Sources of Inspiration

Cooks can get ideas from numerous sources (and sauces - so sorry, couldn't stop myself). The cooking of one's childhood; travel; books; TV programmes - the good ones (so IMHO forget anything with Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson, Too Fat Bikers and The Hairy Women survivor, and generally the artful Jamie Dodger - a bit woo, a bit wah, a bit wey, know what I mean? amen); meals in restaurants; seeing fine ingredients...

Two recent meals have been inspired, if that is the right word, by my shopping shortcomings: risotto is hard to make without risotto rice; and a potato gratin for three needs more than a spud each. So what was to have been turkey risotto turned into chunky turkey broth (hence lack of spuds next day); and the gratin to accompany lamb chops became savoury (basmati) rice.

The rice thing was of course not any sort of innovation, indeed it's a real standby (though the quantity we had would have required about six of the packet varieties). But it was satisfying to produce something that met our needs, was tasty, and actually looked lovely (a handful of corn kernels, another of peas, some fried onion, green pepper and a red chilli for colour).

Without blowing my own trumpet (I have neither the wind nor the flexibility) the near seamless change was because I know how to cook. One of the few sensible educational measures introduced in recent years has been funding to teach kids cookery. Again, not exactly an innovation. But it will, we can but hope, inspire a generation of home cooks rather than another wave of self-adoring chefs, and mean that the hypnotic power of the ready-meal is broken.

Why Bacon on the Radio?

Richard Bacon the witless radio presenter, rather than the delectable meat.

There is an austerity cooking point to this, bear with me.

Driving up the M6 yesterday afternoon I ended up listening to Radio 5-Live, my usual choice Radio 3 playing stuff I found dull. I used to love the afternoon programme when Simon Mayo presented it: well researched, intelligent, varied, and though it inevitably included 'celebrity' interviews plugging book/film/show/dog biscuit it always found something of interest in them. Richard Bacon is the polar opposite: glib, in love with pointless television shows and himself, endlessly fatuous.

I braved his show for a while though as he had on a chef promoting a competition for children who cook. Rather than discuss what is a potentially vital subject, Bacon spent the majority of the interview a) pushing James Martin for the name of the TV chef/cook he least admires, something he was never going to reveal; and b) saying what is the point of children learning to cook when they can go to McDonald's etc, a lazy way to try to provoke a response rather than facilitating intelligent conversation; c) dredging up stereotypes of British cooking out of date 25 years ago.

Sadly I was not surprised by his idiocy, having attempted to listen before. Learning to cook saves you money; is a constant pleasure; is a subject you can never master but where you can constantly improve; and allows creative expression. Instead of which the brilliant Richard Bacon wasted the interview trying to look fey and a teeny bit edgy. He is neither.

Bacon's programme is a vacuum to be filled soon, we can but hope, by someone with a mind worth calling such. I just wish that one of his guests had the courage to halt the interview, state: "You are an idiot," and walk out. Then another, then another, and even the BBC would get the message.

An Omelette and a Glass of Wine

Real austerity of course would mean doing without the second part of that pairing (the book by Elizabeth David my introduction to her writing by the way, a step change in my culinary existence), but the simplicity of an omelette and its easy co-existence with a glass of wine mean they are cosmically made for one another. And the wine, unless an addition to the eggs clashes, can be either red or white, full bodied or thin. Just not sweet unless you are going pre-war with a jam omelette.

Last night's first course was an omelette, with a load of Parmesan grated in with the beaten eggs, a pinch of salt and a turn of pepper. Fried in olive oil and butter it was ready in five minutes from cracking the eggs to table, which doubtless some 'easy-cook' microwaved dish for twice the price or more would also take to prepare.

We have 'free' eggs from our own hens (and tasty too with all those worms and things they forage when let out), but even bought the four eggs and cheese, enough to feed the two of us (one absentee last night) would have cost around £1. I often include herbs from the garden as a clean-tasting way of changing the flavours, and they are essentially for nothing: parsley, par-cel (leaf-celery for those not in the know, easy to grow and prolific, no sticks to speak of but tons of taste in the leaves), tarragon...

Omelettes are not for every day, though nutritionists (as so often) cannot make their minds up about the 'dangers' of eggs. But they are for regular consumption.

The book An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, as mentioned above, was something of a game changer for me, but an omelette was the first thing I ever learned to cook, and very badly too, as a sixth former. Onion fried for 30 seconds if that, bacon cut into thin bits the same, sometimes tiny potato cubes too, before the eggs were added. But it was a start, and I learned from my crunchy under-cooked mistakes. Making omelettes was how I started my son cooking (rather earlier than the sixth form), and he has fared a lot better than I did.