3 recipes

Or more, arguably

A few times now I've avoided writing a recipe here because the recipe in question was too simple or because I didn't have enough to say about it to fill out the space. In general I feel quite ambivalent about writing recipes down and then charging money for them; one reason I'm happy to contribute to zines like Offcuts or Uno that don't offer a fee when usually I am protective of my time. While some writers (Nicola at Kitchen Projects springs to mind) put loads of time and effort into their recipes usually mine are more along the lines of this is what I did with maybe some thoughts of what I might do next time. I will read around a recipe and think about it a lot first but then cook it quite instinctively in the moment, trust it will be hammered out in service; We'll fix it in the mix, my old sous-chef used to say when a dish wasn't quite seasoned right first go – not exactly what you want to be told when reading a recipe, even if that is ultimately how you have to approach all recipes. (Also of course I wrote that whole book against the very idea of recipes which is a hard move to come back from.)

All that being said I do think recipes (whatever is meant by that) are there to be shared and so here is a little compendium of the recipes I thought were too simple or not personal enough to me to share individually and which now I put them together look like a very nice summer lunch for two. Really I have much more interest in menu cookbooks than recipe ones, it's nice to see them all together and the provision of context means there is less of the incessant demand for novelty for its own sake which plagues the churning cookbook industry. Richard Olney in the French Menu Cookbook has a dessert which is just a bowl of strawberries and probably some Beaujolais or something. Eat your heart out, [insert recipe columnist here]!