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Almost totally pointless effort
May. 27th, 2012 07:45 pmI can cook (reasonably) complicated things if I want to. But if I choose to cook complicated things, I expect them to be worth the effort. My Home Ec teacher was quite right back in the late 80s that frozen puff pastry is as good as something you'll make at home. And I speak as someone who is good at pastry.
It was as I scraped out the hairy choke bit of a globe artichoke bought on a whim in the market that I remembered (a) that the artichoke is a member of the thistle family, and (b) the evening on a French campsite, on my first holiday abroad, on which my parents cooked their first globe artichoke and came to the conclusion that it was an almost totally pointless activity. I have now eaten my artichoke, and it was very nice, but not sufficiently nicer than the ones in jars to justify the effort on a regular basis. A novelty it shall remain.
Delia Smith's fast-roast chicken, on the other hand - cooked in only 5 minutes longer than an artichoke takes - remains delicious, easy, and reliable.
It was as I scraped out the hairy choke bit of a globe artichoke bought on a whim in the market that I remembered (a) that the artichoke is a member of the thistle family, and (b) the evening on a French campsite, on my first holiday abroad, on which my parents cooked their first globe artichoke and came to the conclusion that it was an almost totally pointless activity. I have now eaten my artichoke, and it was very nice, but not sufficiently nicer than the ones in jars to justify the effort on a regular basis. A novelty it shall remain.
Delia Smith's fast-roast chicken, on the other hand - cooked in only 5 minutes longer than an artichoke takes - remains delicious, easy, and reliable.