Don’t let the energy crisis ruin your dinner – use the microwave

Earlier this year the horror novelist Stephen King chilled his loyal followers with a disturbing account of a dismembered body.

Body parts are King’s fictional stock in trade, but on this occasion the narrative was non-fiction and the flesh in question belonged to a salmon. In a tweet headed “Dinner”, King suggested sprinkling a salmon fillet with olive oil and lemon juice and wrapping it in damp paper towels, after which you should “Nuke it in the microwave for three minutes or so.”

Of the 5,000-odd replies, a majority agreed with the person who wrote: “This may be the shortest horror story you’ve ever written.” My respect for King as a master storyteller notwithstanding, I tend to agree.

There are many reasons why people think a microwaved meal isn’t “proper” cooking, and it’s not just the ominous “ping” that heralds a horrible mass-produced pub meal. If your culinary heroes are Simon Hopkinson or Claudia Roden, for whom the preparation of even the humblest dishes (Hopkinson’s mum’s cheese and potato pie; Roden’s ful medames) is, as Roden says, “a ritual”, then you are likely to relish the physicality of food preparation: the slicing and chopping and mixing; then the pause when the dish goes into the oven and the kitchen gradually fills with the enticing smell of cooking.

This is the antithesis of fast food, and it comes with the strong – almost moral – implication that time is a necessary ingredient of real food. “If you really love to cook then time will always be found,” Hopkinson writes in The Good Cook. But in 1939, another hero of real food championed the idea of eating well and speedily. Édouard de Pomiane’s book, Cooking in 10 Minutes (subtitled The

Adaptation of Cooking to the Rhythm of our Time) urges his readers to embrace the latest in kitchen technology: “The moment you come into the kitchen light the gas. Ten-minute cookery is impossible without gas.”

The natural heir to Pomiane is Jamie Oliver, with his 30-Minute Meals (and its even nippier sequel, 15-Minute Meals). These, too, make use of up-to-date technology – in this case, the microwave. Yet when my partner made a Jamie recipe that involved microwaving potatoes for 15 minutes, I was appalled.

There is a Luddite element to all this. Like the little old lady in the James Thurber cartoon who is convinced that electricity leaks out of empty light sockets, the microwaveaverse feel that something ominous is going on that somehow alters the essential nature of the comestible. (Hence, presumably, the accusation by one of King’s critics that microwaving salmon was “disrespectful to the fish”.)

But the 80 per cent increase in energy bills this autumn will prove an effective antidote to culinary sentimentality. Microwaves are, on the whole, significantly more cost-effective than conventional hobs, ovens and kettles. Slow cooking and batch cooking narrow the difference in cost – if you have time. But as Pomiane understood, time is a luxury that few can afford. At this difficult moment, he remains an inspiration for anyone who lacks time and money, but still loves food.

“Modern life spoils so much that is pleasant,” he wrote in the dark year of 1939. “Let us see that it does not make us spoil our steak or our omelette. Ten minutes are sufficient.”