Motivation to Cook – Where has it Gone?
I’ve been cooking seriously for 20 years yet I have a fear – a fear of going in to the kitchen and not knowing what to cook – no ideas. I’m afraid to create, to let myself go just in case what I create is not good; is not perfect
I’m afraid of opening recipe books and being phased by having to go and get ingredients – I tend to stay safe with what I know. I never used to be like this – I’ve created and cooked some great food over the years, but chains have been shackling that creativity – I needed a spark to lighten those fires again; a force to break those chains. I needed to understand how to cook again, not just how to make things. To understand ingredients, tastes, flavours, textures, techniques; I needed to go back to basics. Again, I needed that spark…and then one day recently I found it…
Finding That Cooking Spark
It was a lunchtime jaunt to an Italian restaurant in inner Melbourne’s Lygon Street; the home away from home – It was Italy that provided that spark.
King & Godfrey, the Italian grocers-cum-restaurant was the place: I remember eating a simple ravioli in a butter sauce – but everything about it’s simplicity was wonderful – the hint of nutmeg in the cheese filling; the delicate yet slightly resistant texture of the pasta; the decadence of the butter sauce with minute explosions of salty vinegar from the capers. In that moment it made me think about how I approach cooking – about making the most out of ingredients I have – and also looking for the best I can find.
Eating this I pondered about when going to Italian restaurants and tasting a ragu or gnocchi, chilli oil or polenta chips and wondered why my home cooking didn’t quite match with what I ate at these restaurants. My cooking was close but never quite there.
The Epiphany
After finishing the ravioli at K & G I then pursued their deli; a melting pot of inspirational ingredients and produce – but I wanted to find the secret of taking my food at home to their level. And then the answer was right before me they had a cook book – I bought it – and as soon as got it home I read through and studied the recipes and the stories that accompanied them – and it was an epiphany – at home I was just making the food – I had stopped questioning the why or what – it was just how. And when I began to understand that, that was the start – and that start was passata – a simple tomato sauce. It made me understand about doing the simple things well – very well.
Sometimes we are looking for the perfect ingredient, the perfect dish – but sometimes we need to be more pragmatic – to take advantage of what we have, what’s available, what we can afford. So in that, it’s important that we treat everything with respect and try and get the best out of it. I would love to have fresh san Marzano tomatoes, or in season ripe Roma tomatoes – but as I am not in Italy and it is winter here I have to use what’s available – but that should not be an excuse to cook to the best my ability.
Tomato vs Tomato
Tinned tomatoes on the whole are great, but I discovered the taste of tomato sauce, inspired by King and Godfrey, made with fresh tomatoes … it was the the difference that took my final pasta sauce to a level I have being trying to find.
When ripe Roma sauce tomatoes are available I use them; but for most of the year I use these tomatoes – they are the cheapest, most generic type of tomato, but within they are still a treasure trove of texture and flavour. They are pale and firm when I buy them and devoid of any character, but when we let the sun and daylight work it’s magic for a few days. suddenly they begin to submit, darken and start to exude that tomatoey fragrance – and we then turn them into a tomato sauce, a passata, that exudes umami, sweetness, acidity, freshness and notes of rose and violet which the great food writer Harold Magee explains are fragments of the carotenoid pigment, a result of cooking tomatoes.
This tomato sauce I use as a base for my pasta sauces – in a meat ragu, a simple pomarola sauce; even in a French style ratatouille or a Sri Lankan style chicken curry. It brings with it character and versatility.
…this simple tomato sauce was and is my spark.
