Rediscovering the joy of home cooking

The convenience of dining out due to our busy lives has led to the joy of home cooking becoming a lost art, writes Megan Jane de Paulo.

TWO YEARS on from the worst of the pandemic, that time without understanding, vaccinations and treatments. Only lockdowns kept us safe from the visions flashing across our screens of other places grappling with such devastation, such grief, that we were barely able to comprehend these seemingly fictional scenes from a dystopian dimension.

We wore our trackie dacks, lost our hair brushes and we cooked. We nurtured our sourdough starters from their first bubbling blooms to debating hydration and loaf ears. Some of us mastered patisseries such as macarons and croquembouche. And some of us had to get very creative with the odd assortment of canned goods we’d accumulated in the heady initial days of lockdown during our brief communal prepper period, when scoring any can of whatever was a victorious bounty to drag back to our lairs.

Last year, we tentatively crept outside, vaccinated. Many of us masked or careful to maintain airflow and distancing, we ate in restaurants and cafes, revelling in someone else cooking for us. Other people bringing us the food to our table, instead of us dashing to our doors for delivery, hoping desperately that none of our neighbours would spy us presenting in our most hermit troll form.

Common kitchen chemistry and some honeycomb for dessert

Your kitchen a magical place of alchemy transforming raw elements into tempting foodstuffs through a variety of processes.

Gradually forced back into our outside lives, many of us reluctantly dragged back into offices or workplaces to satisfy the demands of the Masters of Capitalism, we’ve abandoned our kitchens.

Our sourdough starter has shrivelled and died. Cans of lychees, baked beans and cocktail frankfurts languish abandoned at the back of our pantries, gathering a patina of dust, hidden by half-used jars of peanut butter and a package of quinoa we purchased with the best of intentions and then never successfully learned to prepare.

Friends complain to me about not having enough time anymore to enjoy preparing food. There is rushing around to do, shopping, working, seeing people — the list goes on.

We’ve lost the joy. Of taking time to prepare ourselves a delicious, nutritious meal. Of learning new skills in the kitchen. Of planning out meals to reduce waste. Researching recipes online and becoming either infuriated or enthralled by meandering stories about the recipe. Flicking and drooling through cookbooks, synapses sparking with culinary ideas, the tummy rumbling in acquiescence.

Step back into that space. Prioritise time to cook — to create and explore. Look deep inside and release that aproned hermit troll from within. Cooking is not a chore — it’s a tasty love letter to yourself and others.

As a nod backwards in time to around two years ago, I’ve created this dish — King Oyster Mushrooms, coming out of the dark recesses to be sautéed in warmth and butter, nasturtiums emerging for spring and in the walnut pepperberry tarator, some stale sourdough for thickening.