A cursory search of my cupboard in the kitchen reveals the following:

• No bread – but 750g Hovis Strong White Bread Flour, dried yeast, and a bit of sugar and salt
• No pasta – but 500g Organic Pasta Flour, a couple of eggs in the fridge and a pasta maker machine thingy.
• No curry paste – but bags of coriander, cumin, paprika, turmeric, cloves, fennel seeds, bay leaves, cinnamon, methi seeds and a whole stack of other stuff.
• No soup – but a whole load of carrots, potatoes, onions, vegetable stock, etc.

Are we spotting a trend here? I dunno; it somehow feels wrong if I buy any kind of ready meal – I’d rather get a takeaway than buy, say, a premade sauce in a jar or ready-made pizza from Asda, or something, and I’d much rather make my own than get a takeaway. Amongst my most prized possessions are a pizza stone, a fantastic heavy-bottomed frying pan, a garlic press and a great set of chef’s knives. Many people may balk at the fact I paid 20quid for what is effectively a circular slab of unglazed pottery, but so far as I’m concerned, that pizza stone is one of the best things I ever bought.

The weird part of it is that when I came to Manchester as a student, just over 6 years ago, I could barely cook supernoodles. The range of food I would eat barely stretched beyond bacon sandwiches. Yet now, I get excited about walking round the supermarkets in Chinatown, looking at the huge array of (to western tastes) bizarre and exotic ingredients and imagining the stunning tastes as yet undiscovered; I love wandering around delis, trying the different types of European sausages and cheeses, in search of the next taste explosion. I harbour deep-seated desires to move to France almost entirely because of the food markets.

A lot of this change has to do with the fact that I went into self-catering halls at Uni and, after that, straight into a house; after I left home, I was entirely reliant on my own skill with a knife and saucepan – if I hadn’t learnt how to cook, I’d have starved. And never one to do things by halves, I figured if I was going to learn how to cook, I should do it properly – not just how to read the instructions on the back of a packet of noodles; after all, it was just chemistry, when you got down to it, and I’d already got an A-level in that.

Early experiments weren’t always succesful – my family will bear testament to the horror that was my first attempt at a balti – but over time, I think (and other people seem to agree) that I’ve become Not Bad At All at this whole cooking lark. And I enjoy it, too. In fact, there are only two real disadvantages – first is that when, on the occasions when I get home from work late, and I can’t be bothered cooking, and I look in the cupboard for something to snack on, there’s nothing in there which I can eat after anything less than half an hour’s preparation time; and secondly, cooking for my girlfriend isn’t a special occasion thing, it’s a couple-of-times-a-week thing (to be fair, she returns the favour, too) – which means that if I want to do anything food-related for a birthday or something, it involves going out somewhere, which can get a bit expensive after a point.

Damn, I’m hungry now.

(and, if I’m being completely honest, the actual reason I have no bread or pasta is that I’ve run out and not got round to buying any more; although the bit about the pasta maker is true, and I can make a mean fresh tagliatelle)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2003 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.