What I Cooked Last Night

Two teaspoons of salt? someone exclaimed (re yesterday's recipe). It’s not that much, I replied. Indian main courses are meant to be small serves filled out by much more rice or bread and vegetables. And in any case, these recipes are upfront about their ingredients, instead of sneaking them in progressively like some others. Take a British-style beef stew, for example; in which the beef is shaken in seasoned flour before being browned. How much salt goes into the flour? More than a shake. Then stock is added to the stew. How much salt in the stock? Who knows. The rest of the seasoned flour usually thickens the stew. If it is served with potatoes, these may be cooked in salted water, mashed with more and then salted further at the table, as are any side vegetables. The whole thing may then get a downpour of Worcestershire, HP, tomato sauce or similar. Thoroughly delicious: and by that stage, quite salty. The curry, on the other hand, is garnished with yogurt and herbs. In o...

... mixed with aroma of brewing coffee at dawn before the traffic has started and the world is still quiet ... when you were ten and your mother took the pie out of the oven and cut it at the table and steam curled in the air and the aroma of baked egg and bacon and pastry was like something you had never smelled before ... in a takeaway when you are as hungry as a tiger and the sandwich hand slips your freshly toasted $5 bacon and egg sandwich (extra butter on top) into a brown paper bag and you sit in the park and pull out your newspaper and tear open the paper bag that is now partially translucent ... when it is cooked so long in the pan it crumbles into deep red shards of salty crunchiness, because that's how you like it best ... on the fish shop grill when George the Greek throws it down next to the meat pattie and the onions and the egg and he drags the bacon around to turbo-charge the heat and it sizzles and pops and then he builds your burger ... when it comes ou...