Research conducted by the BBC in the nineties before they started to produce the Delia Smith 'How to Cook' series indicated that 36% of people between the ages of 20 and 30 claimed that the last meal that they had 'cooked' was a bowl of cereal. Over 20% UK homes do not have a dining table. 'If it fits in a toaster, I can cook it' might be the motto of many of the young man's contemporaries.
He likes to eat. He does it regularly - and often with gusto. Cheese, olives, anchovies, chorizo, jamon, foccaccia, hovis, oat cakes, apples, oranges, nectarines and kiwi all disappear from the kitchen with alarming speed when he's at home.
We've always made a ritual of sitting down to eat together and entertaining friends at the table. Childish cake baking - stirring the mixture (and licking the spoon), pizza dough, being the magimix whizzer, pancake mix, making lemonade and frozen yoghurt have all featured. But when should he start to cook real food? Hot oil, boiling water, sharp carbon steel knives and gas or charcoal ranges do not mix easily with under 11s. But once he was 11 we've cooked together from time to time taking small steps to increasing complexity.
Delia says "If you want to learn how to cook start with eggs" and we did. We've boiled, scrambled and fried eggs. We've made omelettes with cheese, jamon and chorizo. Extended this to Tortilla for a family tapas.
When it comes to the cook books Delia doesn't do it for him nor does the original Nigel Slater - Real Fast Food - though a 30 minute time limit is definitely the right agenda for 11-13 year old cooks. Of all the books Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Family Cookbook is the one he likes best. The wife was able to arrange for HF-W to sign a copy for him - so now he has his own. We've already roasted a chicken. Now we're ready for a bit of complexity - a Ragù. I can't put it better than HF-W (p287)"Once you've learned how to make spag bol, you've begun to master a range of skills that will introduce you to a whole family of different recipies. The ingredients may vary quite a lot from recipe to recipe but the techniques remain the same: the proper browning of the meat, the slow sweating of chopped vegetables in oil or butter, the gentle stewing of the meat in a highly flavoured sauce."So this morning we cooked Ragù. Actually, we cooked up a vatful as Ragù freezes well.
I've been cooking Ragù so long I can't remember whose recipe I first used but I guess it will have been Elizabeth David's from Italian Food - first published in 1954. I remember having an increasingly dog-eared penguin paperback edition which eventually disintegrated completely. (see my librarything for the current). Certainly I still feel inclined to include chicken liver and do not use milk/cream. This method is also in the Alan Davidson Oxford Companion. Marcella Hazan and Anna Del Conte use milk and Claudia Roden double cream. None of these latter three include livers. Perhaps I am behind the times? Heston Blumenthal of course goes to Bologna, interviews everyone and returns to his kitchen where he sets up experiments. I believe he may have used a blow torch...
Of all the recipes I looked up HF-W's is the best described in terms that a teenager might undersand and his ideas for extension of the technique to Picadillo (for Tacos), Cottage Pie and Chile con Carne are an important next step for this audience. Anyway this recipe is mine rather then HF-W's. It took 55 minutes to cook 2Kg of (butcher) ground skirt plus trimmings and a big big soffrito. It should be possible to deal with 500g mince meat in 35 minutes and that is the quantity this recipe is based on. This should feed 4 adults or 3 teenagers.
For the soffrito
1 Celery stalk washed clean and grated
1 good Carrot peeled and grated
1 large sweet onion peeled and chopped fine
2 garlic cloves peeled and chopped fine
2 tblspn Olive oil
Meat
500g premium ground beef
75g Chicken livers coarsely chopped (optional)
3 slices pancetta (or un-smoked streaky bacon)
Sauce ingredients
75ml red wine
75ml veal stock (or a knorr veg stock cube dissolved in 75 ml warm water if you must)
2 tblspn tomato paste (ketchup will do at a pinch)
500ml tomato passatta drained
2 good pinches oregano
Salt to taste
Heat the oil over a medium heat in a sauté pan. Add the onion and stir. Meanwhile lightly cook the pancetta in a frying pan on medium heat so that it releases some oil. Don't crisp it. Keep stirring the onions and after a few minutes add the garlic, celery and carrot. Keep stirring - they mustn't burn.
Lift out the pancetta and cut each slice into 6 or 7 pieces. Put it in a bowl. Add the chicken livers to the hot pancetta fat and cook for a minute, stir then cook for another minute. Keep stirring the onions etc. Take out the liver and put it with the pancetta. Stir the onions and turn them down to low.
Turn up the heat in the frying pan and, when hot, add the beef. Spread it out but don't turn it over for 2 or 3 minutes. It doesn't matter if it burns a bit. Turn it over and press it down in the pan. Cook for another 3 minutes untill the beef isn't pink any more. Tip it into the bowl with the livers etc. Add the tomatoe paste to the meat and mix it in with your fingers.
Keep stirring the onions. After about 25 minutes they should be translucent and soft. Take them off the heat and add them to the meat. Mix it all up with a wooden spoon. Then add the passata to everything and mix it in.
Put the whole mix into a casserole and add the oregano. Set it on a low heat over a diffusing ring (if possible). Stew for at least 2 hours. Halfway through taste the Ragù. Does it need salt? You can add a good pinch if you feel it needs it but remember that you will probably be serving this with a salty parmigiana so don't add too much...When you feel it's cooked take it off the heat and let it cool. It must cool and be reheated before it's served.
Serve with a good pasta (De Cecco is a good bet). Don't choose spaghetti - serve it with tagliatelle if you must have long pasta or with farfalle or conchiglie and with parmesan and a salad of rocket.
And remember, even though I plan to write this blog for just 8 or 9 weeks, when all the transient readers have long since stopped checking if there's a new entry, these recipes will still be here (along with all those dodgy photos on Facebook) so that it can be consulted on a stolen wireless connection from a 2nd year student bedsit.
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