August 22, 2024

The Sohla and Delia and Nigella of it all pt 1

I don’t read cookbooks. I use them. They are frequently gifted to me, or purloined from houseshares where no-one else claimed them and people were delighted for the clearer shelf when I moved out. Cook books take up more space in our one wall library than fantasy books, but whereas the latter have telltale signs of use (white cracks of broken spines, dark corners where I’ve distractedly cleaned my nails), not one of the former has been read all the way through.

There are a few cook books, though, that demonstrate my affection for them by falling open on that recipe.

Delia’s Complete Cookery Course Classic Edition - Rich Fruit Cake, Plain Scones, the ingredient and method page of Soured Cream Soda Bread, Strawberry Jam¹

Simply Nigella - Butternut and halloumi burgers (a simpler time), Warm raspberry and lemon cake, Dark and sumptuous chocolate cake (yes, that one)

Nigellissima - Italian breakfast banana bread (this is very oil marked)

There’s not much analysing there - I like sweet baked goods. I don’t look up recipes for savoury foods - I don’t host many dinner parties and know how to prepare a meal I like/is edible/I Google that/someone else cooks in the evening. There are other books that have stains on the savoury pages, but these are the ones that move from library to kitchen the most frequently.

Delia’s my solid, my can’t-go-wrong, the-classics-are-classic-for-a-reason bae.

Nigella is who I go to for a treat - a real treat. A showstopper not for their looks, but for flavour². These are the bakes I make when I want to spoil someone (myself included). They are also the bakes that people will most frequently ask the recipe for. So delicious, but achievable somehow.

No one asks for Delia recipes. 1) I probs wouldn’t bring a Delia dish to a gathering and 2) People know where to get the recipe for scones. It’s Delia (probs via BBC Good Food, but you get it).

It could be a my form of peacocking, bringing something that I know will get a compliment of a recipe query (and we know I have a head for hats). Though rather than getting some vulnerable pussy, instead it’s just an easy little feather fan to hide behind: “Here I made this. It shows I care, and it’s something to talk about because I’m going to cry or get lost in a diatribe if you ask me how I’m doing”³

Sometimes it’s an outpouring of love. Other times I just want there to be cake.

When Start Here first came into my possession, I prepared it for use. On the dining room table, I held the bulk of the pages and let the hard covers fall either side. I pressed along their inside edge, then let a page on each side fall. I repeated the pressing, stroking action left and right as the pages were allowed to trickle down, roughly equally, thoughtfully pressed, until I got to the centre. It’s how my dad showed me to open new books - books where you didn’t want to crack the spine. Books you wanted to preserve. It’s rare I take the time to do this (mostly I read library books, or acquire secondhand ones). It’s usually only when I’m with others that I prepare a book to be read - it would be rude to just start reading, and it’s something I can do while chatting.

It means now that when I pick up Start Here, no one recipe opens up. Gravity and post-it notes have their effect (affect? Still not checking), but I can flick to any page and the book rests open⁴. I didn’t need my phone to keep the Waldorf salad open. I feel the book emits a form of egalitarianism. All recipes are valid, none more or less loved than the last.

Now, I do intend to make most (if not all) of the recipes in here, as well as read the mini-lessons. Presumably at some point some recipes or methods will pop out more brazenly than others.

I suppose at that point I might be able to trace another lineage of me. Maybe have a better idea of who I’ve become.

Or not.

I didn’t bring Sohla to the kitchen to make today’s curlicue salad. There were bits for lunch - leftover salad, end of a loaf, hummus bought in vain to accommodate celery, tofu, carrots enstickified. And a little cucumber salad to tie it together (aka tie it to this. Not every meal can bring you to your knees and teach you something new. Mind needs space).

There is the large possibility that Start Here teaches me enough that it’s only the rarer recipes - the lessons I haven’t quite learned yet - that get revisited to a Strawberry Jam extent. And I do think I’ve learned that cucumber salad balance, because damn. I wanted to eat it and save it all at the same time. I don’t think anyone would ask me for that recipe, but I’d bring that bitch to a picnic in a heartbeat.