What do you like to cook?
The dreaded signature dish question.
The dreaded signature dish question, one that I’ve always found enormously difficult to answer for some odd reason, trying to find a single dish from hundreds and hundreds in my head, fearing that as I’m unable to name one instantly that I’m actually an imposter and then the onset of brain freeze, rendering me incapable of coherent speech let alone remembering what I actually like to cook.
It’s a question that I've been asked twice this week, firstly over lunch by a family member, then secondly by the cover model of Italian Vogue.
I just clam up and start mumbling nonsense.
Whether through neurodivergence or by just finding myself put on the spot and having to condense the last thirty years of cookery into one sentence, I’m completely unable to give anyone a succinct answer without tying myself in knots, explaining instead the vagaries of some particular nuance of the fermentation of charcuterie, or that I once came up with an emulsion of bacon and green peppercorns, thereby making myself look like a complete cretin.
I love to cook. I’ve decades of professional experience behind me. I’ve headed up many decent kitchens in central London over the last two decades, learning my craft in the years before. Thats a lot of food. It’s impossible though to choose something specific, as I might find as much pleasure in the preparation of rolling a length of laminated dough, its surface smeared with butter, dark muscovado and cinnamon, tucked into a tight spiral before cutting through with thread for Kannelbullar, pulling the end of the spiral out and under the bottom of each bun to keep it together as it expands into layers of crisp buttery dough as I might find in basting a veal chop in a pan of foaming butter with rosemary sprigs and confit garlic or the slicing a fillet of wild sea bass, paper-thin into long neat lateral slices for a crudo.
I’m someone who loves their work.
I can find the greatest satisfaction in the minutiae of many mundane tasks; removing chokes from braised artichokes carefully with a teaspoon, obsessing about how the fibres curve around the centre of the artichoke in a smooth purple and yellow nest, taking care to remove them from the middle of the heart in one scoop. I like it when they lift out in one smooth arc. Or perhaps rotating scallops by ninety degrees as they sear, the deeply golden crust that develops evenly as I rotate them by one-quarter turn every so often in the pursuit of the deep colour and texture that I like.
I love to beat butter through a saucepan of pomme purée. I like to feel the texture as it slaps against the Maryse, finally lifting a small quenelle with the corner of the rubber blade, knowing that it has the correct amount of butter by the way that it lifts from my fingers and doesn’t stick, then pushing it through a tammis no less than twice for the best texture.
And then there is Pommes Aligot, something that is on another level entirely and one that I’d like to leave for an essay on its own.
When I cook over fire and smoke, I love pushing around hot embers of glowing wood with a foot-long section of copper pipe that I also use as a bellows, roasting and hot smoking bunches of root vegetables or woven strings of homegrown garlic, chunks of meat grilled on the searing hot bars, glistening with crispy fat hissing and spitting whilst it renders its dripping fat onto the coals.
Sweet crustaceans and bivalves cooked in their shells over wood, dripping with butter and garlic as they tighten in the heat, the smell of the smoke from thick branches of marjoram, thyme and bay as they ignite in the fire as it smoulders underneath a slow-roasted shoulder of lamb sprinkled with crystals of sea salt.
I like to study the glass jars of vinegar that I make, looking at the raft of the mother as it forms on the surface of the sour liquid as it transforms from alcohol to acetic acid. Watching the colour change, the clarity developing over the days and weeks.
These are things I love.
But that isn’t what people expect me to say I think. I don’t know what they expect if I’m honest. Also I find it easier to write about these things.
On a more mundane level, Shepherd’s pie is something that I love to both make and eat. That would be my last meal on earth if I’m honest, along with a tuna-mayo sandwich. Perfect. Though as scarce as hen’s teeth that anyone ever makes me either. It’s actually quite rare that anyone ever makes me anything, to be honest.
These last few days I’ve been wondering about you all. The different food stories that are out there. There are well over a thousand of you who read these words every week, spread all over the world in fifty seven countries at present.Thats is a huge following if I’m honest and one for which I’m truly grateful. As I scroll through the lists of your names, I’m curious as to what you like to cook, what you like to eat, the traditions and dishes in your lives. What you like to make on a quiet evening at home, or what you might cook to put on the table for the return of a long-lost friend?
Perhaps you might like to share it with me below?
Until next time
William
If I'm cooking solely for myself I like to make a half-rye bread with a good chewy crust, and I like to have a slice of it topped with a crunchy mustard and nicely firm but not overcooked scrambled eggs. Alternately, I'll dry-fry green beans until they are blistered and semi-charred and then stir-fry them with garlic, ground meat of some sort, and some of the fermented broad bean and chili paste called doubanjian, and eat that with rice.
If I'm cooking for others, I like to roast a chicken and make pommes fondantes and some sort of interesting salad. Everyone loves it and it's dead simple.
Or, since I moved to within a stone's throw of some of the best shrimp fishing in the USA, I'll pull out the molcajete, grind up a sauce of parsley and lemon zest and shallots and olive oil and lemon juice and some garlic and maybe some other green herb I have around, very gently poach some shrimp (that were swimming a few hours prior) in a mix of good butter and olive oil, pull the shrimp from the oil/butter, drain, douse them in the salsa verde/gremolata/whateverata, let them think about their life decisions for 15 minutes while I make a salad and slice some good bread. Similarly dead simple and everyone loves it. Also I do this with a mild white fish, like triggerfish or some sort of flatfish if it's the season, when I have guests who are not shrimp fans.
And I love to pull out some really rich chicken stock -- the kind that is still pretty much jellied at room temperature -- steep a bunch of greenery in it as I bring it up to temperature so it has some bright veggie flavors, then grab a few eggs and some good cheese and turn it into stracciatella. Serve it with some grilled (oil, rub with garlic clove, salt-sprinkle) bread. In the summer, a plate of sliced tomatoes gets the salad job done. At this time of year, probably a little dish of escarole with lemon juice and oil and black pepper and salt instead.
I feel so seen. As much pride as I took in being a pastry chef, the question, "what's your favorite thing to bake?" alway irked me. It's like asking an actor what's their favorite show to act in. Maybe they have a favorite, but more likely it is the act of performing that they love, not one specific scene. Obviously, people usually have good intentions and are just trying to show interest, but I can definitely identify with struggling to answer.