Chris Worfolk's Blog

We don’t often repeat recipes in the Worfolk household. There are so many amazing cuisines, cookbooks and ideas out there that we try something new almost every night. However, there are some recipes that are tasty enough, quick enough or reliable enough that they are reused on a semi-regular basis.

As you might imagine from knowing me, I keep them on a spreadsheet. I thought it would be interesting to analysis how many recipes from each cookbook made it onto the spreadsheet and therefore which cookbooks have stood the test of time.

I have linked through to the review, where one exists.

* indicates I am still working my way through this book.

This isn’t an exact science. I re-use some recipes more than others. If anything, Veg Every Day deserves to be higher because I use that a lot, whereas although I have marked Easy One Pot as having a recipe I would re-use, I certainly don’t go for it anywhere near as much.

It is also unfair on some of the books. A lot of the baking books for example are full of amazing recipes that I have yet to try, but one might day and find they are definitely keepers.

Based on these figures, it seems sensible for me to recommend River Cottage and Mary Berry cookbooks. River Cottage consistently does well. The original River Cottage Cookbook isn’t really a cookbook, it’s more of a book about self-sufficiency, so it is not surprisingly it did not do well. The River Cottage Fish Book did not score so well either, but it was fun read. At the other end of the table, both of my favourite River Cottage cookbooks are storming ahead.

Mary Berry is also on the recommendation list because I am working through my second cookbook of hers at the moment and that is also going to score well. Plus they’e excellent for easy meals and dinner parties as they almost always contain instructions for making in advance.

UPDATE: Since writing this, I have finished working my way through Mary Berry Cooks that added 8 new recipes onto my spreadsheet. That puts it in third place behind the two River Cottage books.

Tim Ferriss, the author of the The 4-Hour Work Week, created a TV show called The Tim Ferriss Experiment in which he tried to apply speed-learning techniques to a number of different challenges.

He tries his hand at rock and roll drumming, golf, rally car driving, helping someone start a business and more. He has some success: he plays one song live with a famous band, and makes par on his second hole of a golf course. He also puts a rally car in a tree.

It is somewhat interesting, but I suspect it suffers from the compact format. Each episode is 22 minutes long, which isn’t enough time to really see his journey. He meets an expert, gets a few tips and then completes the challenge. It all looks too easy and you don’t really learn anything. The episode on him helping his friend start her own business is perhaps a little better, but not by much.

The website also has some bonus material for this episode. This is typically a 10 minute interview with the expert, that again falls under the category of somewhat interesting.

As my quest to make a better pizza continues, it occurred to me that when I cook flatbreads I fry them in a dry frying pan, so maybe I could apply the same idea to my pizza.

It turns out that I am not the only person to have had such a crazy idea. A recipe from Pizza Pilgrims details how to do it. I didn’t actually read their instructions, but immediately took heart that it could be done and set about trying it for myself.

I heated my sauté pan on the hob, put the pizza base in, dressed it as it was cooking, and then put the sauté pan under the grill to cook the top.

Results were mixed. I did get a crispier base, but not as crispy as I wanted it. Maybe the pizza itself was too thick: it is difficult to get it fully cooked all the way through. Also, I only have an electric grill, which is a rubbish kind of grill. I am an adult: give me some flames!

My next plan is to build a clay oven on the balcony.

Morrisons have spelt marijuana incorrectly. Maybe they have been smoking too much of the merchandise?

I ordered some exotic meat from Kezie Foods. They offer a great range of non-mainstream options including horse, kangaroo, camel, crocodile and edible insects.

The problem is that they are delivered via a standard courier. You might wonder how they keep them frozen in transit. The answer seems to be that they do not. They put the products in a polystyrene case that they pack with dry ice. This is supposed to keep everything frozen for 48 hours.

However, when I received their delivery, everything had defrosted. I spoke to their customer services and they were very nice about it, arranging another delivery. The problem is, the exact same thing happened the next time.

Maybe I have somehow misunderstood the definition of frozen. But it feeling exactly like defrosted meat does not seem correct.

So I am giving up. I cooked what I could from the latest batch and will leave it there. At least until I can progress my backup plan of starting an ostrich farm. The products themselves seem good quality: the meat I did manage to eat very good.

The last time I tried to make brioche, it was a total disaster. The recipe book made it out to be this terribly complicated process. The River Cottage bread Handbook dismisses this as nonsense however. Following the much easier to understand instructions, I managed to successfully produce two lovely looking loaves.

Years ago I remember a bus advertisement that read “bus ads work! You’re reading this aren’t you?” The concept recently re-appeared on a billboard on York Road. The question is: do such adverts work?

My guess would be no, because they are so stupid.

Even if you haven’t heard of availability bias, my guess is that most people can work out that those reading it is a self-selecting group. I was reading the billboard but there is no guarantee that anyone else does. In fact, I could have been past a thousand similar billboards and never noticed them, but you would never know if you had. It’s insulting to our intelligence.

Second, I am not sure that anyone who works in marketing is so bad at their job that they use their gut instinct of driving past a billboard to pick their advertising channels, rather than relying on hard data about the audience and conversation rates of different channels.

Finally, if you are going to use this message on a billboard, at least have someone proof read it. You would be barking mad not to.

The apartment building I live in is mixed-use apartments and office space. That means that every now and then there is a fire drill in the middle of the day. I say every now and then: give how little I am home and how often it seems to happen, I would guess at every month. This is really annoying.

We don’t get a warning, so all of a sudden the alarm will go off.

There are two ways you can react to this. One way is to panic. That makes sense, because there might be a fire. But, you are at home, so what state are you in to run out of the building? You might be naked. In the middle of a toilet visit. Asleep. In the shower. In the middle of cooking.

The second is to assume that it is just a drill. They happen so often that this is a good bet. Apartment buildings basically never catch on fire. In fact, it is so rare that even when it happens in Dubai it is a major news story over here. Which is fine, until there is a fire for real and you are burnt alive.

Not to mention that the fire alarm is incredibly loud. If you are of a nervous disposition it probably causes a significant amount of stress, and even if you are not, you are probably running for the exit with fingers in both ears as I saw someone doing today.

Fire alarms are for when there is a fire. That should not have to be something you have to state. It should be obvious. But people keep setting them off and calling them “fire drills”. That should not be acceptable, any more than yelling “fire!” in a theatre is acceptable, unless there is an actual fire.

If you do want to test the systems, that makes sense. But doing it without telling everyone is irresponsible and breads complacence about what a fire alarm actually is.

How often should you bathe your baby? Many parents do it every day, out of a sense of responsibility, or merely because they enjoy it.

It may turn out that I do enjoy it, but right now it sounds like a massive hassle. Recently, I was talking to a friend who said that he did not bathe his baby at all. As long as you clean them properly when changing them, how dirty do they get lying around? Which leads me to the question, how often do you need to bathe your baby?

The evidence is not apparent. The NHS guide, washing and bathing your baby, says that you don’t need to do it every day. However, it offers no guidance on how often you should at a minimum.

Other research suggests that there is a reason you should not bathe your baby every day. Daily baths may contribute to dry skin and eczema. The theory is that bathing removes the protective oils from the baby’s skin, which actually does more harm than good.

This actually fits with the bigger picture. We have known for years that showering every day removes an important layer of oil from adult skin. A new study earlier this year backed this claim up.

Perhaps the answer to the question is, whenever the baby smells.

You probably know how to cook a meal for a group of people. You do not need the many gems of wisdom on offer from Pippa Middleton. Nevertheless, I have a clear and well-defined process for how I prepare for a dinner party, and I thought it might be useful to share that so that we can compare notes.

Decide what to cook well in advance

I do my grocery shop weekly and I don’t really want to have to spend any other time shopping. Therefore, ideally I want to know what I am going to take a week in advance of the event so that I can get it included in that. If I need something fresh I might go out a day or two before to get it, but I want all of the dry and store cupboard ingredients to already be there.

At the planning stage, I make sure everything will work together. Like most people, I have just one oven and four hobs. Therefore everything has to fit on them at one time. This is a limit that is easily reached if you have your starter and your main overlapping.

Draw up a plan

I get pretty detailed with my plan. I tak an A4 sheet and divide it into 5-minute segments. In each of these I can list actions like “turn potato on” and “remove chicken from oven”. If required, I can put multiple columns into the sheet to deal with each part of the meal. This means I don’t have to worry about what I am supposed to be doing while in the heat of battle because I just need to check what is on the plan.

This normally includes two sections before the clock starts rolling: morning prep and evening prep, both discussed below.

The other thing you need is a clock. This is a strange thing to have these days. Many people have replaced their clocks and watches with using their phone to tell the time. However, if you don’t want to be constantly checking your phone every few minutes, you will want a nice big visible clock so you know when each 5-minute segment is up. The solution: more technology. I have an alarm clock on my iPad that I put in a prominent position in the kitchen.

Morning prep

The first stage of prep I do for the party. This is anything that can be done on the morning, or even the day before. This could include baking bread, making a marinade, preparing batter mix for Yorkshires or baking and chilling a dessert.

Evening prep

Second round of prep. This is stuff that I want to do as late as possible, while still doing before my guests arrive. Things like chopping vegetables and pealing potatoes for example. I want to do these as late as possible to keep everything fresh. However, it’s not as important as talking to my guests, so it is stuff I want to get out of the way ideally just before they walk in the door.

This section should include as much stuff as possible, such as:

• Laying the table
• Lighting candles
• Putting some plates in the plate warmer
• Getting all the utensils and making trays out
• Cleaning the kitchen
• Preparing a pan full of potatoes so I can literally just turn the pan on
• Slicing bread

Cleaning

Nobody has a kitchen as big as they would like, so I find it important to keep it as clean and tidy as possible. That means ensuring it is clean and tidy before I start. I make sure that the dishwasher is empty and after it runs its last cycle in the afternoon I tend to wash everything by hand to ensure I have everything I want to hand: the only things that go in there are things I know I definitely will not need.

Then I clean as I go. If I find myself with a spare minute as I bring a pan to boil I will wash something up. Or, when I clear the table I will load it straight into the dishwasher, rather than dumping it on the side for later. This does take a bit of time away from my guests, but also makes for a far less depressing end to the evening when I am left with a far smaller pile of clearing up to do.