There’s a moment — usually halfway down the ingredient list — when your enthusiasm for a recipe quietly packs its bags and leaves the kitchen.
It starts off innocently enough. You spot something appealing in a newspaper, hear a dish described on the radio, or flip open a glossy cookbook. The photograph looks irresistible. The introduction promises comfort, flavour, and just a hint of culinary magic. And then you read on.
Ingredient number seven is something you’ve never heard of. Number nine requires a special trip to a boutique deli. By the time you reach fifteen, you’re wondering whether you’ve accidentally enrolled in a professional cooking course.
And that’s before you even reach the method — a marathon of steps so detailed you begin to feel like a pilot studying a flight manual rather than someone trying to get supper on the table.
What on earth happened to simple cooking?
Somewhere along the way, recipes seem to have drifted from practical to performative. Perhaps it’s the rise of celebrity chefs, cooking competitions, and glossy television productions. Food has become theatre. Every dish needs flair, complexity, and a story. There are reductions, infusions, emulsions — and an unspoken suggestion that anything less is somehow not good enough.
But for most of us, cooking is not a performance. It’s a necessity. And, at its best, it’s a pleasure.
A friend of mine summed it up perfectly the other evening. She said she reads through a recipe once — just to get the general idea — and then proceeds to ignore most of it. She uses whatever ingredients she has on hand, cooks the way she knows how, and hopes for the best.
Sometimes, she admits, it’s a flop.
But sometimes, it’s absolutely delicious.
And perhaps that’s the point. Cooking was never meant to be an exact science in the home kitchen. It’s a living, breathing process — a pinch of this, a handful of that, a bit of instinct and experience guiding the way.
That’s certainly how I’ve approached it.
Of course, there are exceptions. Every now and then you stumble across someone who hasn’t forgotten what cooking is really about. On platforms like TikTok, for example, there are chefs — often Italian or French — who strip food back to its essentials. No fuss, no theatrics, just honest, good ingredients prepared simply.
One of the most refreshing voices is Jacques Pépin, who has a remarkable ability to make even the humblest ingredients feel like a feast. Stale bread becomes crisp, golden fritters. A handful of spinach, a bit of ham, a tomato or two — and suddenly there’s a pasta dish that feels both effortless and satisfying.
Even the ever-popular Jamie Oliver has his moments. His recipes can sometimes lean toward the elaborate, but if you strip away the embellishments, there’s often a solid, simple idea at the core. Take a basic chilli con carne — it doesn’t need ten spices and three garnishes to be good. Sometimes less really is more.
And then there’s the oldest and most reliable cookbook of all: your family.
Speak to almost anyone, and they’ll tell you they learned to cook from their mother or grandmother. Not from a glossy magazine or a televised masterclass, but from standing at the stove, watching, asking, tasting.
One woman told me how terrified she was when she first had to cook for her family. She didn’t know where to begin. Fortunately, she had a hotline to her mother — a reassuring voice at the other end of the phone guiding her through each meal.
And that’s how it’s always been. Cooking passed down, not written up. Learned, not performed.
I was fortunate in that regard. My own mother was a wonderful cook, particularly when it came to seafood. She even wrote her own recipe book, Myra in the Galley, long before the modern food industry turned cooking into a competitive sport.
To this day, if I’m making calamari and can’t remember whether it’s egg first or flour first, I don’t turn to the internet. I go straight back to her recipe.
Because it works.
And that’s really what most of us are after. Not perfection. Not presentation worthy of a television show. Just something that works. Something that tastes good. Something that brings people to the table.
Yet the modern food world seems to have lost sight of that simplicity. Cooking has become big business — television shows, competitions, magazines, endless online content. Every month, a fresh batch of recipes appears, each one seemingly more elaborate than the last. Exotic ingredients. Lengthy methods. Endless variations.
But where are the basics?
Where are the recipes that use what you already have? That take a reasonable amount of time? That don’t require a small fortune or a degree in gastronomy?
Sometimes it feels as though we’ve forgotten that the best meals are often the simplest ones.
A good piece of fish, lightly seasoned. A pot of pasta with a straightforward sauce. A stir-fry made from whatever is left in the fridge. Food that nourishes, satisfies, and doesn’t demand hours of preparation.
Failing a hotline to your mother — or your gran — perhaps the only real answer is to find your own way. Try a bit of this. Leave out a bit of that. Adjust, adapt, experiment.
Yes, you’ll have the occasional disaster.
But you’ll also have those small, satisfying victories — a dish that comes together beautifully, that everyone enjoys, that feels entirely your own.
