The Anonymous Widower

An Experiment In Serial Cooking

According to many people I’ve met, including my secretary, Jane, men are not good at multi-tasking. She put it down to the caves, where the man had to be single-minded enough to go off and kill that buffalo, so they didn’t all starve. The woman meanwhile was left at home with all the problems, like the kids, collecting firewood, nuts and berries, and perhaps trying to grow some crops.

I am not the best multi-tasker, although with tasks I used to do in the past, like software bug-fixing, I would do them in related groups.

One of the problems in this house, is the small, but extremely-badly designed kitchen. I deliberately have a smaller two-oven Zanussi cooker, but the kitchen has only one sink with a low tap, cupboards you need a torch to get things out of and no freezer.

So often if I cook something, I get piles of washing up everywhere and have nowhere to put anything.

Some recipes I use, like Cinty’s French Fish Pie are what I could call serial cooking, in that they are a series of tasks. That recipe also has the advantage that you can make it in the morning, leave it in the fridge all day and cook it in the evening. I usually, make two, when I’m cooking for myself and leave one for the supper after next.

So as an experiment, I decided to see if one of my favourite meals, Lindsey Bareham’s sausage and bean casserole could be cooked as a series of tasks. Normally, it needs a casserole and a frying pan to cook the sausages, so instead of that, I cooked the sausages first in the casserole and then started the meal in earnest.

I was also able to leave the casserole on top of the cooker all day, before I cooked it in the evening.

November 13, 2014 - Posted by AnonW | Food | Coeliac/Gluten-Free, Lindsey Bareham, Recipe, Serial Cooking