Why don't we cook anymore?

This week I read an interview in The Advertiser with the owner of Woodside Cheese Wrights. She spoke of the trouble they were having attracting a qualified Cheese Maker to their company and revealed that there were only 14 qualified cheese makers in South Australia. Her only solution was to look offshore for someone to fill this role.

This might seem like an isolated problem to some but I think it points to a wider problem of the loss of basic food preparation ability in our society. We’re in a situation where people have de-valued these skills as passé or unglamorous. Everybody wants to be a stockbroker (or some other high paying & glamorous but essentially soulless role) but they have no clue (or don’t care) about the quality of what they are putting in their bodies. I can’t tell you how many supposedly smart and successful people I have spoken to who seem to think its quite amusing that they ‘can’t even make toast’, as though this is something to be proud of. I find it just a little bit sad.

Perhaps I am an unusual case as my idea of a good weekend is de-boning a chicken and making a stock using the carcass (or maybe I should just get a life) but I think it’s a terrible thing that we are losing such basic skills. I remember watching ‘The Cook & The Chef’ where it was mentioned that the old CWA (that’s the Country Women’s Association for city dwellers) cookbooks had no methods listed in their recipes, just the ingredients and quantities. The reason being that people (Ok, let’s be honest, women) knew exactly what to ‘do’ with the ingredients. You wouldn’t be able to do this now. I guess nobody teaches their kids to find their way around a kitchen anymore. I know not all of us were lucky enough to have a stay at home mum (or dad!) to teach us the ropes, but that’s no excuse. Let’s face it; if we want to learn how to do something badly enough we’ll do it. Mum taught me a whole lot in the kitchen but I’ve gone on to learn a lot more myself as well.

I’m not suggesting for a moment that everybody should go out and learn how to make pasta and shun the store-bought varieties (though I can tell you it is well worth the extra time and effort), San Remo would go out of business for one thing! However, I wonder if some of our ‘problems’ in society (Obesity and many of the other health problems related to poor diet) would be solved if people actually took an interest in their food and how it is prepared.

Even the tryouts for the Channel 10 Series ‘MasterChef’ were a bit revealing, was I the only person who thought that 7000 entrants (total, not just here in SA) was very low? Of course, there’s no glamour in getting your hands dirty in a kitchen (not like getting famous on Australian Idol) and how many people really care that much about food anyway? Even the final top 20, whilst mostly talented, have a few contestants who make me wonder how on earth they got on the show.

We live in a society where we I have observed that we have two types of ‘kitchen phobics’:

1) People measure the quality of their food by its size. The general thinking with these types seems to be that if you pay $15.00 for a schnitzel big enough to feed a small African nation (leaving out the soggy chips underneath) then you’ve got ‘good value for money’. Is it any wonder that we’re a nation of fatties? Why make something at home (or go to a great restaurant that serves realistic portions) when you can feed the family for a few dollars at the local Maccas? Just imagine for a moment if these same people actually learnt a bit about the food they’re eating and took an interest, would they still want to eat that disgusting greasy and tasteless burger?

2) The other type is the highly educated professional type who seems to think that food preparation in the home is just too passé and old fashioned for someone as fabulous as they are. These are your ‘try hard’ types dressed head to toe in designer gear who order green Oysters in the middle of summer and don’t notice the spawn (gross) because they’re too busy trying to look good in front of their equally vacuous friends (“oh yes I’m a terribly adventurous eater with my green oysters that I secretly don’t even like, please approve of me”). Their food ignorance is particularly frustrating as they actually think they know what they are talking about. I have heard of a particularly wealthy SA woman who has 2 kitchens in her home; a large, ‘hidden’ one where she hires an actual chef to prepare delicious meals for her guests and a ‘for show’ kitchen near the dining area where she makes it appear as though she made the food herself, I hope that this is an urban food myth but I fear it isn’t.

Knowing how to prepare food means that you know how to pick good quality ingredients that are in season (so you don’t end up with those disgusting Coles/Woolies apples that have been in cold storage for 5 years), and it doesn’t mean you have to pay more. Anyone who has been to the Torrens Island Market can attest to that. It also means you know which flavours work together (and which don’t), which means you don’t have to spend a fortune on expensive ingredients. Importantly, it also gives you a sense of control over what you are consuming; has anyone actually seen how much butter goes into puff pastry? You don’t want to be eating that everyday unless you have a death wish (not that I have anything against it, just not every day!).

I wonder what the world will look like in 10, 20, 30 years. Will we be a society made up of half grossly overweight people abusing their body with crap food and the other half glamorous, designer clothes wearing, Lexus 4WD driving schmik professionals with no basic life skills?