Nobody Panic - How to Cook

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

Hopeless in the kitchen? Afraid of the oven? Deeply suspicious of the hob? So are Tessa and Stevie but now they’ve slowly, slowly, slowly, managed to teach themselves a few things. Although they are still not experts so expect tips like “buy a big knife” and “get one of those pans you know the flat one”.BooksMidnight Chicken by Ella RisbridgerFrom the Oven to the Table by Diana HenryOnlineJack Monroe on Twitter: @BootstrapCookMiguel Barclay’s One Pound Meals on Instagram: @miguelbarclayMob KitchenRecorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive Productions.Photos by Marco Vittur, jingle by David Dobson.Follow Nobody Panic on Twitter @NobodyPanicPodSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/nobodypanic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Carriad. I'm Sarah. And we are the Weirdo's Book Club podcast. We are doing a very special live show as part of the London Podcast Festival. The date is Thursday, 11th of September. The time is 7pm and our special guest is the brilliant Alan Davies. Tickets from kingsplace.com. Single ladies, it's coming to London.

True on Saturday, the 13th of September. At the London Podcast Festival. The rumours are true, Saturday the 13th of September. At King's Place. Oh, that sounds like a date to me, Harriet. it. Welcome to Nobody Panic. What's Cooking? Oh, Steve, it's so slick, so good. What's cooking is this episode on how to cook. Welcome, come on in, into the kitchen, pull up a high bar store, get a drink, and gather round the hob. I'd like you to be imagining my kitchen as having an island,

which is all I personally want. I very recently nearly moved flats. Purely, I'd say maybe 90% it was based on the fact that there was an island in the kitchen. And I was like, yeah, I think I will pay that amount of money for an island. I then had to stop myself because I couldn't. That's the thing. An island is the ultimate. No man is an island, but... Most women want one.

And there we go. And there we go. That's the thing. It's all anyone wants. If I may, it's a real barrier to cooking because I've only started cooking since I've had a kitchen that isn't like infested and he, hideous. And I think that the island mentality is very crucial to cooking because in your head, you're like, yeah, I'll cook when I look like a cooking YouTuber. Exactly right. Exactly. When you're like, when I've got the stuff, then I'll do it. So I did a cooking course with the

Avenue Cookery School. Very nice, lovely people. But the thing about a cooking course is you are a beautiful, individual island, and somebody brings you the exact right amount of ingredients in a little glass bowl and they're all sort of there for you. Everything looks exquisite and you're like, yes, yes, I can cook and then you make, you know, proffitol's or whatever. And, but then you try and take those skills back to your totally crap kitchen where you don't have any of the things and no one's helping you. And you certainly don't have a sous chef who's like just popping things, doing the kitchen porter job and just washing as you go. How many glass bowls can you even fit in your kitchen? Exactly. So it becomes really tricky, you know, and we watch these amazing,

we watch all the amazing cooking shows and they've all got all the bits there and you're like, I don't have, I don't have that many glass bowls and I don't have the wherewithal to measure, you are supposed to measure things out, you know, ahead of schedule. Anyway, so I understand that it's, that is what holds us all back is we have a very clear vision of like what cooking is supposed to look like and then we have our own current kitchen state, you know? And I think psychologically you could become so disheartened with your current kitchen state and your current psychological cooking state that you, for about four years, I would look off. put a recipe and say ounces and I'd be like,

did it all that is and then I'd just give up. Exactly. So this is welcome to How to Cook and this one I did a shout out on Instagram and I've been genuinely overwhelmed with people wanting to give in their top tips and so just to say I'm so sorry if I don't name you individually, just know that you were

seen, heard, appreciated and ignored. And crucially ignored. No, hopefully they will all feature lots of them are, lots of people said the same things. So if your thing comes up, be like, that's me. And it was you. It was you, among others.

So before we get into that, though, what's, what adult thing have you done this week, Tessa? This is a nath answer, but mine is related to this episode, which is that we finally got around to doing the How to Cook episode, because we wanted to do this one for so long. And people kept asking us to do it. And we were like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But we don't know how to cook. So we'll have to find, like, someone, a guest, an ex-exam. expert to come in. And I think the confidence to be like, yep, we can do this episode. I feel confident enough now. I've taught myself enough things to be able to do this is a really huge adult thing

for me because cooking was honestly my worst skill by a country mile. So to have the confidence to talk on a cooking episode. That's my adult thing, Stevie. Congratulations. I'm very proud of you. I've been, my adult thing is also food related and also you related. I've put an onion in a glass. Yes, please. And I will transfer it today into a pot. Lovely to have a project and just keep growing that onion. I'm really into it. So, Tess's baby, how to cook. I would say both of us are crisp and dip sort of cooks. Yes, we're both not natural cooks. And even right before lockdown happened, so I know this happened in the beginning of March because I just moved house and five people came around in a very,

very, very casual way. And then I was like, oh, I'll make some, I'll make some dinner. And I was, I had a small cry in the kitchen. And all I was making was pasta with a jar of Lloyd Grossman sauce. And I was so stressed out about doing it wrong, that I wasn't doing it. And then, and then I served it. And I was like, it's not very good. And everyone was like, no, it's not. But it's also the best thing you've ever made. And then everyone was basically just shouting things that I had made for people in the past, or like things I'd messed up. And then one of my, an ex-housemate was reminding me at the time that I tried to make these cookies, burnt the pan so badly that I couldn't even wash it.

And so I hid it outside because I thought, oh, they're coming back. I'll just hide this for a second. Obviously forgot about it. Months later, they were like, where's my special baking tray? And I was like, oh, fuck. It's under the, it's under the roses. Outback, completely ruined. Anyway, what I'm doing here is setting the scene of a person who really does not like the kitchen.

It is a place of extreme fear. and but but lockdown has allowed me space to be to get get it get it to get right in get right in and I'm coming from a place of I very much have always cooked but I've always so when I was at uni and also right up until my god maybe like three years ago I cooked the same thing pretty much every night because I'd panic and be like well I did like very much a hob very much a hobman Not going anywhere near that oven. Absolutely. No.

And then things go in and they come out totally different. They come out totally different. You can't control that. You can't control it. You can't see it. I stay with the hob and I never veer away. Okay. We're going to start with two similar basic things. One is that we're going to be talking about cooking here and not baking.

Cooking is like, throw it in. Have you not got an onion? Try this. Like haven't got any lemon grass. Some lemon zest will do. You haven't got this? Not to worry. half those, whack it in the pan.

Baking is like, you do not deviate from this list. It says 67 grams of plain white flour. You need 67 grams of plain white flour. I've started to see it like Snape's potion classes. Stevie, that's exactly what it is. And indeed, somebody on Instagram messaged me exactly that to say, it's an art form. It's the Hogwarts Potion Lab.

Take it seriously. And also, you may be in like, when you're in fifth, in fifth year, and you're doing your nukes and your owls, maybe you're like, okay, maybe I'll try a bit of Wolf's Bain with a bit of whatever they're cooking in Potions Lab, but you don't come into your first class and be like, I'm just going to mix some things up here.

No, you stick to the goddamn recipe. You're not the half-blood prints, are you? No. Stevie, yes. So, number one rule is, maybe you're going to become the half-blood prints, but you're not right now. You're in first year. So just do the instructions,

listen, read the things. And I don't love baking because I don't love to read the instructions. And I always am like, oh, wang it in, here's a bit of flour, there's a bit of gravel, a banana, will that do? They're nice. Put that in. It always comes out absolute shit because you've got to follow the instructions. So we're not really going to be talking about baking today.

As baking, this is cooking. And the other thing is that everybody is obsessed with exactly that, being the half-blood prints, like putting your own ideas in the margins, all the recipes that were a mistake of like, like, oh, and then one day I didn't have the right paprika. So I put in this like saffron blend and I invented this whole new thing. We're all obsessed with that vision of us of, you know, and therefore we become overly experimental in the kitchen when we actually don't know what we're doing. So build.

Yes, by all means, I mean, I'm not saying stop experimenting, but like break the rules when you know the rules, you know, learn to make a good basic thing and then be like, okay, now what can I do, you know, get yourself really confident, really in the routine. Don't start already. Don't walk in there day one and start just throwing things in the pan willy-nilly because it will be a disaster. And then you'll lose confidence and low the cycle will continue. So this is a nice tip from somebody.

This one is start practicing by cooking for someone that you love. Oh, God, I'm terrified. I've gone very sweaty even thinking about. Okay. Okay. Talk to me about the sweat. So my sweat glands have activated because I feel like I needed to be confident in a dish me tasting it.

So if I taste it, I'm like, that tastes like shite, it's just me eating it. And then I'll know what to do next time. And then I'll be like, great. So I will probably have made a meal

like three or four times minimum, that's what I meant to say, before I will be like to my boyfriend. Oh, do you want to, do you want me to make you this? First note for you, Stevie, is to be like, it's okay.

Like, you need to just get in this habit of being like, oh, it was a disaster. No problems. Like, oh, no, don't shake your head. Okay. Tell me. Because when dinner is ruined, that's the worst thing.

I know, I know, I know. Okay, right. This is my friend Ella's book. It's called Midnight Chicken. It's absolutely fantastic. And in it, she writes at the beginning, if it is a disaster, you can put your coat on over your pyjamas,

like in the tiger that came to tea, and go down the road to the cafe for sausages and chips. If it is a disaster, like, it is okay. Then it takes that pressure off you of being like, everything has to be good. Okay. Because I understand. 100% of being like, if dinner's ruined, life is ruined.

Okay. I feel slightly better. May I have at least one go by myself before? I think you'd get in the habit of just being like, here it is. This is what I tried today. And just be like, it's okay. If I fucked it out, I fucked it out. No problem. We'll try something else.

Okay. Lots and lots of people said, get a fantastic knife. Get a really, really good knife from a chef's shop. Like a knife set? Because there's lots of types of knives. That's the thing. like I remember like, you know, I now know what a bread knife is after when I lived with my sister and her boyfriend and her boyfriend's an amazing cook and I'd just be like chopping an onion with a bread knife. Right.

Yeah. Okay. So the serrated blade one, that is the bread knife. You want a basic, I think it's called a butcher's knife. I've lost confidence. But what you can do is I guess you know the sorts of things that you're going to want to cook. So like look it up and, or you get like a nice, knife set and then you're covered. If you've just got one crap knife in your kitchen or you're cutting things with a table knife or a bread knife.

Or your own hand. Or your own car keys. We've all done it with the keys to that. My house keys for like a year. Someone was like, what's this on the keys? And I was like, I don't know. But I did know when it was an avocado. Oh, my God.

So a good set of knives. And it's unfortunate that obviously we're in lockdown and people can't buy. things on the cheap, but like TK Max has a fantastic cooking range. Car boot sales, getting things secondhand. People always, you know, you feel a bit like, oh, I don't want to get cooking stuff secondhand, but actually you can get fantastic pans, dishes, knives, all of that great stuff. You can always get secondhand. There was at carboot sales. They're always at things like that. And so it's worth like, you know, and then you're like, oh, this was a pound as opposed like 90 quid. So people recommended a great knife and a great pan and a set of scales. And I think

And if you've got those three things, then you're ready. Go ahead. Questions? Please. I've got a little pan set from John Lewis. Okay. Oh. And you've got a frying pan in there.

You've got a slightly smaller frying pan in there. And you've got varying sizes of sauce pans. Now, if you had to buy one pan, how can you boil pasta and also fry your onions? Okay. Sorry, you need one in your life. You need one sauce pan. Nice. Understood.

Understood. And one deep frying pan. If you, if in a total crisis, one of those like wok pants will do you all right. I'd love a walk and that is my dream, but I'd have had to have the cupboard space to even think about it. A walk if you've got the space for it. What I'm, what I've got and this I would put on your birthday list or a Christmas list is the agar deep iron pan which has a detachable hamill. Isn't that just for argas? No, it happens to just be in the aga cooking range but it's for anything. So what it means is I do

everything in it. Do all my frying and then you can put it in the other. detach the handle. Hello. You feel like you're on the homestead in Little House and the Prairie. Carry it from the oven to the table, clip it out again, and now it's a dish on the table and it's just, you know, mother just whipped. And also, I just feel like I have to say that some people listening will be like, I'm 21 and have more knowledge of cooking than you.

And what I want to say here is, yeah, we know we're very relatable. And that's why you listen to this podcast. So just enjoy it. when Tessa's getting very excited about her one pan, okay? And if one of the tips on, don't cut your avocado with your car keys, enjoy it! Enjoy it! Also, I'm so confident this morning was like,

see, I've really got this under control. Yeah, you did. You did. I also have, yeah, I was going to say, also on the carbute thing, if you have crap cutlery in your house, you can always get amazing silver-plated cutlery at all, it's always at car boot sales. And it's always mismatched.

or charity shops, whatever, and it's like a pound. But then you're like, it feels so nice to have a decent fork, you know? Also, like, you can't just get, like, there are, it's not that expensive to just buy, like, like, cheap knives and forks. Only the queen will know that it's cheap. Just get, like, nice simple, nice, simple, stainless steel, nice of rock. No, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like 30 quits for a set. Again, no knowledge.

Yes. Zero knowledge. That's the thing, Steve. This is why I say this point, because I was like, who cares? We didn't have any. I was like, how much can a fork be? And then they went to the shop. And I was like, are you joking? I'm not paying that.

I made my own. I made my own out of hair. So I whittled my own. And so, yeah, even if you go to IKEA, even if the crap is set, they're all like 20, 30 pounds for a nice forks set. And they do feel crap. So I promise you that it's hard to get nice, nice coloring. It's hard. No, that's okay.

And that's again, one of those transition things when you first leave home for the first time. You're like, what, I have to buy my own forks. I think what's happened is I've got forks from, like, when I was freelancing, I'd go and like going to different offices, shift works. Yeah, and I just, I didn't mean to, but I just came home and be like, oh, I guess. I didn't mean to, but I just stole the good force. It's always forks. It's never like a knife, and that's because of the sort of food I was eating, very much only fork-based food. Okay, next tip. So that's, now you've got your basic, you're completely sorted in the kitchen. You've got one knife, you've got one pan and you've got, I think, a fork. That's it.

You've got your thought that you stole. You've got one big knife that I'm describing as a butcher's knife, and everyone at home is reeling going, fucking hell, it's not a butcher's knife, you would eat it? That's like a meeple. Definitely, this knife set. We're definitely going with knife set. We've got a knife set. You've got your big, you've got your big, deep frying pan.

But not a deep, not like a friar. No, not a deep, sorry, not a deep fat friar. Just like, it's deep, it's got steep edges, you know? And, like, if yours is sort of bashed around and the bottom is wibbly-wobbly, and it's, like, got years and years of, like, burnt stuff on it, like, that is going to affect how you cook, and therefore what you eat. You know, like, there is a reason.

And it'll, it'll heat up at a different rate because the bottom is literally at a different angle. And so, like, the flatter your pan can be, the, like, more even than you're cooking. Okay, good. I've never seen a pan that's got an uneven bottom. I'm reeling. You've definitely had a pan in your,

in your possession that had a completely uneven. It was just out of shape because I've been cooking for years and years, and the heat has just molded it. Okay. So now we're into the real deal. Okay. Number one, slow down.

Both in your life. life and in everything else, slow the hell down. So I was responsible for just, you know, you chop an onion, you throw it into the pan on the highest possible heat, or you throw it in, then you turn the hob up because you're a hobbsman. It gets hot with the thing. It's a flame. Sorry, it gets hot with the thing. Okay, no, no, please, more.

Thank you. Sorry, okay. The onion is heating up at the same time as your pan. What? Rather than your pan getting. Yeah, yeah. Got it, yeah. Rather than your pan getting hot, then you put your onion in.

Also, the concept of slow heating, there was a tweet recently. There was like, all of you, I can't remember the exact numbers, but it was something like, all of you people cooking things for like 40 minutes in the oven on 180, why don't you just cook it for one minute on 14,000 degrees? And then you, it's like, it's that level of like, when you realize, oh, yeah, when I put the onions in the pan and with the oil, and I'm like, ah, they're probably done. So much nice if you actually fucking just cook them. Yeah.

Exactly. So the first time that you ever actually cook an onion and you're like, oh shit. Okay. Because there is a reason that people write these cook, but there's a reason that they say these things. You can't just, I just, it's like that time we tried to talk about like being late to things. You can't just look at the distance and see that it takes, it's a mile and say I'll get there in a minute. Like you can't, you can't, you physically can't. So you can't look and you can't say like, oh, cook your onions for half an hour and you be like, a minute will do. It's not the same. So like discovering that like it takes time that you have to slow down. that therefore, and again, it's like that confidence thing of like, make sure the person on the other end of the meal, even if it's just you, like, isn't starving hungry and isn't freaking out. Just be like, I'm cooking now. This is my thing. I'm in the kitchen. Like, maybe it's going to be an hour from this point till meal time rather than being like, I think I've been whack this out in 10 minutes. And that is very difficult. I remember when I was like, when I had an office job, when I come in at 7 or something, I'm like, well, I'm hungry now. Like, the thought of waiting until 8 o'clock, absolutely not. The big thing is we cook starving hungry being right I want to be I want to eat right now. So like, you know, don't that's that's when. So have a snack. Have a snack. Have a snack and a lovely drink of water and then cook so you're not starting.

Get your snacks on the go. Get your crisp. Get your dip. Get your things. The meal is in many ways the pudding to the experience. Very good. Okay. You don't let yourself get crisis hungry basically.

So you're slowing down. Okay. So your pan is when it says, so listen. So this is a great one. It's listen. This dip is listen to your pan. All right. The Larian condo thing is saying thanks to your socks or whatever, yeah.

So listen to your palm means like if you want to get to this like, I basically only just recently learned what it means because I understand that what like a gentle, pleasant, calm, simmering sound sounds like as opposed to, you know, in like a stir fry place where they would like flombe a walk and then a flame would leap into the ceiling. That was honestly what my cooking was like. But understanding that like a low, a low, heat for a long time is going to produce infinitely better, nicer, things, results than the flambay experience.

And look, don't get me wrong, it's a time and a place for a flambay. It's not in your kitchen. And so onions need to go in there for like half an hour. What? Which you're like, yeah. And you're like, I beg your pardon. But honestly, that's, that's a lot. 15 minutes is the absolute bare minimum.

Obviously certain recipes require onions to be in there for certain times, right? Like, so there's lots of, because I've got a recipe book that my mum made me that's the best thing I own, which is like all of the recipes from when I was little, so then I can remake them. And a lot of it is just like cook the onions in pretty much every, every recipe that she's got in there starts with. Cook the onions and garlic until they're transparent. And I was like, this transparent thing, it's just a saying. And then you actually go, oh, no, they do go transparent. But it's normally after about, yeah, 10 to 15 minutes rather than half an hour. Well, sure. All right. So we're slowing down. We're actually listening to things.

We're actually measuring stuff. We're like, we're saying, okay, this is. We're not just guessing how much things are. And you can become a free-pourer, but it's good to have a little check about roughly how much something is. Because if you free-pour and then you're like, yeah, that's probably, however, I'm 100 mils. If you then actually go and pour out 100 mils, you'd be like, oh, gosh, that is. Yeah. Oh, that is.

Get yourself one of those little measuring jugs. They're great. Although the cheap ones, the numbers rub off after about a day and then you can't see anything. So you've got to get a Pyrex one, unfortunately. That is what holds you back initially from cooking. is that like the good stuff is expensive, but there is a reason, like, your grandma still has her, you know, her stuff. Like, they, the good stuff lasts and it will see you in good stead for, possibly forever, you know, so like, get the, get the right stuff. Otherwise, it'll be just be,

it'll be a sad disaster every day. I forgot the scales as part of that initial cooking setup, getting some good scales and ones that work and that I feel nice and easy to use, because otherwise you'll always just be guessing and always just be saying, it's probably about a kilo. throwing it in. Okay. This one is read the whole recipe before you start, like the, not just the ingredients list, but the entire recipe,

because there is nothing worse and being like, oh, I've got all the things. And then you start and then it says, like the first couple of things are quite simple. And then it'll say, now pop the ham hoc in the slow cooker for four hours. And you're like, uh-huh. Okay.

And then you'll think, like, can I just not? And then you'll be eating raw ham. Raw ham again for dinner. And so there's nothing worse than being surprised by the recipe. halfway through, or knowing that it's completely out of your league, because it starts easy, and then you're like, and now you have to make a filigree sugar, and you're like, oh, you tricked me with this recipe. Also, may I add as well, some people, so I've got, I do better with recipes that you can

see, so like Instagram cooks. So I save loads of recipes that I want to have a go at in a little, you know, when you save them to a little collection called like, Stevie's food or something very creative like that. And then it means that when I'm doing like online. shopping or something, I'll always have a look through to do these food and be like, what? So it basically means I've got like 10 types of like vinegar in my cupboard that I've never used. But on the other hand, it does mean that when I'm cooking along with it, I like set my little phone up and then I'll just kind of do it. I don't know, seeing, seeing hands doing what I'm

supposed to be doing is so much better. Because often in a recipe, he'll be like, oh, just wait until it thickens. You're like, give it thickens to what? Like to what consistency? Like show me. tell me, don't just expect everybody to know. And that is what, again, puts everyone off cooking because it says things like, dice this and put it in a Ban Marie. And you're like, what does it mean to dice something? What's the ban Marie? Why is she helping?

This one is just somebody saying, don't put a whole pepper into an open flame and expect positive results. Thank you. Noted. I'll note that down. And also, never assume that just because you want to skip the overnight soaking of the lentils, that the lentils want you to skip the overnight soaking, which I think is so nice.

Just because you're like, oh, that bit sounds shit. Like, there is a reason they put it in it. That's very important with vegan recipes as well, because I've tried to make, or I have made quite a few vegan cheeses out of nuts. And good Lord, do you have to follow that soaking? Because if you don't follow the soaking,

then you just end up with very hard nuts that are stuck together that you're eating and nothing like cheese. Terrible. Yeah, dreadful. Just quickly, I've got the answer to what the type of knife is. I was closed with butchers, but also in many ways, completely wrong. It's actually called a chef's knife. Okay. Oh, God. I feel like we both could have come to that

conclusion. I can't believe we didn't. I'm absolutely staggered that that's the name. Or a cook's knife. So I asked, this is, my friend got me one of these for my birthday, so I asked her, so it's a chef's knife or a cook's knife. And with one of those, you can do absolutely anything in the kitchen. Great. So we even need a set. Okay. Getting into ingredients and seasoning. And you always used to see this in like the back of the, you know, magazines where they'd interview people and they'd say, like, you're a good cook. And they'd always say, like, I'm not a good cook,

but I just use, like, really fantastic, fresh ingredients and hope for the best. Which I see now is code for, like, I'm actually very rich. I feel like most skills, you can just be rich to be able to do it. Yeah. It means, like, I'm living walking distance of a farmer's market and I have a vegetable man

who brings me wonderful bits, you know, like, yeah, no shit. You're a good. cook, like, pissed off. But I do understand, I'm beginning to understand what that means. And this, this tip is, um, if it smells weird before it goes in, it's not going to transform into something good once it's in the other. Oh, wow. Yeah, I feel that. I feel that so hard. I've done that with, I've done that with many a mushroom. I've been like, mushroom should not smell like that. Yeah. And then, and then the entire risotto smells like that. And so that is such a like, you trick yourself into being like, it'll be fine. If it's not,

If you don't smell something and go like, hmm, lovely, when you're putting the ingredient in, it's not going to try to make something nice on the other end. Like, you need to be ripping that like fresh basil and being like, oh, fresh basil rather than like dragging a bit of basil out of the bottom of the fridge, being like, it's like, brown. You've got to have nice stuff. Okay, get really great quality salt and pepper.

A proper, like, you know, nice crack black pepper thing that will just make you feel so fancy and confident. and you want to be putting that in throughout the process, not just at the end. So seasoning needs to be happening constantly and equally like good salt. Like, so you can just have crap like, that red, that red packet of the cheap table salt

and use that sort of regularly in everything, but then have for the table the nice like molden to see stuff. You don't need to use the expensive stuff throughout. You can use the crap table salt, but then at the end use the flaky stuff. Yeah, I remember like the sort of year that I was like, oh yeah, I'll see. season things, that was a real big year for me.

Even just like putting salt and pepper in everything. It was like, oh, yeah. Also, salt. And the difference between like, I don't know if I've got a, if I've got some food going on. And I'm like, I don't really have any vegetables to go with it. Chopping in a tomato, fine. Chopping a tomato, putting some olive oil on it and some salt. It's a different, it's a different fruit.

Exactly right. There's any salad thing, if you just put some, like, raw vegetables into a bowl and throw some olive oil on the top, like, it will be gross. if you individually season everything and take care of each individual ingredient, then you're like, oh, holy shit. And it's not, it's a magic art, but it's not an expensive magic art. It's just the difference between putting salt, pepper, bit of lemon. Lemon is, goes in everything, just whack a lemon on it.

Oh, yeah. Learning to season is like, oh, wow, we just went up. We just went up into second year. Oh, hello, we just smashed out this potions lesson. Oh, am I the half blood prince? No, but you're getting there. Okay. A restaurant will add four times the amount of,

of butter and salt that you deem acceptable at home. I read this and that's why everything tastes so much nicer in a restaurant. You're like, ah, yeah. Yeah. So when it calls for like 300 grams of butter, you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you measure it and you're like, sorry, is that a typo? Like, have you put an extra zero on the end there? But then you realize, like, that's how much it takes to make something be nice.

So throw in your butter liberally, if you, someone who eats butter, if not, is there a good vegan alternative for butter? Yes. It's just like, like, Flora do a good vegan butter. Okay. And the last one for the ingredients bit is more garlic than you think of you. Oh, you're pretty sure they converted. I actually did, I've got a pasta salad recipe that my mum does, which is basically like a mayonnaisey,

lemony, black pepper garlic sauce and then pasta and then vegetables in it. It's really nice. But it is raw garlic. So it's very serious. And I was doing it just for me. So I, like, downsized all of the recipes, which is all of the ingredients, which is something that I, also, if you're a bit frightened of like, so sometimes, like, it's so, sometimes. sound so lame, but I'm really bad at math. So I get really upset with myself whenever I have to,

like, okay, let's just take that down by a third. And I don't know what that is. Anyway, so I did it. It was very, very proud. And also, there's lots of conversion things online that you can just do, which is very helpful. But I forgot to take down the garlic. So the, I'm not joking, it, it tasted like really hot, spicy, because it was so garlicky. And about three days later, I still had garlic coming from my pores. I could taste, all I could taste was garlic for like three days. It was horrific. So garlic, raw garlic sometimes, you obviously don't go crazy with it, but oh my God, I absolutely love garlic. It's the best. Okay. I'm just going to bring us home by just talking about pasta. Please. Which has been a staple in both our lives for many years. And I've

learned some things. One comes from Nigella and one comes from Gino de Campo, him of, you know, the guy from, he's on a good morning with Holly sometimes. And he's, he's on a good morning with Holly sometimes. He's the one who she said, hmm, if this had more cream, it would be like a carbunera. And he says, if my grandmother had the wheels, she would be a bicycle. Okay, so we like him. He's great.

We love, you know. And he's just been on this. If you're looking for some nice lockdown entertainment, him, Gordon Ramsey and Fred from first date's restaurant, have just gone on this trip around America. It is so sweet. I don't like Gordon very much or at all, but it's been a really lovely show.

Anyway, so lovely Gina. This is from, this is a combined resources. pasta because what we do is we cook our pasta put it in the colander of course and then cook your sauce separately then add them together because it looks nice and you make a sort of nice visual and then your cheese on top and your sort of triangle of a fair past you know pasta sauce cheese um um but what you want to do is uh boiling water absolutely boiling boiling water and full of salt in your saucepan and nijela says you want it um as rough and as salty as the mediterranean sea lovely.

So that's how salty you're going for. And you're like, gosh, that's quite salty. Yes, that's salty. And then what you can do, if you are not a vegetarian, put a chicken stock cube into that water. If you are a vegetarian, a vegetarian stock cube will do it, but might not have quite the same kick to it, but we'll still add to the flavour.

So put that into the pan. Then you cook your pasta in there for however long it takes. And then, rather than putting it, colandering it and throwing away that water, I'm sorry, separately at the same time, you're making your sauce, you are doing your slow, slow, slow, 15-minute cooked onions,

you've got your garlic in there. If you've got some chopped tomato, a can of chopped tomatoes in the oven, in the oven. Sure. It's where to keep them. Get them out of the oven. They're done.

If you've got tins of chopped tomatoes, they're your good friend to always have in the house. If you don't have any, an actual just tomato chopped up and in there on the slow, low heat will see you through. Anything else in. Keep that there for as long as you can.

and then tong out this pasta into the straight into the sauce. Mm, okay. Tonging action, especially if it's spaghetti, makes you feel so professional. You'd be like, sorry, am I in it? Sorry. Am I an Italian, a professional Italian ship? I don't have tongue, so I'd have to like, could we use maybe two spoons tied together with hair bubble?

Yes. Or, Stevie, your bare hands into the boiling water will do. just fine. Great. No. Two spoons with a hair bottle will find. A fork will do you, just fine. A spoon will do you.

The tongues really makes it feel real profesh, but you don't need the tongs. But honestly, I bet they're for sale at the supermarket, you know, for a couple of pounds. You don't need nice, classy, good tongs. Like any old tongs will do you. And they'll really make a difference. Those go straight in and then a couple of teaspoons, a teaspoon, sorry, tablespoons, big spoons of your pasta water.

Into the sauce? Into the sauce. Okay. Okay. So now the pasta, the tomatoes, the onions, everything's in the one pan together. And you've got an extra bit of your water. Throw that in as well. It's got the vegetarian stock or the chicken stock in there.

And now keep it on the heat again, maybe cover it for another couple of minutes. And now give it a chance to really like soak in and become, you know, all flavors together. And I did it tonight. And so it'll transform it from being like, oh, pasta is quite a sad, you know, your Lloyd Grossman jar and your sad pasta and your cheese to sort of cover everything up. it'll transform it into being like, oh, wow. Like, this is a, this feels like I got it in a restaurant, you know? And then if you cover it, you want lemon, crab back pepper, your fancy salt, bits of parmesan on the top. And that's a dish.

I mean, what a way to bring us home. That is excellent. And also, probably one of my favorite episodes we've done in ages, because I do like it when we tried a day episode that neither of us actually understands. It has been a while since we've really, as this one, because when, honestly, when this start out, I was like, I'm going to smash this. And then it got. Oh, it wasn't soon before I was like, oh, no, have no idea what I'm talking about. But actually, you know, chef's knife, cooked knife. I don't know if you could just buy one knife for everything.

Pasture water into the sauce, you slow down, you're 15 minutes on your onion, you whack in another garlic. You cook for somebody you love and you calm the shit down in the kitchen because if it's a disaster, it's a disaster and you go out for tea. Oh, what an absolute delight. I mean, if you have any good cooking tips, please do tweet us out, Nobody Panic Pod. And if you have any other topics that we don't know anything about, be one of us. So that have a vague go at, then please do let us know. And yeah, I mean, just go forth into that kitchen.

And whether you're a hobbsman or an ovens, buddsman, then just enjoy yourself. And, yeah, and there's just two recommendations of books to get us home. Midnight Chicken is this book I was talking about by Ella Risbridgeer, and also Diana Henry's from the oven to the table. Also, do follow Jack Monroe on all the social media. Excellent. Just excellent.

Cooking on a bootstrap is their thing. Also, Miguel Barclay does meals for one pound on Instagram and really, really good stuff. And also, Mob Kitchen, which I absolutely love to do great videos that you can follow, really easy to follow stuff. A lot of, like, vegetarian stuff, some gluten-free things. Very, very nice, nice business. And also follow us for more excellent, excellent, excellent, just excellent hot stuff. tips. I'm at TVM, the SSA 5. I'm at Jessica. And see you next week, guys. Have a lovely week. Have a wonderful week. I hope you cook something lovely. Bye. I believe in you. Bye-bye.