The Secret to Good Cooking

I have spent the last few years experimenting with dinners. From experimental gourmet meals for grown-ups to different kinds of mash for toddlers, to family meals: quick & easy, slow-cooked, recipes from different countries, low-fat healthy meals, recipes torn from the pages of women's magazines, recipes scrawled down watching episodes of Nigella, Jamie, Gordon Ramsay and others, recipes from my mother's collection from the 1970s and 80s, recipes from my own first cookbooks bought in the 80s and recipes from flatmates in my university days.  I have made up my own recipes and adapted others, to make them fit what small children will eat, make them healthier or yummier, or suit what I had in my cupboard at the time. I have made meals from pre-made sauces and bases and added a pinch of this or that or tossed in a handful of greens so I could feel like I cooked.

And from this wealth of variously loving, despairing, fun, boring and desperate experience, I have found the secret to delicious, successful family meals. Meals that the whole family will eat.

I don't mean to imply that everyone eats and loves my food every night - far from it!

Also, I don't cook every night. We have a baked beans or scrambled eggs night and a "picnic dinner" night every week, and we get take-out sometimes.


But for successful cooked meals I now know what works, and it is this:

Method:

• taking time (enough time - but not hours)
• taking care
• being relaxed (music helps)

Ingredients:
One or more of the following, in very generous quantities:

• salt
• oil
• butter 
• cream

!!!

Cooking: do you love it or loathe it?

What works for you?

Creamy Honey Mustard Chicken. Serve with greens and rice.
Bribe children with a small dessert to eat some greens. Yes,
I know you're not meant to do this. Don't care.