THE ART AND SCIENCE OF BAD
COOKING
By Dr. Siggie Fried
This is an excerpt of the book by Dr. Siggie Fried
'The Art and Science of Bad Cooking'
© Isolde Kopping
aka Dr. Siggie Fried
September 2018
soon to be published by
Panache Publishing
FOREWORD
The book you
are holding in your hands is the first cookbook paying attention to bad cooking
- by describing, analysing and explaining bad cooking. This makes it different to all the other
cookbooks on the market which focus almost exclusively on good cooking or on
ways to emulate good cooks. This book is
called 'The Art & Science of Bad Cooking' and it is based on the fact that
bad cooks outnumber good cooks at least three to one. This statistic was one of several startling
findings coming out of the relatively new field of quantum cooking. Several chapters of this book will present
new data from dozens of double blind and mono unsaturated studies conducted
worldwide. These new findings, coupled
with observational studies, anecdotal evidence and the odd thought bubble, form
the basis for this new and exciting book on the art and science of bad
cooking.
INTRODUCTION
This book on
the 'Art and Science of Bad Cooking' acknowledges that there is a lot of bad
cooking out there, whether we like it or not.
This undeniable but previously ignored fact has finally spawned the
first cookbook on the market specifically written ‘for’ bad cooks. Yes, you read that correctly - ‘for’
bad cooks. How so? You could rightfully ask: Why has it taken so
long?
You may have
noticed that other ordinary cookbooks ignore bad cooks, rally against
bad cooks, or try to offer bad cooks ways of improving themselves. They don’t cater at all to the needs of bad
cooks beyond wanting to offer them salvation.
They don't really empathise with bad cooks. They seem to look down on bad cooks. How patronising is that! If you happen to know that you are a bad
cook, or suspect you might be, then it’s time to relax and enjoy reading what might
be the first cookbook ever to validate who you are instead of setting out to
change you.
This kind of
book is definitely overdue. Why? Because research has shown that bad cooks
outnumber good cooks three to one. Bad
cooks are the silent and suffering majority, the elephant in the room of
cookbook publishers and booksellers. It
is a tragedy that this silent mass of bad cooks is constantly ignored or
criticised by the writers of ordinary cookbooks and by the producers of those
ghastly and ubiquitous televised cooking shows.
The book you are holding in your hands is
written with the mindset of a bad cook in mind.
It is full of magical tricks, hints and insights which will satisfy any
bad cook and go straight over the head of any good cook. This book also contains a collection of bad
recipes which I have painstakingly gathered over many years and tested time and
time again on my unsuspecting friends and family. Initially I did not want to include any
recipes in this book, but my publisher told me that a cookbook must
contain some recipes, no matter how bad.
I leave it up to you whether you want to cook any of them (see
disclaimer) or just ignore them. But
please realise that you cook these dishes at your own risk and I take no
responsibility for what happens to you or anyone associated with you if you
follow any advice or recipe contained in this book.
This book is more
than just a cookbook for bad cooks.
It also contains and explains the results of decades of research into
bad cooking and the reasons why some people are destined to be bad
cooks. This exciting research underpins
the ‘new science’ of bad cooking; culminating in the exquisite eight laws of
quantum cooking you will read about in this book. Hence the book title ‘The Art & Science
of Bad Cooking’. There is an art to
cooking badly and getting away with it for years, but now we have real science
explaining why bad cooks do what they do - repeatedly, consistently and
instinctively.
Maybe this
book is about you. About
bad cooks like you. Don’t be
embarrassed if that is so. You are not
an aberration, you are not abnormal. You
belong to the majority and you’re in good company. It’s time to let go of the guilt and shame
and instead accept your lack of finesse or talent in the culinary arena. Let go of guilt and shame and walk proud and
stand tall again. Stop trying to improve
what is essentially an innate trait and fixed, no matter how many of those
normal garden variety cookbooks you buy, no matter how many cooking shows you
watch on TV. Please consider that you
don’t need to buy more and more of those ordinary standard cookbooks clogging
your kitchen shelves. You’ve got plenty
already that you don’t use, I bet. This
cookbook could be the last cookbook you'll ever read or need.
Ordinary
everyday cookbooks are full of patronising statements and wrong
assumptions. They constantly insult
people’s intelligence. One of those
assumptions is that all readers are the same and belong to one homogenous
middle-class group with similar skin tone and of a similar age. The assumption is that all of them have a
desire to improve their cooking skills because it is the right thing to
do. No discussion, no questions
asked. Let me ask you one question. Who says so?
Where is this chiselled in stone?
Please, don't fall for this lie.
And remember, out there bad cooks outnumber good cooks three to
one. Said differently - 75% of the
population cannot cook a quality meal to save their lives. Realise that you are the norm.
There are
millions of people who think that ‘fresh’ means a freshly opened tin. There are huge numbers of people who enjoy
nightly TV dinners of tinned tuna, crackers, chocolates and cooking
sherry. There are millions of people who
are fed up with being judged by the nerdy minority of good cooks inhabiting
this world. Don’t allow this injustice
to be perpetuated. It is an
illusion. It creates feelings of
insecurity and leads you to believe that most people are good cooks and that
you could join their ranks if only you tried hard enough. They want you to believe that so they can
sell you more ordinary cookbooks, recipes and TV shows. Stop playing into their hands right now. But how I hear you ask?
Think about
it for a moment. Why is it that the
cookbooks on the market are all so similar?
This makes no business sense when you consider that the people who read
them are all so very different. It's
plain business madness. It should be a
no-brainer that cookbooks for good cooks who want to become even better cooks
(which is what most cookbooks seem to be about) need to be presented
differently from cookbooks whose target audience consists mostly of bad cooks,
but could also include a small segment of Quantum Physicists, a swarm of
depressed people, a gaggle of geniuses, a bunch of ordinary blokes or a flock
of simpletons.
All these people have different requirements,
different interests and varying attention spans. Therefore cookbooks aimed at any of these
groups need to be organised differently, look different and even have different
content. Some of them should only
contain pictures and no text. Others
should express their content as formulas and/or algorithms. Some of them should provide a list of
references, proof and testimonials that the recipes actually work. Some of them should be printed on handmade
Japanese paper or be infused with jasmine or coffee aroma. Some of them should provide recipes with a
totally different, even otherworldly, list of cooking ingredients.
Surely it
must have occurred to cookbook publishers that there are overlooked target audiences
out there ready and eager to purchase a cookbook they like, with money in their
pockets? To my knowledge there has never
been a cookbook on the market with recipes specifically for Quantum Physicists. Well, now there is. You are holding it in your hands.
But wait,
there is more. There is something I
would tentatively call 'the psychology of bad cooks'. This book offers concrete evidence for the
existence of at least 15 different types of bad cooks. There are vast inherent differences amongst
those cooks and many double blind and mono unsaturated studies support these
findings. There is new proof that being
inept at interpreting recipes, chopping and preparing ingredients, or cooking
and assembling food, may be an innate trait which is unresponsive to
environmental factors. In other words
it’s in people’s DNA and can’t be changed.
An example of this is the intriguing correlation between bad cooking and
being British, or at least having Celtic or Anglo-Saxon genes, even if the
person’s ancestors had migrated to another country or continent several
generations earlier.
Their
groundbreaking research shows that bad cooks are more likely to live in English
speaking countries, are male, have above average IQ and drive SUVs or sports
cars.
Conversely,
it was shown that good cooks are predominantly female, are creative and
artistic, have above average IQ and speak Italian, French or Thai at home. Good
cooks drive mostly Toyotas, Fiats or Citroens.
And to make these statistics even more interesting it was discovered
that the best cooks in English speaking countries were still scoring
significantly below the worst cooks in
If you happen
to be a good cook then you might find this book mildly amusing; or
alternatively you can stop reading now and go back to doing whatever feels safe
and familiar to you. Blandness,
predictability and smugness are not criminal offences. If you are English and a good cook I urge you to contact the publishers immediately
because we need you to do some research on.
At this point we only have a small sample of eight. We need more of you.
But if you
happen to be a bad cook then I promise that this wonderful and unique cookbook
for bad cooks will not dent your already dented culinary confidence any
further. This ‘denting’ probably
happened on numerous occasions when you tried to use those other ordinary
cookbooks. Fear not. It’s safe for you to read on because this
book is truly written for you and all the bad cooks out there. To all of you I want to say - read on and
relax. It is safe. In this wonderful book there isn’t a mouth
watering gourmet recipe or stylish photograph in sight. Let me assure you - you absolutely do not
need any more gourmet recipes to add to your dust gathering collection of
recipes. Admit that you don’t cook any
of these anyway. Isn’t that true? Of course, in the past, you’ve thought about
cooking these dishes, you’ve even bought the special ingredients, but you
either failed when you tried or you didn’t even get to that stage. And then, before you had a chance to try once
more, you had to throw out the special ingredients because even expensive
spices have a use-by date. Then you felt
guilty about the money you’ve wasted and somehow you ‘lost interest’ and never
tried this special recipe again.
Subconsciously you would have felt like a failure, even if you did not
consciously think that way. The deck of
gourmet recipe cards is truly stacked against the bad cook. But now you can relax! Let the past be just what it is - the
past. My research has shown that you
belong to the silent majority of cooks, that you are the norm and good cooks
are the aberration.
Realise that
ordinary cookbooks are full of photo-shopped pictures and visual
make-belief. In real life no dish ever
looks like it does in those photographs.
They were changed, coloured, cropped and arranged to fool you into
feeling inadequate or to make you live up to some impossibly unrealistic
standard. These images are pure lies,
and sadistic ones at that, because they set you an impossible task and let you fail. When you read this wonderful cookbook for bad
cooks you will not be insulted by such falsity.
You will be spared pictures of dishes that simply don’t exist in real
life. You will be spared pictures of
suave or sexy cooks in tight sweaters or cute shirts, labouring away for you in
expensive designer kitchens or exotic locations. There are no sexy cooks working themselves
into a sweat against the backdrop of a Fijian beach or a one hundred year old
French chateau while making patronisingly sweet statements, such as ‘this
exquisite and yet simple dish is easy to prepare (see - even you could
manage it) if you have six hours of spare time, plenty of spare cash, an
international provedore around the corner, your own native herb garden at the
back, and those special kitchen gadgets from France’. No! Non! Nein! No more.
This
wonderful cookbook for bad cooks does not seek to emulate other kinds of
cookbooks on the market. There are many
reasons for this, some I’ve already outlined previously, but there is
more. It is clear to me that these
‘other good’ cookbooks are often no more than thinly disguised self help
manuals for people who feel inadequate on some level which is totally unrelated
to kitchen duties. How so? In those ordinary ‘good’ cookbooks chefs are
presented as modern day heroes and gurus and the mantras they are chanting at
you are appealing to some deep feeling of lack.
They promise that you can ‘unearth your hidden master chef’! Or that you could ‘be the cook you have been
waiting for’; or that ‘you too can be sophisticated’ or they show you
‘how to impress your friends and influence people’. How pathetic!
How shallow! Many of these books
are nothing more than ego boosters, hope elevators and delusional fantasy
escapes. They promise you the key to a
more sophisticated life where you and your friends can celebrate each others’
pseudo sophistication by attending each others’ dinner parties. People who fall for this scam are usually
weak and inadequate and to them these ordinary and false cookbooks are nothing
more than a prop. These books are the
culinary equivalent of the gloves, scarves and hats worn by women around the
world since the elegant Audrey Hepburn did so in the film ‘Breakfast at
Tiffanies’. These items allow them to
feel ‘sophisticated’ for a second or two when blind Freddy can see they are
not.
Ordinary and
nice cookbooks would not be out of place next to all the self-help manuals you
have read or wanted to read over the years.
And like those self-help manuals these cookbooks (and cooking shows on
TV) are just an excuse for not tackling the real issues you should be working
on to become a better person. No, we
don’t need more of that!
This
wonderful new cookbook for bad cooks attempts to take the pressure off bad
cooks to conform and to try and be someone they are not. This book is most and foremost a validation
device for bad cooks. Cooks like you
and me and those other millions out there.
The book is meant to support bad cooks and help bad cooks feel less
alone, less stupid, less marginalised.
Hopefully this book will help us recognise each other when we meet in
the street or at a dinner party and help us bond with
each other. So let us share and
celebrate those hilarious and sometimes sad mishaps we've all had in our
kitchens. Let’s be proud and say - vive
la difference.
This book
also tries to balance the noise and chatter made by the chorus of commentators
and TV hosts who sing the praises of celebrity chefs as if they were the
present day saviours of our society. It
has become necessary to inject a sense of sanity back into the subject. In this world of wall to wall cookbooks and
daily cooking shows on television ‘something’ needs to be done to reign in this
out of control herd mentality among the cooking obsessed population. To give a voice to the many black sheep among
the few white ones. Writing this book is
just one attempt to do so and I hope it succeeds in that endeavour.
This book is
about real people having real mishaps in real kitchens. Let’s say it as it is. Cooking is not rocket science, there
is no Nobel Prize or Oscar for cooking and most cooks I know don’t look like
film stars either. Cooking is however
the oldest profession in the world (yes- even older than the ‘other’ one) and
for this it must be given due credit.
Cooking is also the oldest ‘unpaid’ job in the world,
often ignored and taken for granted by family or significant others in our
lives. Think about the millions of cooks
who slave away over hot stoves without ever hearing a ‘thank you’ from
anyone. This fact alone may account for the proliferation
of self-important shrillness and out of control bragging so common amongst
celebrity chefs and lesser cooks.
This book
cried out to be written. It was written
in defiance of all those smug ‘good cooks’, bragging celebrity chefs and
patronising perfectionists out there. In
proud defiance of all those able people who can make something out of nothing
in the kitchen - and then it tastes good as well. And in defiance of those people who actually use the French cookbooks they have. Mon Dieu. These people scare me. Are they for real? Don’t they know that even the French don’t
cook French food anymore? The common
garden variety French person eats hamburgers, donuts, spag bol, pizzas and chips
like everyone else.
So - read on
to find out the truth about real life cooking, bad recipes, real life cooks and
all those dinner parties we wished we hadn’t had.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND TRIBUTES
I am grateful to my family and to my many friends who,
when confronted with my bad cooking, refrained from direct criticism but would
merely joke about it. This book might
not have been written without them.
A special
thank you goes out to the small group of people who have made hurtful comments
and who judged me harshly. By just being
their usual perfectionist, small minded, patronising selves, they have given me
cause, in a strange indirect sort of way, to conceive of this book in the first
place. Thank you for holding up the
mirror. You know who you are, and so do
I.
Thank you to
my brother who always checked out the use by dates on my tins before he ate
anything at my place. He was a little
bit pedantic, being a Virgo, but I believe I survived long enough to write this
book because he threw out so much of my food.
Through him I learned that sometimes it is not what you eat but what you
don’t eat that makes the difference between health and sickness. Thank you brother.
Also at this
point I would like to pay tribute to the many tuna fish who sacrificed their
lives so I could survive with just a tin opener and without having to learn how
to cook.
Thank you to
my dog Panache who survived the years under my care because he was not very
fussy. But even so he would sometimes
refuse to eat the things I shared with him from my own dinner plate, which is
highly unusual for a dog. This in turn
made me re-examine what was on my plate, probably saving my life. Sometimes he would even refuse to lick the
dinner plates clean and I had to wash them. Anyway, thank you Panache.
Thank you to
my third husband who was such a shocking cook that the memory of the first
dinner he prepared for me still haunts me and has given me inspiration for some
recipes. I have also had constipation
ever since. *
Thank you to
my friend Jo the psychologist, who contributed the wonderful fruit cake
recipe. It sure takes one to know one.
A special
thank you goes out to my editor Helen T.
I know how difficult it must have been for you to stay calm and objective
while reading my draft manuscript. I
reckon it’s not easy being English sometimes.
Cricket comes to mind, food as well, and having to edit a book by a
German writer which insults the English.
It’s not personal Helen. It has
to do with my third husband who was English and who treated me very badly. Helen, believe me. I really appreciate your corrections to my
manuscript. I really do. Even if you persuaded me to
delete the eighteen pages of British recipes and the insults that accompanied
them. I thought they were really
clever. It’s a shame really, but I got
your point, thank you very much for your assistance.
The coco
cubes recipe was supplied by my friend Justin Case. He tells me they would come in handy just in
case there’s nothing else to eat. They
keep in the fridge for weeks and that fact alone makes them ‘superfoods’ in my
opinion. Bad cooks have their own
definition of superfoods. A superfood is
a food that keeps in the fridge for a few weeks, is easily removed from the
kitchen floor or your blouse, is cheap but tasty, comes in a tin that opens
easily without a tin opener, makes a dish taste better when you don’t add it
even if the recipe asks you to. The list
could go on. I am sure you can come up
with your own list of superfoods when you think about it for a moment.
Thank you to
my mother for giving birth to me and in an indirect sort of way birthing this
book as well. She cannot be blamed for
everything that went wrong in my life - but for most things. It started from birth when she chose the name
Gudrun for me, then got the names mixed up at the registry office. Who knows what might have been if I had been
allowed to live my life as Gudrun.........
A special
acknowledgement goes to my fourth husband who, through his complete disinterest
in all matters domestic, forced me into much needed daily cooking
practice. It's a shame he is no longer
around to benefit from it.
And finally a
big thank you to my current fifth husband who is the best cook I have ever
known. It is rather strange to have a
best and a worst cook sharing the same kitchen - and surviving the
experience. But then the idea for this
kind of book could not have germinated, because in a world without duality,
without a balancing positive-negative force, you cannot know 'bad' if you don't
know 'good'. I wish to thank him for
providing the positive aspect of this dualistic equation. Without that I would not have realised how
bad I was. And then this book would not
have been written. Blame him if you
wish.
* Note - we won't mention here what happened to my first two husbands, but
you could check out the legal definitions of manslaughter and food poisoning at
the back of this book.
CHAPTER ONE - ARE YOU A BAD COOK?
In
this world of wall to wall cookbooks and daily cooking shows on television the question
of whether you are a good cook or a bad cook may have crossed your mind.
Be honest. Surely there’s been a
doubt or two about your own performance in the kitchen on the odd
occasion? Especially after several
people in a row declined your dinner invitations or they brought their own food
along under the pretext of being gluten intolerant. You would not be human if that didn’t make
you think.
You could ask yourself at this point why you
should care and why it should matter if you are a bad cook or not. My personal opinion is that it does
matter, especially if you cook for large numbers of people or you host a lot of
dinner parties. It is important to be
realistic about your true cooking ability when there are many people who will
be adversely affected by it. The law
allows you to poison yourself, but it gets nasty when you start poisoning other
people, even unintentionally (see the definition of manslaughter at the end of
the book).
But apart from that, wouldn’t you like to
know anyway whether you are a genius or a dud in the kitchen? People do all sorts of tests in magazines to
find out how good they are, or how bad they are at different things. They want to know if they are good in bed, or
a good parent, or have anxiety, or a high IQ.
So why shouldn’t you want to know whether you are a good cook or
not? There is a test for you on the next
page which will answer this important question once and for all - finally.
Of course there are other ways to get a
reasonably accurate assessment of your culinary skills, but they are not
foolproof. Clues in your environment can
give you a hint, so take a minute to answer the following questions:
* Do you have friends who regularly decline your dinner
invitations, giving you different reasons every time?
* Do some people bring their own food (under some pretext) when
they visit you? These people claim to
eat gluten free, sugar free, fat free, vegan, low carb - you name it.
* Do your family and friends joke about your
cooking often? Irony and friendly leg
pulling fall into this category.
* Has anyone in your household suffered from food poisoning in
the past six months?
* Does your dog refuse to lick the dinner plates clean?
* Does
your dog prefer dog biscuits over table scraps?
* Does your fridge smell off when you open it?
* Did you put on weight when you spent a week in hospital last year.
* Does the thought of hospital food cheer you up?
* Does the thought of airline food make your mouth water?
* Are you British or of British heritage?
If
you’ve answered yes to more than one question you are probably a bad cook. But if you want to be sure there is a better
way to find out. I have devised a test
which you can do now, instantly, in the privacy of your own home. The results of this test will give you a
clear indication as to whether you are a good cook, a bad cook, or something in
between. The test will only take five
minutes so I encourage you to do it for your own interest’s sake and for the
sake of your family or your next dinner guests.
THE TEST
Get a
pencil, circle the letter in each of the following 13
test categories that you most agree with (circle more than one if you cannot
choose). Don’t get too hung up about the
exact wording in each sentence and don’t spend too much time thinking about the
answers. If you cannot choose just
imagine which of the given scenarios you would be most comfortable with and
then circle that answer.
1) THE BASICS
A Your
fridge normally contains half a tub of old margarine, some condiments, some
left over take away, alcohol and some old sacrificial vegetables - nothing else
B In addition to the above your fridge also contains
eggs, soft drinks, peanut butter and some cheese
C Your
fridge is chock full of fresh vegetables, Danish butter,
special sauces and pastes, gourmet cheeses; and your left overs are securely
wrapped in foil or stored in plastic tubs
D You
don't have a fridge
2) THAT SPECIAL INGREDIENT
A You believe
that adding a tin
of tuna to almost any dish will enhance its flavour and nutritional value
B You think that there are not many dishes that could be improved by
the addition of a tin of tuna
C There is a time and a place
for tinned tuna - and it's not in your kitchen
3) INGREDIENT SUBSTITUTION
A You
decide to cook ‘Spicy
Chicken Galangal Soup’ for a special occasion, unfortunately you cannot buy
galangal anywhere and the chicken smells off when you defrost it.
Because you don’t give up easily your solution would
be to omit the galangal and to use bacon bones instead of chicken
B If a recipe requires nutmeg
and you have none you would rather leave it out altogether than replace it with
cinnamon
C If you can't get the right
ingredients you just don't cook the dish, even if you have 'similar'
ingredients on your shelves
4) COOKING TIME AND TEMPERATURE 1
A You
know that by cooking meals at the highest temperature you can
shorten the cooking process and save on fuel costs
B You don’t use cooking timers
as your sense of timing and your intuition are only matched by your flair
C You would buy and use a cooking timer with a milliseconds hand
if you could find one somewhere. Great for soufflés.
5) COOKING TIME AND TEMPERATURE 2
A You
know that if the
meat comes straight from the freezer you cook it ten minutes longer than normal
using the highest (maximum incineration) setting on your hotplate
B You have learned not to set
off the smoke alarm when cooking by taking the battery out
C You realised long ago that
cooking temperature and cooking time given in a recipe are not just frivolous
inclusions but that they do have a certain purpose
D Temperatures are important when
it comes to the weather report on telly
6) FRESHNESS
A When shopping for fresh food
you choose the lettuce that is least limp, mushrooms that aren't too brown and
spotted, fish that still smells okay and you generally stay away from food
circled by flies
B You can really tell the difference
between stinky and fresh fish without asking other shoppers for their opinions
or applying the above mentioned 'fly test'
C If the shop offers dead or
uninspiring food you would always leave and shop somewhere else, even if it
means driving a further ten minutes to the next shop
D None of the above
7) INTERNATIONAL CUISINE
A The word 'Hunza' is Hungarian for
'cardboard'
B The
word 'Jalapeno' is Mexican for 'diarrhoea'
C The
word 'Nori' is Japanese for 'trendy'
D All of the above
E None of the above
8) VEGETARIAN FOOD
A You
know that vegetarian
food is 'something without meat' which tastes quite bland but is supposed to be
good for you
B You
know that sugar, wine,
beer, white flour, cookies, lollies, rice, bread, cakes, pasta and hot chips
are all vegetarian foods and are therefore good for you - so you eat lots of
them while ignoring your expanding waistline
C You understand that vegetarian
food can be very tasty and involves a lot more than just cooking chilli con
carne without the carne but with lots of chilli
D You
have a vegetarian friend or two, maybe even a vegan friend, or maybe they're
just gluten intolerant
E You
like meat - lots of it
9) USE BY DATES
A You know that the use by date on packaged foods is just a marketing ploy to get
you to throw food out so you buy more food and spend more. You don’t fall for these tricks. It’s a fact that food can be safely consumed within a few days, maybe even weeks,
of that fake use by date
B If you see something green
growing on the bread you throw it out, but on cheese you eat it
C You realise that the use by
date on food indicates the variance of bacterial growth rates at inverted
temperatures squared with the weight of the food divided by the number of days
left before the use by date is reached.
You are able to do this calculation quickly in your head before you
decide whether to throw it out or eat it
10) MAKING THE EFFORT
A There is only one known place
in the world where tinned soup tastes better than home cooked soup and that
place is your kitchen
B After several friends politely
declined your last three dinner invitations you’ve decided, on a hunch, to no longer
use pre packaged dessert and cake mixes.
But on a positive note you can also claim that you’ve mastered the art
of correctly reading and interpreting facial expressions even if they were not
matched by the spoken word. Not everyone
can do this, congratulations!
C You would happily spend eight
hours of a two day stop-over in Paris searching for that little shop that sells
those special ingredients so you can stock up your dwindling supplies back home
D Is
that how you spell 'effort' ?
11) CLEANLINESS
A When you drop the meat on the
floor you pick it up, run it under the tap and hope your dinner guests weren’t watching (5th Law of
Quantum Cooking)
B You finally cleaned your
kitchen floor when someone complained of sticking to it with their bare feet,
but normally you just clean it when it’s necessary or when you can’t locate
anything you've dropped on it
C You never let your dog lick
the dinner plates clean, even after your dinner guests have departed
D None of the above
12) HUNGER
A When you are hungry you will
eat anything that's quick and easy, such as tinned tuna or tomato paste
B You have somehow managed to
find a way of cooking delicious and healthy meals and not dying of hunger
before dinner is ready. Oprah Winfrey had you on her show to share your secret
and a lucrative new book deal is in the wind
C You are starving, but on the
way home from work you buy fresh ingredients, clean and chop the vegies
properly, let the marinade stand for 30 minutes as specified in the recipe and
then you serve a delicious and usually healthy dinner by 9.30 pm (usually to
yourself because no one likes a nerd)
13) ATTENTION TO DETAIL
A You don't wear your glasses
when washing lettuce because you need your glasses only for reading
B You have learned to read
facial expressions since your last dinner party and now you don't serve sand
and grit with your leeks and lettuce anymore
C You use a special brush for
cleaning mushrooms, different knifes for cutting raw meat and salad vegetables,
and you are the only person in the southern hemisphere who actually uses the
flour sieve as specified in cake recipes (most mortals just chuck the flour on
top of the egg mix and stir)
D What are you getting at?
E None of the above
14) GENETICS
A You are British or of British
heritage
B You are not of British
heritage, not even a tiny bit
C You actually are French, Italian or Thai
D None of the above
E I don’t know who I am but that doesn't bother me
This
is the end of the test. Now add up how
many times you circled each letter, read the comments that follow and discover
your very own personal cooking style:
A = BAD COOK
B = BORING or average COOK
C = GOOD or nerdy COOK
D = NOT SURE about anything
really
E = DOESN’T MATTER or don't
care
TEST RESULTS
Mostly A
If you have circled the letter A
more than eight times you definitely qualify as a bad cook. This book is for you. Also realise that you are not alone. There are millions of bad cooks out there,
just like you. From
this moment on stop feeling guilty or embarrassed when you stuff up in the
kitchen. Stand tall, be proud,
accept who you are and remember that despite what you see on telly it’s cooks
like you who are in the majority.
Stop feeling intimidated by good cooks and stop your desperate attempts
to learn from them. You can watch the
cooking shows on the TV but see them as mere entertainment from now on. Feel free to snigger at the earnestness, the
wholesomeness, the silliness, and sometimes just plain stupidity of the TV
cooks and the unlucky participants.
Don't waste
any more money on cookbooks and Thai cooking classes, but go out to eat more
often. Also invest in a better tin
opener, an electric or digital one maybe.
You can now download digital tin openers without infringing
copyright. The web site of the
'Australian Open' offers a high quality digital tin opener which you can
download for free straight to your iPad, laptop or mobile (but watch out, some
of the ‘cheaper’ cripple ware (or trial) versions don't work properly at all,
or their ‘trial’ period finishes in the middle of a half opened tin, or they
leave dangerously jagged edges on tins).
Mostly B
If you have chosen B more than eight times you are a sensible
individual who most probably can also cook. The book may appeal to your fairly
balanced sense of humour because you are neither too defensive nor too arrogant
about your cooking skills. You also
appear to be one of those rare individuals who are able to learn from
experience.
The downside
is that you lack a little pizzazz. You are just a little too predictable and
too sensible and too middle of the road.
So beware of becoming a complete bore as you get older, and in your case
(referring to the sensible but boring type) old age happens sooner rather than
later, so be extra careful.
Hint: A quick and cheap way to spice up your boring
life and dazzle your friends is to paint over your safe beige walls at home
with chilli red, pumpkin yellow and aubergine purple. And please - stop wearing navy blue, grey or
black all the time (even if you look slimmer in it) and consider basing the
purchase of your next car on more than just the safety rating. No one likes a bore.
Mostly C
Congratulations if you have chosen the letter C more
than eight times. Most likely you are
not only an excellent cook but you have also mastered the art of food
preparation as your special way of demonstrating love and affection to
others. In this regard you have a lot in
common with Italian mamas.
After doing
this test you may understand why you always seem to be the one giving dinner parties without anyone
ever inviting you back (they are too embarrassed to cook for you). Hint:
Be careful about becoming too obsessed with detail as you are most
likely a tense little perfectionist.
This of course makes you ideal for washing the dishes and cleaning
lettuce and for cooking those six and a half minute soufflés. If you are too nerdy or serious to enjoy this
book you can always give it to someone who can't cook or who collects books
(any books).
Some D's -
Neither here nor there
If you have chosen D more than twice or neither of the
other letters more than four times, you must be born in the zodiac sign of
Libra as you appear to be either extremely balanced or extremely
undecided. If you are not born in the
sun sign of Libra consider that your birth certificate may have been filled in
incorrectly; or that you may have multiple personalities which take over in
rapid succession. Or you don't read
English very well. Alternatively you may
just be contrary, or you missed the point altogether, or you can't do simple
maths. Read on just for fun if you can
still be bothered. Consider passing this
book on to someone who understand or appreciates it.
Mostly E
Don’t bother reading this book, you are beyond
help. You could be depressed, or not
very bright, or neurotic, or inhaled too much of that lovely weed you are
smoking right now. Ring the HelpMeGetaLifeLine on 1300 0000001 and put the book away
NOW. Lie down and wait for help or just sleep it off.
CHAPTER TWO - TYPES OF BAD
COOKS
Have you ever wondered why some
people are bad cooks and others are not?
It’s a fact - some people just cannot cook a decent meal no matter how
hard they try or how closely they follow a recipe. Why is that?
Is it due to nature or nurture, overcritical parents or a pet chicken
dying a horrible death in a backyard when you were four years old? Are some people just born without taste buds
or with an emotional deficiency that leaves them cold and uncaring towards
their intended victims (people who have to eat their food)? Are some bad cooks simply just sadists? Or is it that sadists also give dinner
parties? Are some people simply
incapable of learning the rudimentary basics of cooking? Has a low IQ anything to do with this? Could someone still be reacting to their
mother who always criticised them but who is now ninety-two and in a nursing
home? Do some people unconsciously
confuse eating and enjoying good food with gluttony? Did these people get 'bible-bashed' at some
point? Do some refined and highly
evolved people feel that the act of enjoying food and maybe gorging on good
food would put them in the same category as apes or animals? Those people might fear that the enjoyment
and gobbling down of food (because it's so good) exposes their animal instincts
which they consider a step backwards on the evolutionary ladder. It may prove to them (mistakenly) that they
are mere flesh and blood, existing as mere biological creatures, at the mercy
of their most basic biological impulses, devoid of higher consciousness and
sophistication. That realisation would
be too hard to bear. Sacre bleue - what an awful thought.
The question remains - why are some people
bad cooks? Sure, some people never
learned about food or grew up in poverty.
Maybe some people just hate their bodies so
much that they would swallow anything put in front of them, without a single
thought given to what they are doing to their poor bodies. Maybe some people are bad cooks because they
just don’t care about cooking, or because they have a latent psychosis or
because they drink too much red wine while cooking?
This chapter may provide some of the answers
to those questions. Research has shown
that the world is populated by all manner of bad cooks, each one with his or
her unique and hotly defended set of rules, behaviours, reasons or excuses. I have been one of the pioneering researchers
in the field of bad cooking, combining my knowledge of psychology and expertise
in bad cooking to good effect. But as
mentioned earlier, much credit for this pioneering work must also be given to
my colleagues from the Universities of Hamburg and
But let me make something clear. By 'observing' bad cooks in their habitats
and describing their actions and methods in this chapter I try not to judge
them. I simply observe them and describe
what makes them tick so anyone reading this chapter may learn something or have
a good laugh at their expense. There is
nothing wrong with a bit of schadenfreude, don’t you agree? And if I do judge them inadvertently I hope I
will be forgiven. It is not my intent
(at least not my conscious intent) to judge those hopeless characters any more
than they deserve to be judged. Their
lives are difficult enough as they are.
Sometimes we don't know whether to laugh or
cry when we read about their follies.
But schadenfreude, fun or insight are not the
only things this chapter offers. There
may be an unexpected benefit in it for you too.
By reading about other people’s struggles some very astute readers (this
refers to you) could stumble across the answer to the age old
existential question - 'why me, why this, why now, woe me'. It is possible that somewhere in this
wonderful chapter you will discover the answer to your silent yearning, to your
deepest longing and to the release of your emotional baggage. You may recognise yourself in this
chapter. As you read about the
psychological make up of all those bad cooks you may get the feeling that I am
describing you, after going through your secret diaries and talking to
your mother first. Don’t worry, I
haven’t and I couldn’t be bothered to do all this research. But be warned. Your life may change as you read on. The next few pages may contain the key that
could open enough emotional doors for you to make you a better person and to
finally unleash the good cook within. Which would be a little bit like finding the holy grill of cookery,
but without having more and more recipes and well meaning advice stuffed down
your throat. You might just
become a good cook by reading about the psychology of bad cooks. And if you recognise yourself in one of those
‘types of bad cooks’ categories you could be shaken up and you might need to
find a good therapist - soon. Ask
yourself now if you are ready to take this step. You have been warned!
Let us start the list of bad cooks with the
one that is most prolific in western society.
It is believed that as many as 65% of women and 2% of men fit into this
category. Their numbers are in the
millions because the 'Mother Reactionary Cook' is quite ubiquitous, quite
unconscious and quite resistant to change.
This is an excerpt of the book by Dr. Siggie Fried
'The Art and Science of Bad Cooking'
©Isolde Kopping aka
Dr. Siggie Fried
soon to be published by
Panache Publishing