I do a lot of the cooking at my house. It’s a pleasant break from the rest of my day which is mostly “brain work”. But if you ask anyone in my family about my cooking I guarantee they will say two things:

1. Once he makes something he really, really likes……he makes it repeatedly until we get sick of it.

2. When he comes up with something really terrific….you can be sure he will fiddle with it with it until it tastes like crap.

My rebuttal to each of these criticisms is as follows:

1. I quote Oscar Wilde: “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best”. If something is good then why for Heaven’s sake wouldn’t I want to eat it often?

Here are the five meals I could eat once a week for the rest of my life:

• Portuguese salt cod, either grilled on the BBQ with some olive oil or stewed with tomatoes and potatoes.
• Shepherd’s pie.
• Pasta (preferably macaroni or spaghetti) with my grandmother’s meat sauce recipe.
• Homemade pizza.
• Pulled pork made with tenderloin and my homemade BBQ sauce.

The other two days would be up for grabs.

2. Nothing was ever improved by simply accepting the status quo. True, on the way to making things better, sometimes they get worse in the short-term , but cooking, like any art or craft, is both revolutionary and evolutionary.