Time to enjoy weekend cooking
When the weather cools, the best place to be is in the kitchen, says our columnist
Joanna Blythman
Now there’s an autumnal nip in the air, I realise I was a dilettante in the kitchen over summer. We still ate well, but with light nights and so many inviting reasons to be outdoors – a splash in the sea, expeditions with old friends, holidays, trips to see family – my cooking went down a gear.
I wasn’t exactly slacking, but I certainly didn’t peruse my extensive cookbook library, follow a formal recipe or ring the changes. Instead, I fell back on trusty, easy dishes like classic salade niçoise or melted local goat’s cheese on toast with sharp-sweet cherry tomatoes and Greek basil from the garden. Our plates showcased peak summer ingredients. My habit of making a weekend food shopping list went into abeyance. Weekends lost significance, too. My excuse – not that I need one – is that a series of public holidays confused me about the days of the week. Cue more than usual disorganised dashes to the shops for missing ingredients. We ate a few too many takeaways, which in retrospect, were disappointing and expensive.