The Joys of Cooking

Cookery at its best, along with gardening, represents the most creative of practical activities, combining as they do both utility and imaginative flair. Both however require commitment in terms of time, concentrated mental application, perspiration and emotional engagement, in both activities constant practice is required. Practice if not quite making perfect makes for increasingly satisfying results.

Living in a top floor flat in central London I have no access to a garden and possess neither the time nor inclination to obtain an allotment. This has not always been the case and I once enjoyed the satisfaction of growing my own potatoes, onions, carrots and radish. Incidentally whilst understanding the aesthetic I have never been attracted to the idea of growing flowers. For me gardening was always about utility and few things are quite as satisfying as cooking food that you have grown, which leads me to another passion, the passion for cooking.

Cooking is the most accessible of creative activities; moreover it also is an essential activity, we need to eat if we are to live. It is of course possible to live a life as a stranger to the oven and the hob, on takeaway food, in restaurants and cafĂ©’s and indeed some people live lives in just this way, however in these more straightened times this is becoming more difficult and far from being ‘a luxury’ such a lifestyle represents a form theft from yourself, a severe a debilitating loss, like illiteracy.

Now I am far from being a great cook, but I do love the art and it is an art, of cooking. To explore flavour, to experiment, to learn how to season, to watch meat change colour blended with spices, to understand the value of condiments and the creativity in simplicity, the use of spices, the dressing carefully arranged, the flavours of a variety of herbs, the fusion of all these flavours, this is to engage directly with all the senses with the final pleasures of the palate. Few things are as satisfying.

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