Ever since I ‘got into’ cooking, I’ve had a bit of an all-or-nothing attitude towards cooking at home. Since I know how tasty the food I cook can be, if I’m not giving 100%, what’s even the point? I’m aware that this is not a very useful perspective to have, but it’s been difficult to shift. It’s led to me ordering quite a lot of takeaways in my adult life, especially since delivery apps have given us access to restaurants and food of a higher quality than your local chippy. This has meant I’ve spent a lot of money I probably didn’t need to, and, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear, has resulted in a *lot* of disappointing dinners.
I think it’s a bit of a hangover from my 7 years as a vegan, when, if I wanted to eat anything good, it would take at least an hour or two in the kitchen to get it to the plate. I recently read an article from former Bon Appétit editor Christina Chaey, on her Substack, entitled ‘On breaking up with perfectionist cooking’. In the article, Chaey shares similar woes of giving herself unrealistic expectations in her home kitchen, and delves deeper into the relationship between cooking and her mental health. I really resonated with her words because she asks herself to give up on the idea that food needs to be of a certain standard for it to be worthy of being on your plate. Not only that, but that you’re self-worth isn’t based on whether you’re providing yourself with restaurant quality food every night.
I know that may seem strange to some, but I certainly have been living a life where, if I’ve not tried really hard cooking my dinner, I won’t try at all. And so, I too am trying to break up with this idea. This doesn’t mean I don’t still want to be eating delicious flavourful food every day, but it does mean I can use a combination of made-from-scratch and pre-made shortcuts to make a meal I’m happy with.
Last week, I had some pre-made scampi in the fridge, all I had to do was chuck it in the oven. To add that element of actual real cooking, I decided to make myself a little tartare sauce, AND add some buttery nocellara olives to it, to help me feel like I was actually being creative in the kitchen. Another element of wanting to ‘properly cook’ at home, rather than just heating something breaded up from the freezer, is that I do want to at least *try* and be healthy. And I think we know chicken nuggets just ain’t that. For this meal I had some rainbow chard in the fridge. I fried up some chorizo before adding the chopped chard to the pan, making it smoky and delicious. And it took all of 5 minutes.
In the spirit of attempting to actually put a recipe up on this food blog, here’s roughly what went into the Olive Tartare Sauce.
1/2 cup mayo
1 medium pickle/gherkin, finely chopped
1/4 cup olives, roughly chopped (I 8th-ed each olive, to be specific)
1 tsp capers, finely chopped
juice of 1/2 a lemon
2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
1/2 tsp dried dill
1/2 tbsp pickle juice
1/8 tsp smoked paprika
flaky salt & freshly ground pepper to taste
Do keep in mind that this was very much what I had in the fridge/cupboard. For example, if I had fresh dill, I probably would have used that, ‘cause why not? I did a lot of tasting and re-seasoning to make sure the flavour was spot on. And voila, it felt like I'd kind of cooked something! All the while, the scampi was cooking away in the oven, and I hadn’t really put that much effort in at all.
So, that’s how I’m going to move forward in my kitchen. Just trying to let go really. All the while, still actually enjoy what I’m eating, and hopefully spend… let’s be honest, *quite a lot* less money on takeaways.
Make sure you’re following me on Instagram for all the visual content (reels!) that goes along with these written posts, and more casual updates from my kitchen: @sophie.serves.it.up