What the experts recommend
Spotify for homecooks
Ckbk (ckbk.com) is a subscription service that bills itself as “Spotify for cookbooks”, says Ajesh Patalay in the FT. Having struck licensing deals with publishers, the London-based company provides full access to a fast-expanding library of hundreds of cookbooks. You can scour its database using multiple search criteria (ingredient, dish, cuisine, era, etc.), to “track down recipes at speed” . Why, you might think, would I pay almost £60 a year for such a service, when thousands of recipes are available online for free? One answer is that many of the books on Ckbk can’t be found anywhere else: around half are out of print. Its library includes such “insider gems” as M.F.K. Fisher’s How
to Cook a Wolf (a favourite of Yotam Ottolenghi) and Josceline Dimbleby’s 1978 classic Cooking for Christmas. There are, it’s true, some “noticeable gaps” – Ottolenghi’s own books are premium add-ons, as are Nigella Lawson’s – but as a means of accessing a rich heritage of cookery writing, Ckbk is unrivalled. And the good news is you don’t have to subscribe to get a sense of the possibility: you can access three recipes a month for free.
To fridge or not to fridge?
The way we use our fridges has changed in recent decades, says Xanthe Clay in The Daily Telegraph. Once, they were reserved for the most perishable items – meat, fish, milk, cheese – while other foods were stored in larders, cupboards, fruit bowls or vegetable racks. But as our homes have become warmer and smaller – and our interiors have become more minimalist – we’ve increasingly adopted an American “bung-it-in-the-fridge” mentality. If your fridge is starting to get overcrowded, bear these simple guidelines in mind. Tomato ketchup, brown sauce and mustard are all fine in a cupboard – though English mustard will keep its kick for longer if chilled. Eggs will last for longer in a fridge (up to two months) but in a coolish kitchen they will still last for three weeks), and room-temperature eggs are better for baking and boiling. Tomatoes lose their flavour if chilled, and putting bread in the fridge will turn it hard; instead, prolong its life by storing it ready-sliced in the freezer, and then “take out pieces as you need them and pop them in the toaster”. Although it isn’t essential to store onions in the fridge (they last for at least a week out of it), there is a reason to: “chilled onions are less likely to make you cry”.
Tips for batch cooking
Like bread-making and crochet, batch cooking has “been given a new lease of life during lockdown”, says Tony Turnbull in The Times. “When we have little else to do with our weekends, it makes sense to use the dead time to give ourselves a head-start on the week’s catering.” Here are some basic principles to follow. Since you’re not in a hurry, cook dishes that you love, but which are also a “bit of an effort”: lasagne or moussaka perhaps. Alternatively, you might prepare something that can be adapted for a succession of meals: tomato sauce, for example, “can go with pasta one day, chilli and poached eggs the next, and can later be turned into a tomato and sausage risotto”. Remember that some things (such as chicken) can become dry when you reheat them – and so are best used in soups or casseroles. Lastly, if you’re freezing your dishes, “be sure to mark each bag with not only the quantity it will serve, but also what it contains”.