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Monday, May 24, 2010

Gaining experience

I enjoy cooking – most of the time – but a lot of people say they don’t like to cook, or don’t know how to cook. To me, this sounds like a lack of cooking experience or confidence. You can achieve anything you want to do. Food preparation is a natural, and largely instinctive, part of life.

Start with a simple recipe, with no more than 10 ingredients including spices and herbs. Broccoli and asparagus pesto pasta might be a good one to start with. Is the recipe for the right number of people? Scale it up or down, and write your alterations on the recipe sheet.

Make a shopping list and go to the supermarket. Read through the recipe at least twice before you even think about starting, then read through it again.

Assemble all the ingredients, and prepare each as directed. Wash, peel, chop, slice, measure. You can even line everything up in the order it’s going to be added. Read through the recipe again and check that you have everything. Now you can start to cook.

It takes a while to begin with, but you will speed up with experience. It doesn’t matter if you make mistakes along the way, keep learning and keep trying. Everything worth doing is worth doing well. Doing something well requires a bit of experience, that’s all.

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