Why cooking together is better than cooking on your own

Just remove the stress of being entirely responsible for a meal.

AI’s take on cooking together!

Last weekend I went to stay with my friend Fiona to cook together. Well not just to cook - we love to hang out - but it generally involves a cooking project too. We both love cooking and can think of nothing better than being in the kitchen together. We’ve done it many times, picking a book and running it through its paces.

This time the book was Brutto, a bittersweet reminder of the genius of Russell Norman who tragically died just before Christmas last year.

Part of the pleasure is the planning. We decided on the main course, a Florentine meatloaf (above) then worked around that.

It was quite substantial so we didn’t want to precede it with anything too heavy but Fi was aching to make the spinach and ricotta gnudi (dumplings) so we had those the night I arrived. (They are aMAZing!).

We kicked off with the Brutto spritz which is based on Select aperitivo (available from Ocado and Amazon) topped up with prosecco and a splash of soda or sparkling water and some broccoli and anchovy crostini from one of Russell’s other books, Venice, then finished with a gorgeously light blood orange and almond cake. 

Apart from the pleasure of creating a restaurant quality meal the obvious advantages are spreading the workload and being able to discuss the queries that inevitably pop up about a recipe as you cook your way through it.

Did. Russell mean 180°C fan or conventional oven temperature for the cake for example? There weren’t any gas or Fahrenheit temperatures alongside to give us a clue. (You can usually solve the problem by googling a similar recipe and seeing what that suggests.)

Having someone alongside you even helps you laugh off any disasters. We decided to make the salt cod crostini from the Venice book too which needed, Russell said, to be pounded with a wooden spoon to achieve the right moussey consistency.

We decided to put it in the food processor instead and it came out grey, and slightly gritty with more of a flavour of olive oil than salt cod so we just shrugged and chucked it. If I’d been on my own I’d have been mega-stressed.

I’ve cooked in bigger groups too. As I’ve mentioned before a group of us in Bristol formed what we called a Collaborative Cooking Club about 5 years ago to cook a meal from a cuisine with which we are less familiar or including dishes which we might hesitate to tackle on our own.

Most recently that was a classic old school French menu including this rather splendid ballotine of chicken but we’ve also made Brazilian moqueca, a Chinese new year’s feast including silken tofu that one of our more intrepid members made from scratch and an extravagant Sicilian timballo that was adorned with gold leaf. That’s led by three more experienced cooks and chefs, the rest of us operating as willing sous.

But you don’t have to have access to culinary superstars to make the idea work. Just find a friend with the same interest in cooking and ideally a similar level of ability as you. It doesn’t even have to be hugely challenging - you could even do something simple like making sushi or tacos together.

Just make sure they’re up for the washing up …

Do you cook with friends or family members you don’t live with? If so tell us what you’ve made recently.  Or maybe you find it easier to cook on your own?