YOUR dinner guests are trying to smile, but not doing a very good job of it.
The hard, flat souffl茅 was bad enough, but now they are all wondering how
many times they will have to chew each squid ring before they can swallow it, or
whether they鈥檒l get a chance to twang them out of the window while your back is
turned. Another ruined meal.
It doesn鈥檛 matter how simple the recipe, all too often there is some small
step or ingredient that you decide to miss out, or simply forget about. And this
part of the recipe always turns out to be vital.
But cooking needn鈥檛 be like this. If rocket scientists or nuclear engineers
were asked to design a recipe, they would go about it in an entirely different
way. Any engineer would take a very close look at those seemingly innocuous but
hugely important steps on which the success of the entire meal depends.
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Engineers are obsessed with these 鈥渟ingle points of failure鈥� (SPFs). When
they find one, they try to remove it, so that the computer program or nuclear
power plant will survive if any one thing goes wrong. If that is impossible, it
must be replaced with something more robust. The load-bearing parts of a bridge,
for example, are designed to cope with much greater stresses than we expect them
to encounter.
Recipes ought to be fault tolerant too. It鈥檚 not that the recipe must be so
simple that you can鈥檛 screw it up, or so easy that only an idiot could get it
wrong. A rocket scientist would design a recipe that would work out even when
you did screw up.
So how do you design a fault-tolerant recipe? The main thing is to choose
robust ingredients and cooking methods. Overcook salmon, for example, and it
generally survives, but overcook sole and it crumbles beyond salvation. So a
salmon fillet rather than a sole fillet is the ideal starting point for a
fault-tolerant meal (see Main Course), and fish baked in a foil parcel
tolerates overcooking better than grilled fish. Put some ginger, soy sauce and
vegetables in your salmon parcel and you have a good looking and tasty main
course. Add too much or too little ginger, overcook by 10 minutes or turn the
oven too high, and your meal should still come through with flying colours. You
can leave out many of the ingredients entirely鈥攅ven without the salmon you
have a palatable vegetable parcel.
So here is my fault-tolerant dinner party menu for four. I have chosen these
dishes because they are tasty, colourful and quick to prepare. I have also
gutted them of as many single points of failure as I could. For example, you do
not need to add salt to any of these recipes鈥攁n obvious SPF. How often
have you oversalted potatoes and vegetables? Until somebody invents salt cubes,
I prefer to avoid this step. All the flavourings added to my
recipes鈥攑epper and basil for example鈥攜ou can ladle on liberally or
even leave out altogether, if you prefer.
Another way to avoid SPFs is not to cook the dish at all鈥攖he cunning
ploy I adopted for the starter and dessert.
I have tested this meal under a wide range of conditions. Most of the
mistakes I make are a result of rushing through supermarkets, or related in some
way to small children, telephone calls or unexpected guests calling at crucial
moments. The recipes have been highly tolerant of all the mistakes I could throw
at them. I won鈥檛 wish you good luck鈥攜ou don鈥檛 need it.
STARTER
Surefire Sicilian salad
Serves 4
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: zero
Ingredients:
4 large ripe tomatoes
300g fresh mozzarella
8 large leaves of fresh basil (not dried basil)
8 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (extra virgin is much tastier than
lesser grades of olive oil; do not use other types of oil!)
Freshly ground black pepper
Equipment:
Sharp knife, pepper grinder
Method:
1. Slice one tomato and arrange the slices on a plate
2. Slice the mozzarella. Take a quarter of the slices, tear slices into
pieces and drop onto the tomatoes
3. Tear up two large leaves of fresh basil and scatter onto the tomatoes
and mozzarella
4. Pour two tablespoons of extra virgin olive
oil over the dish and sprinkle with freshly ground pepper
5. Repeat on a separate plate with
each tomato
Alternative for salt lovers:
to make Surefire Cypriot salad, just replace
the mozzarella with halloumi
DESSERT
Fruit foolproof
Serves 4
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: zero
Ingredients:
One cantaloupe melon
450g plain yoghurt
Four dessertspoons of runny honey
4 strawberries
Equipment:
Large bowl
Dessertspoon
Teaspoon
Large sharp knife
Method:
1. Cut the cantaloupe in half and spoon out the seeds
2. Cut into quarters and then into eighths lengthways, so you end up
with 8 crescent shaped pieces
3. Use knife to cut the flesh from each slice and then dice into bite-sized pieces
4. Place yoghurt in the large bowl and then add the cantaloupe pieces. Stir
so that the pieces are thoroughly covered with yoghurt
5. Divide into bowls and drizzle with honey using a dessertspoon. Use the
teaspoon to remove any honey from the dessertspoon. Decorate with
strawberries and serve
MAIN COURSE
Armoured oriental salmon
Serves 4
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 35 minutes
Ingredients:
4 fillets of fresh salmon
A fresh ginger root
20 baby sweetcorn (they look like lizards鈥� tails)
450g tin of sliced water chestnuts
Four spring onions (US: scallions)
Four dessertspoons of extra virgin olive oil
8 teaspoons of dark soy sauce
4 knobs of butter
Equipment:
Baking tray
Tin foil
Sharp knife
Method:
1. Preheat oven to 450 掳 Fahrenheit (230 掳C, Gas Mark 8). Missing out
this step wastes time later
2. Finely chop the spring onions. Peel about an inch of ginger root and
finely dice. You should end up with about four heaped teaspoons of diced
ginger
3. Tear off four pieces of tin foil roughly 10 inches square. Pieces that are
too big are better than those that are too small
4. Coat a foil square with a thin layer of olive oil. Use a paper towel or
brush to smear the oil round if necessary
WARNING! The salmon will stick to the foil if you leave out the olive oil
coating
5. Place a salmon fillet on the foil square and add a five baby sweetcorn,
100 grams of sliced water chestnuts, one chopped spring onion and one heaped
teaspoon of diced ginger
6. Pour two teaspoons of dark soy sauce over the salmon and place a knob of
butter on top
7. Wrap up the parcel and place on baking tray
8. Repeat this process with the other salmon fillets
9. Place in oven, cook for 35 minutes and then remove from foil and serve
onto warm plates. Pour the juices from the foil parcel over each serving