Boys Don't Cook

"I can't even boil an egg" Okay, this sounds like I'm taking the Michael, but the old joke “when I went to school I couldn’t even boil an egg” is actually not as nonsensical as it sounds. So let's start here: Boiling the egg isn’t hard to work out, boiling water, egg, where’s the mystery? To start with the question is how you like your egg. Most go for soft boiled, a cooked white (really, you don’t want less than a cooked white) and a runny yoke for the dipping of soldiers (more on them later). My personal preference is fully cooked, but I recognise I’m in the minority there.  As a rough guide I have learned that an egg boiled in the shell for 5 minutes will come out ‘runny’,  and an egg boiled for 10 minutes will come out fully cooked. There is a method that involves bringing the water to the boil with the egg in from cold and then once it is bubbling, turning off the heat and letting the egg cook in the residual heat. This produces a nice soft boil, if that’s yo...

Lets make sure we're all talking the same language! You might notice that all* the measures in this book are in Metric milliliters, liters, grams, etc (if I've gone into kilograms anywhere I’ve obviously got a family of twelve to feed!). I’ve done this not because it’s my native system... The UK native system being: grab whatever unit happens to be running by and hope someone knows what the heck you are talking about ...but because Metric is the measure of science, and cooking is a science! (unlike baking, which is witchcraft and alchemy, and I will hear no argument!) You can use online converters to switch to ℉, lbs and cups. It will all work out fine, maybe. It would be useless to write in Imperial, since UK imperial is bigger than US imperial anyway, for which I blame a collective psionic-zeitgeist caused by UK drinkers looking at pints of beer and collectively thinking: I’ll have a wee lot more of that, thank you very much! A cup is equally confusing in these pages, will...

Need to make a feed? Have something in your Back Pocket...  What am I talking about pockets for? Well, if you’ll indulge me; my first and only memory of, or being shown anything cookery related, was my father showing me how to use the back of a spoon on the mash potato to top a shepherds’ pie. His reasoning behind this was that Shepard's Pie was the only thing he —as a uni graduate from the 1960's north of England— had any idea how to cook.  But! He could pull it off to such a degree that first-dates were a hit, so why break a good habit? (...and since he’s been married to my mother now for nearly 50 years, obviously it’s a damn good pie).  I don't know that it was the point of his lesson, but it put in my head the idea that you keep a few best dishes ‘ in your back pocket ’, so that if needs be, whether or not you’re always been told “Boys Can’t Cook” you can pull something special out of... your back pocket. (Yes, I started a sentence with 'But' back there... if ...

“Boy’s don’t cook” You probably guessed with a title like that, that that would be the opening line of something like this... (—blimey— there were a lot of ‘that's’ in that sentence!) This was the message I heard as a kid, anytime I asked... we’ll come back round to that in a second - I've come round to it thirty five years later.  First I want to make it clear that it’s not ‘boys can’t cook’ as in they are not able to. Nor that identifying male, or female, or wherever else you fit into; affects your ability too —or enjoyment of— cooking wonderful things. It’s actually embracing and dispelling, exactly that! As a young boy I was barely taught anything about cooking. Despite growing up in a family that championed learning, when it came to meal times, I was better served ‘learning to cut the grass’ or ‘help dad with the car’ or ‘don’t let your uncle run with that, you know how he gets!” (that last one is me being silly, my uncles are wonderful) I don't think that's a ...