YOU COOK... so while you have the veg, the meat, and anything else browning off in the pan that’s the best time to make magic happen: English Savoury Gravy Ingredients: 3 tbsp plain flour (corn flour will work but you will need abou...

There are several basic ways to cook eggs,  and the very same amount of ways to do them wrong. Trust me, I've made every mistake in the book.  Here are some in your back pocket ways to cook good eggs, every time. Basic eggs, we'll get on to 'yer fancy eggs later! - Keep scrolling for Scrambled eggs (UK and US) and a perfect Poached! (at the bottom) Fried Eggs I mean, you crack it into a pan of hot oil and watch it... that’s it, right? Well there are some tweaks: When you fry an egg you do want a small pan of hot fat, at least 3 tbs of good vegetable oil (olive oil isn’t good at very high temperatures). You want the oil hot so the white of the egg starts to take solid form as it hits the pan. Your hob will vary, but just above mid level heat should do it without burning anything straight away. A useful trick is to tilt the pan once the egg had started to hold together, and spoon some off the hot oil across the top of the egg, especially if you are cooking it ‘sunny side up’ ...

The Basics Check back here, bookmark it, whatever you need to do. This page will probably get updated with more little tips that don't need a post all to themselves! MISE EN PLACE: KNIFE SKILLS: DICING! : SEPARATING AN EGG: There are hundreds, I’d guess thousands, of cookery basics that the nations of the world have. The point of this blog is you probably have a basic idea about some of them, no one probably knows all of them anyway, but importantly; no one here is expected too (unless you already have a star or two, in which case, go teach someone new!). Some of this may be ‘teaching mother to suck eggs’ (a description that works perfectly well here, but I have no blinking idea how it ever came to be! ). So if some of these basics are stuff you are already on top of, jump ahead! We’ll have recipes for some of the best go-to meals for every occasion, and things to keep in your back pocket but, first we need to be able to do all those things everyone else just seems to just... do…...