Top TV chefs can make 20-minute meals but I certainly can't
TV chef Jamie Oliver, pictured in a previous cookery series, is at the top of his game and far more capable than me of making a quick meal. Picture: PA (Image: PA)
HAVE you ever tried eggs in purgatory?
I have, and it’s not something I want to repeat. I’d never heard of this Italian dish until I tried an ‘easy 20 minute recipe’ I found online. Forty minutes later, having rinsed, chopped, sauted, stirred, mashed, torn, cracked and done various other things with the ingredients, the kitchen was as close to purgatory as it's ever been.
The dish - so named because the eggs represent souls trying to escape from a hot, red tomato sauce - wasn’t as easy as the recipe made out.
Am I the only person in the UK who finds cookbooks filled with meals you can supposedly cook in minutes frustrating? I could add a string of other adjectives - exasperating, annoying, irritating, infuriating.
I’ve never been one for cooking and, since my students days, I’ve been at pains to find ways to produce meals with minimal effort. Back then my housemates and I lived on something called Beanfeast, a bolognese dish which involved opening a packet and adding hot water. Perfect.
Further down the line, as a parent of young children I usually sated my appetite with toast and a sliced banana. Now working from home, as lunchtime approaches, I often resort to beans on toast, and even that takes at least 15 minutes as the ring on my oven has to heat up.
I love a tuna mayonnaise jacket potato, but that can take a while, as I microwave it and stick it n the oven to crisp. It’s at least 20 minutes.
If I'm cooking, it’s not about what I would like, but what I can produce at breakneck speed. I’m too impatient to faff about with it. Even looking at a list of ingredients gives me palpitations.
I would love to be able to produce appetising meals, not only for myself, but to surprise my husband, who does 99 per cent of the cooking in our home.
That's why I have accumulated so many cookbooks promising ‘meals in minutes’. One of my first was based around 'quick and easy’ ways to cook pasta. Inside are pictures of appetising dishes, from fusilli with tuna and tomatoes to bolognese, all supposedly cooked in around 15 minutes or less. But once I put it into practice I quickly realised that, to me anyway, none of the recipes were either quick or easy.
Even beans on toast can take at least 15 minutes. Picture: PA (Image: PA)
Another book, Indian Meals in Minutes, has sat on the shelf in my kitchen for three decades. It’s another one selling the quick and easy myth. Some of the dishes have lists of ingredients taking up a whole page - the samosas have 18, the rogan josh 17. The preparation alone would leave me frazzled. It takes me five minutes to set out the chopping board and knives.
Recipes claiming a fast turnaround are often based on the expertise and speed of accomplished chefs, who can slice onions and chop garlic at the speed of light. They don’t get in a tizzy when breaking an egg into a well of tomato (egg purgatory).
Jamie Oliver has just released a book 20 Minute Meals. I might give it a go, I thought. While in Asda I had a quick flick through. Same old, same old. Nothing I could achieve in less than an hour.
His chicken fricassee, for example, demands slicing and dry-frying mushrooms, peeling and finely slicing garlic, trimming and chopping spring onions, cutting, seasoning and cooking chicken breasts, deseeding and dicing tomatoes - I’ll stop there because, were I doing this, I’d be well over the 20 minute mark.
On Monday I watched Jamie's new Channel 4 TV show, linked to the book, where he timed himself. I was impressed - he achieved very tasty-looking dishes in 20 minutes; but he’s so slick, quick and professional. He’s at the top of his game. It would take us normal folk, us amateurs, twice, if not three times, as long.
Then there’s all the washing up...