A slave to cookery books or a free spirit?

DD1 loves Maddar Jaffrey's curry bible too, charlotta. Time is the key, as you say, but DD finds it very clear and easy to follow. As she said of the last curry she made: it was one of those three hours to make and five minutes to eat recipes.

I use recipes for cakes but main courses come out my head/imagination, well actually I rarely cook nowadays as I had a broken ankle and DH had to learn. When I got better he asked me when I was going to start cooking again and I said "well I did the first 43 years ..........................." Now he does it all unless we have visitors and he even does that sometimes.

Now I would like to learn sugarcraft but there is nowhere near here to learn. Tomorrow I'm off to Surbiton where there is a great shop and also hoping that my birthday will bring some books on the subject. If anyone knows of (and can recommend) a full day or more residential course please let me know

I treated myself to 'The little Paris' cookbook and love just browsing through it at the moment. I looked round my tiny kitchen after seeing Rachel's and started sorting out and getting rid of clutter! haven't begun to cook anything yet but have made a list of possible recipes to get me going.

Mostly improvise- cooking for one-often using frig leftovers. Reject any recipe with more than six ingredients.
From 30 vegetarian years some pages of my Sarah Brown's 2 books are very stained and well thumbed
Make good use of slow cooker.Occasionally try a new cake but go back to old favourites.
My lovely cast iron recipebook stand is somewhere in the garage!

Maniac I love the idea of 'frig' leftovers!

I often feel like that when I look in my fridge and see a bit of cheese, some limp lettuce and a yogurt that doesn't look that appetising

....and the friggin' freezer isn't much better!

If I believed in astrology I'd say I was a typical Pisces! I love recipe books and have to be soooo strict with myself to stop buying new ones but generally ignore them.
I tend to read a recipe think it sounds great , start to make it and then substitute items with whatever I have available!

That's funny nanaeg I'm a Pisces .I like looking at recipe books but rarely adhere to them.They sometimes give me an starting idea.

Exactly maniac OMG maybe astrology is true!!

I'm Sagittarius and I'm the same?

jeni thanks for saving me from having to reconsider astrology as a true science!!!

Oh guys – in northern Europe, for cookbooks to sell they have to be very precise (the same is true in the USA). I wish that I had a pound for every time I have typed " Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the onion and cook over a low heat, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes, until softened.' Nearly 40 years of doing that – I'd be a rich woman.

Southern European cookbooks are quite different. "Make a Béchamel sauce (without even giving a quantity or list of ingredients, let alone a method). "Cook until ready" – no idea whether it is designed take 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 or 2 hours. Often no oven temperatures, no cooking times. It's easy to go off piste with Brit cookbooks because there's already lots of guidance, aπd so, of course, you should, if you want to – but it's quite different if you're dealing with continental ones.

Why do my onions always take much longer?

I have quite few continental ones and am used to them. I'm an addict. Haven't got any Inuit ones yet, but no blubber round here (except on me)

That would be interesting jeni. I have written umpteen Italian, Thai, Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern, Spanish, etc. cookbooks, but never done an Inuit one. Tricky for the testing.

Maybe you have the heat down too low. Everyone's cooker is a bit different. Onions should soften and become translucent within 5–7 minutes.

Well whales are protected. I can see Wales from my window though?
The only kind of seals round here are the ones on legal documents.
And then there's the load of cod(swallop) I keep hearing!
What can you do with all that?

Burn it?

What Wales?
You'll upset bags
Where is she by the way?

Same here jeni , onionwise , not Wales or even whales.
When softening onions it takes longer than 5 or 7 mins. If done on a higher heat they stop softening and start to fry.
A cast iron pan does the job very well, rather than a non-stick or stainless steel,
well, for me anyway.

I find that with onions, too - either they seem to be just stagnating in the oil, or if I turn the heat up just a fraction they go brown around the edges!

I'm glad I'm not the only one! I thought it was me. I do use le creuset cast iron,most things(except chastity belt. That's titanium)

Yes, could be a bit cumbersome made out of cast iron.....

One of my regrets is throwing out a well used Good Housekeeping cook book I had for a Wedding gift (42 years ago) decided it looked scruffy on the shelve when alongside all the books with beautiful photos. Have tried to find one on the interweb. No luck. (sad)

I have a Mrs Beeton which I received as an engagement present in 1969. Great advice about how to clean a house and then make yourself nice for your husband coming home from work. However, it has excellent recipes for things like gingerbread and is infallible on all sorts of jams and marmalades. The sign of a really good cookbook is that it looks scruffy on the shelf! My 'Delia' is a case in point.

PS I am also a free spirit as was my mother. Sometimes this results in disaster but not too often.

I had a cookbook that was my Welsh grandmother's. Unfortunately it was one of the casualties of moving house - all the cookbooks got left on a shelf in the pantry, I think....this is the thing I really miss. It had basic recipes in lb and oz and some of her recipes in the back.

I had a Mrs Beeton too but couldn't hack the '12 eggs and a pint of cream'....

I still work in lb and oz, never got used to metric and as for cups! I use an old scales with actual weights - my grandson was intrigued.