There’s nothing quite like being left alone in the kitchen to slowly and quietly prepare some good grub. It is deeply relaxing and one of the greatest and simplest pleasures of life.
However there is a force loose in the world which seems determined to undermine this calm and pleasant activity and turn our kitchens into a chaotic whirlpool of over-boiling pots and burning pans. This insidious agent of disorder is the phenomenon of parallel cooking propagated mostly by authors of the world’s cook books and the scores of celebrity chef shows which seek to convince us that a kitchen should be a highly pressured environment.
You see when I cook I like to prepare all the ingredients and arrange them into groups in the order in which I am going to use them and add to the pot. If there are any mixtures or components which need to be used with haste or at a specific time during the cooking process I will have these prepared also and ready to go when required.
Now it would be nice if when I opened one of my recipe books the descriptive passages that go along with each recipe laid out the preparation and cooking in such a clean logical order. But alas this seems to never be the case. My recipe books are littered with fuzzy minded parallelism which seems purposely designed to confuse and confound. Things such as:
Now while the pot is simmering for the next five minutes prepare the breadcrumb mixture
Now what’s so wrong with this? I’ll tell you what’s wrong, instead of leisurely making your breadcrumb mixture and perhaps daydreaming or writing your next blog entry in your head, you’re thrust head first into a stressful race against time to get those breadcrumbs ready before the contents of the pot start to burn and the whole meal is ruined not to mention your precious moments of relaxation.
This sad state of affairs results in me having to read through every recipe in advance and mentally reorder it so I can cook in a manner conducive to my own peace and well being. While this is a workable situation it is less than desirable and so today I’m inaugurating the Single Threaded Cooking Defence League so you can join with me and strike a blow against those who would disquiet the mind and have us stir a pot with one hand while chopping with the other.
Stay Linear! Stay Relaxed! Your Food Deserves it!
