Victims of my cooking often remark on my lack of respect for recipes. I have respect for them, sure, but I can’t read them. I have recipe blindness.
Put this another way – I cannot read something that is three pages long, remember where I am up to, go back, read the same bit again, remember where I was up to, go back again, read the same bit but a little bit further, remember where I was up to, etc., etc.,.
And I’m beginning to wonder who can? Who are these rare and delightful creatures who can maintain their attention on something as endless as a recipe?
Honest to Christ, the idea of having to go back and look at the same bit of paper over and over and over and over and over again makes me want to embrace the pro-ano movement with open, wavering arms. I just can’t do it.
So I read the recipe, and then I try to memorise it, because I know I won’t be able to go back and read it again and again and again and again and a-fucking-gain, and if I do I will get confused anyway – did I already add the sugar? Perhaps I’m at the bit where I already put the flour in? Perhaps I’m at the bit where I lost my mind with the fucking endless fucking instructions? Did I eat my own hair already? Where is all this smoke coming from?
This is why I am good at roasts. And bread – there is no recipe for sourdough.
Here is my favourite recipe for everything I can cook;
Place all ingredients in the thingo together
Do the one and only thing that needs doing until it looks right
Bake
Check it
Bake it some more
Think about doing the dishes. In the morning.
There is a prequel to this recipe, if the main ingredient used to have a beating heart.
I’d buy food at the shops if it weren’t completely comprised of paint thinner and sawdust or whatever the fuck Miracle Food Co. is pushing down the ‘human chute’ this year.
Roast it is!
The Mutton Flap 