The seeds of rebellion

Julian Barnes cautions against hubris in home cooking

The Guardian, Saturday March 29 2003

We are in the kitchen of a professional household in London; late 1995 or early 1996. It is dinner-time; guests are ambling in and waiting to be seated at a long scrubbed table. On a sideboard is something circular, brown and sloshy, and definitely not looking its best - a kind of cowpat, really. Sympathetic Guest: "Chocolate Nemesis?" Host/ess: "Yes." SG: "Didn't work?" H: "No." SG: "Never does." H: "I've made a couple of other puddings instead."

The key elements in this scene are: 1) The instinctive and sincere sympathy on the part of the Guest, who has been in the Host/ess's position not long previously. 2) The fact that the pudding, despite not working, is nevertheless displayed openly, as proof that it has been attempted. 3) The fact that two other puddings have been made to compensate for this extremely high-tariff failure.

Moralists know that Hubris inevitably leads to Nemesis, but never before had the theory been given such literal expression. Overweening pride in one's ability to cook led to chocolate disaster. The pudding - in case you need reminding - was asignature dish (as the vile phrase has it) of the River Cafe. People had eaten at the restaurant, discovered this most decadent of puddings (2lbs chocolate, 10 eggs, 1lb butter, 1lb 5oz sugar), and, when the first River Cafe Cook Book came out, decided to try it for themselves.

Why it went wrong we Nemetics never discovered. The paranoid explanation was that some key element of the recipe had been deliberately omitted, thus driving customers back to the restaurant for the authentic item. The more plausible one was that there is a difference between the professional and the domestic oven, that certain dishes exaggerate this difference, and Chocolate Nemesis exaggerated the exaggerations. But the failure was generally so spectacular that few got back up off the floor and tried it again.

This is one of the earliest lessons to be learnt: there are certain dishes always best eaten in restaurants, however tempting the cookbook version appears.

In my experience, these frequently turn out to be puddings. That perfect apple tart with the parchment-thin but effortlessly crispy base and the shimmering glaze on top? Forget it. Ditto anything dependent on the tatin principle of inversion. Oh, and there is a spectacular yoghurt cake at Moro restaurant in north London which, the only time I tried to make it, tasted wonderful but looked like something regurgitated. So I tend to read pudding recipes, sigh, and get out the ice-cream machine again.

When the first River Cafe Cook Book came out - the blue one - it drew high praise followed by a certain raillery. Some felt they were having a lifestyle package thrust at them; some felt the emphasis on just this kind of olive oil and just those kinds of lentils was a little discouraging. As James Fenton put it in the Independent at the time: "I've been picking it up and putting it down for weeks now. I can't say I've actually cooked anything from it. More, what I'm doing is deciding whether I can live up to its exacting standards."

River Cafe Blue led to RC Yellow and, most recently, Green. I use Blue and Green constantly; though almost always for pasta dishes, risottos and vegetables. The recipes are clear and largely pedant-proof; the results consistently delicious. And they have taught me more lessons than most. Lesson Two: that the relationship between professional and domestic chef has similarities to a sexual encounter. One party is normally more experienced than the other; and either party should have the right, at any moment, to say, "No, I'm not going to do that."

The professional might - like Elizabeth David, for instance - refuse to hand-hold or sweet-talk the punter. While from the punter's point of view, the refusal is more likely to come from (where else?) the gut. For instance, you buy a chicken, take it home, run your hand along the kitchen bookshelf, and decide today is the day for River Cafe Blue. First recipe: Pollo Alla Griglia. Sounds about right: Marinated Grilled Chicken.

You read the recipe carefully, and discover that the first three-quarters of it are devoted to boning the fowl. And you think: No, I'm not going to do that. Perhaps if they'd called it "cutting the flesh off the chicken", I might have been up for it. But firstly, I don't trust my skill. Secondly, I doubt there's anything in the kitchen drawer which qualifies as a boning knife. And thirdly and conclusively, I've only got one sodding chicken, and I don't want to find myself an hour from now faced with something that looks as if the fox has got at it. So that's decided. Turn the page and look at the other RC Blue recipes for chicken. There are two of them. Both start by telling you to bone the thing. Well, Hello Delia again.

Lesson Two, Part Two. It's not just difficulty, it's also time. RC Green has a terrific recipe for Penne with Tomato and Nutmeg (and basil and garlic and pecorino), which I make regularly; the nutmeg is the key surprise element. But I did first have to overcome the recipe's opening sentence: "2.5kg ripe cherry vine tomatoes, halved and seeded". So that's well over five pounds of cherry tomatoes. And how many of the little buggers do you think you get to the pound? I'll tell you: I've just weighed 15 and they came to four ounces. That's 60 to the pound. So we're talking 300, cut in half, 600 halves, juice all over the place, flicking out the seeds 600 times with a knife, worrying about not extracting every single one. All together now: NO, WE' RE NOT GOING TO DO THAT. Leave the seeds in and call it extra roughage.

These may sound like negative lessons, but they can be as valuable as positive ones. You are discovering - painfully, a little humiliatingly - that you are not up to this, and you are not up to this because you are not a professional chef and you don't have a larderful of Jamies all panting to deseed tiny tomatoes and being paid to do so. You are by yourself, at home, under pressure of time, and you would very much prefer not to make a hash of dinner.

In any case, what do cookbook-writers want? Mute obeisance? What sort of relationship would that imply? You're not a spud-bashing squaddie after all, and they can't put you on a charge for insolence, dumb or otherwise. Remind yourself who paid money for whose book. The only way to earn their respect is to rebel. Go on: it's good for you.It's probably good for them too.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/mar/29/julianbarnes.houseandgarden

Home

Back

Firstpaper