Light the oven, grease the tin, wash your hands and then… begin

I love cooking.

That hasn’t always held true. It came to me in my mid-20s, having spent many years ‘cooking’ supernoodles and the like at university and beyond. My mother was a home economics teacher for over 40 years — that’s her mantra you see in the title to this article — but with three sons and a husband to feed, plus a house to take care of and paying B’n’B guests to serve in the summer, funnily enough that didn’t leave her much time to teach me or my siblings the ropes. She put together a rudimentary cookbook for when I flew the nest at 18, but I had bigger fish to fry at that point, and having had home-cooked meals for pretty much my entire life I was busy exploring the delights of Perfect Pizza and the campus eateries…

Fast forward a few years and I was still pumping out the old classics after work in my rented flat in London — Pasta’n’sauce, Ainsley Harriot Cous Cous, ready meal lasagnes, etc. None of my friends were that interested in food and the great British food revolution had yet to really take off. It was only in 2003, when I started dating the daughter of a renowned chef, that I started to take more of an interest. He had left the pass and was working as a consultant, but as soon as he walked in through the door of his house he would be in the kitchen, lighting the stove and rooting around the fridge looking for inspiration. And I was inspired too, by the love he had for and the joy he took from the meals he produced.

At the same time, I was working in my banking job with a serious foodie. He was dumbfounded at my lack of knowledge, and took great joy in talking through some of his favourite meals. He challenged me to invite some friends over and cook a meal, an easy one, one of the classics. Spaghetti Bolognese.

Spag Bol. One of the greatest comfort foods ever created. He meticulously dictated the recipe step by step to me one afternoon, and we took half an hour out to shop for the ingredients. He insisted I use a beautiful Barolo in the ragu, which cost more than I had ever spent on wine to drink, let alone cook with (yes, I wasn’t much of an oenophile either…) and I trekked home with fully laden bags to a house full of friends eagerly/gingerly awaiting my efforts.

I literally slaved over that meal for hours. Chopping, slicing, dicing, sauteing, stirring, tasting. I followed the instructions religiously, and it was a success. I felt a satisfaction in feeding others that I have never experienced before, and I never looked back. Cooking is without a doubt one of my favourite ways to spend an evening, an afternoon, hell sometimes a whole weekend!

I got to thinking about this time in my life again a few weeks ago, when I read an interesting article on Elon Musk over at Wait But Why (great article, and site). The author related Elon Musk’s thought process vs. the normal person to that of a chef vs. a cook, and used what they called The Culinary Spectrum

I wondered where I fitted on that spectrum. Probably somewhere around Cook With Unique Style these days — I no longer religiously follow recipes, and have even been known to ‘freepour’ at times! But without that recipe from my colleague, I would have been stuck with the lottery that is internet recipes. That’s where Crowd Cooks comes in.

Crowd Cooks is (hopefully) going to be THE source for the best recipes. And I think Medium is going to be an excellent place to get to those best recipes. I’ve only just discovered Medium, through a Business Start-up course at Escape the City, but I see it’s highlight and commenting functionality as perfect for this sort of exercise. My plan is to post my recipes, or generic recipes, for the worlds favourite dishes, and for the people of the internet (this could be the tough bit; getting it in front of the people of the internet) to come together and tell me where it’s wrong, where it’s right, where’s it’s a little bit off, where it’s way off. We can look at it democratically and make adjustments based on consensus. Maybe we can add options for really contentious parts — you’ll have to bear with me as I don’t have it all figured out yet! But hopefully we’ll end up with a resource where people can come and know that they are getting the best recipe possible for the dish they want to cook, as certified by the power of the internet!

So, are you with me? If so, then I think the best place to start is with that Spag Bol recipe of mine. Watch this space! Comments/suggestions/complaints all gratefully received. I realise this isn’t the sort of thing that is usually housed on Medium, but it’s my ‘hack’!

Yours

VC