The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Cooking for Other People

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Cooking for Other People

I can remember well the first time I cooked for other people. It was a beef and Guinness stew. I had to cycle to Crossgar to the butcher's for the stewing steak, and go to the off-licence for the two cans of draught Guinness (the best kind of Guinness for cooking). I remember following the instructions of the recipe, which I believe was this one from Jamie Oliver (in fact most of the recipes I followed early in my cooking life were from Jamie Oliver - the man deserves a knighthood, if he's yet to receive one). I've moved on a bit from Oliver's recipes now but I can't praise him enough for making recipes in simple, plain terms and making everyhting seem achievable to a novice. Anyway, I proceeded to brown the stewing steak, chop the carrots, and eventually add the Guinness and let it bubble away. I couldn't beleive I'd made it for my family, and they were eating it, and, shock horror, some of them even said they liked it. And that was just the start, fast forward about twenty years and I now actively enjoy cooking for people and will grab the chance with two hands if given a sniff. In fact, it's even got to the point where I don't really want to go to restaurants anymore, or it's got to be a really good one where the chef is doing something a bit different, or doing something very simple, very well. But, cooking for other people is about more than just self-improvement, it's about bringing people together, connecting, talking and sharing something delicious.

I’ve always loved cooking for other people. I love the planning stages of thinking about what to make. I love shopping for the ingredients. I love going the extra mile and surprising people with the dish. I love learning new techniques and recipes and working with new ingredients, and that’s all before anyone has even set foot inside your house for an aperitif. As I’ve written about before, moving away from home for university forced me to learn to cook for myself, and I soon realised that the meal I made was only going to be as appetising as I made it, so I started to make them more and more appetising, which required learning more recipes and techniques, and, the other enjoyable thing, watching many Youtube videos of chefs doing it properly. 

I’d say that roast chicken would be the dish I’ve made most for other people. It feeds a crowd, people like it, you can jazz it up if you want, you can serve it with a wide range of sides if someone is vegetarian, and it’s a communal meal whereby everyone eats from the same bird. There’s something equitable about that I like. 

Then again one of the things I most enjoy about sitting round the table with guests is that - without getting too grandiose about what is essentially a meal - it’s about equality and democracy. At that point, no matter what jobs or status we might have, we’re all people with a need to be fed and watered. We are all, at that moment, reduced to an almost bestial or primitive level - we are all at that moment, despite our differences, connected by the need to eat and satiate our hunger. And, by extension, sitting around the table, there is also sense of democracy, of everyone having a chance to speak and be heard, whatever they are talking about, whether it be news, economics, politics, anecdotes, or even just the weather,  

It’s also a very human and humane thing to do, to cook for someone else. It’s humbling for people to sit together and eat and talk. It’s a great leveller in the sense that everyone gets hungry, so therefore everyone must eat, and so to cook for people is to be the person facilitating this sustenance, the continuance of life, the restoration of our hungry, drained selves to our full-stomached, fully functioning selves. To sit around a table together is, on a very basic primitive level, satisfying our own base needs: to not be hungry.

Dinner parties get a bad name, and I think that’s mainly because most people maybe have the wrong idea of them, or try too hard to impress with dishes which don’t suit the occasion or simply haven’t been cooked properly or practised beforehand (a key element to a good dinner with friends is t make sure you've had a go at cooking it before). But, I don’t really think of them as dinner parties, more as just dinner. The phrase ‘dinner party’ conjures up some awfully drab, stiff, awkward silence filled evening, whereas dinner suggests something more normal, light, unpretentious and simple. And as Auguste Escoffier is claimed to have said: "above all, keep it simple."