Running with the theme of food poverty and our lack of cooking skills which seems to be todays news (and probably tomorrows fish and chip paper) I've just read an excellent article regarding Jocasta Innes, author of The Pauper's Cookbook.
Innes led an affluent lifestyle, eating in expensive restaurants and shopping for food in Fortnum & Mason's food hall, however, with the breakdown of her marriage she fell on hard times and found herself subsisting on £20 a week earned by translating books. As a foodie she had to learn how to make the kind of food she wanted to eat on a tiny budget.
Innes wrote her book off the back of her own hard experience, full of ideas for turning simple, cheap ingredients into delicious meals such as bacon and potato hotpot and oxtail stew, her book proved popular and is still in print four decades later.
Innes daughter Daisy Goodwin wrote an article in response to the Baroness Jenkin debacle (see post: Food Poverty In The UK - savoury dumplings.) Like me, Goodwin thinks Lady Jenkin was absolutely right regarding poor people not knowing how to cook.
A survey published this week estimated that a great many Britons cooking repertoire consists of: toast, cereals, crisp sandwiches and baked beans. Many of those surveyed were bedazzled with convenience ready meals and didn't have the first idea how to turn raw ingredients into a meal.
As Goodwin states: 'Once, Home Economics was widely taught in schools. Today children are taught to design their own apps but leave school not knowing how to chop an onion or plan a weeks food budget.'
The Pauper's Cookbook has a chapter on how to plan and cook a weeks worth of meals, a foreign concept to a generation who, according to a survey, still have no idea what they're eating for dinner at 4pm and will pop into a convenience shop on the way home.
Staff at Action For Children, one of the biggest children's charities in the UK, are acutely aware of the problems caused by a nation's culinary illiteracy. One family who were receiving supplies from a food bank were still sending their children to school hungry. When a charity worker visited she found a cupboard full of dried pasta which the mother had no idea how to turn into a meal. The family had been living on cereal and tinned food. The charity worker showed the mother how to cook the pasta and combine it with tinned tomatoes, an onion and some garlic. If people aren't taught basic cooking skills ie making onion soup from scratch for roughly 20p a head, the inability will make the poor even poorer. A tin of hotdogs or an expensive ready meal won't sustain a family, being able to stretch limited ingredients has been the way people in poorer countries have survived for centuries. Cooking shouldn't be the preserve of the middle classes, everyone has the right to learn how to cook.
As Goodwin points out: 'The fast food, instant gratification ethos is to blame. Microwave meals, ready made sauces, tinned soup, frozen pizzas and chips and packs of expensive vegetables, trimmed, washed and ready to go.'
Our complacency is proving costly, as I have said before, it's not lack of food that leaves Britons hungry, it's not knowing how to cook it, the fact is, poverty shouldn't be a barrier to eating well - bargain vegetables made into a stir fry or soup, cheap cuts of meat slowly stewed, a whole chicken which seems expensive until you know how to turn it into three meals...........
The only thing I will say regarding this current debate is that it's not just poorer people who don't know how to cook. I worked in education where a high percentage of 'intelligent' women wore their lack of cooking skills like a badge of honour. The fact that they cooked neither with, or for their families was like a huge joke.
Which brings me to one of my all time favourites, cottage pie. This can be made very cheaply with only a small amount of meat and lots of vegetables. This dish originated as a means of using leftover meat and I very often make it with Sunday roast leftovers. If making from scratch I buy the meat from my butcher, you really only need 1lb minced meat per 4 people, the trick is to have your butcher mince up some chuck steak or stewing steak, your meat needs to have some fat to add flavour. The extra lean packaged mince sold in supermarkets has no flavour and you will notice when frying, you end up with a pool of slurry in your pan.
Cottage pie
Recipe
1lb good quality mince
1 bag frozen casserole vegetables
1 bag frozen cauliflower florets
1 large onion, sliced
1 tin baked beans
1 litre stock
Salt and pepper
700g potatoes, peeled, boiled and mashed
Knob of butter
Heat butter in a large pan, add onions and sauté gently on a low heat
Add mince and cook until brown and slightly caramelised
Remove mince and onions from pan and set aside
In the same pan add frozen veg, stir picking up all the sticky, caramelised bits off the bottom of the pan
Add 500ml of stock and simmer gently for 10-15 minutes
Add baked beans
Return mince and onions to pan, add the remaining stock and simmer for 10 minutes
Transfer to baking dishes
Cook for 30 minutes
'A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.'
- Elsa Schiaparelli
Love Donna xxxxxxxxxx
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