Word of mouth: oral history you can eat

I have a shelf full of cookery books and I know some of the recipes off by heart but lately when I need inspiration I reach for the laptop, send some ingredients into cyberspace and back comes a list of recipes. Some of them are pretty good. Does this spell the end of the cookery book?

Or is it a way of reconnecting with the kind of knowledge which used to be passed from one generation to another? Food is the best oral history we know which is probably one of the reasons why ready made junk food is so bad for us. It has no past, no sense of place.

I am posting a little food video (thanks to Ray and Dougal) inspired by the World Kitchen in Leith . Mridu makes a meal from her new cookery book Feasts of India but as she explains in her foreword there were no cookery books in her mother’s kitchen.    Even now Mridu doesn’t weigh ingredients when she is cooking. She knows by feel and smell when she has popped enough cumin into the pot.

Mridu was one of the driving forces of World Kitchen in Leith at the Leith Festival last year (she even cajoled me into cooking potato scones to go with her chutney). It was a great event supported by many friends but what struck me most of all was how much family history was involved in the foods people brought to the stall.

Granny Barron’s soda bread came with a recipe which had never been written down until a family member sat down and weighed each ‘handful’ of this and ‘pinch’ of that. The recipe for Maryjanna’s sour apple cake travelled from Poland with Daniel, a young man paying tribute to his grandmother who taught him how to make a heavenly, fragrant sponge. And so it went on – Pip’s pakoras, Luis’ prawn and coriander pancakes – a mix of  memory, improvisation and inspiration from childhood kitchens.

These are skills we need.  Maybe the internet has a part to play in reconnecting people with food stories we can tell each other.  I still like cookery books but I have a weak spot for food films (for a while the BBC added cookery videos to their online food newsletter which provided me with a great excuse for not starting work. I mean, I know how to make apple crumble but it was very soothing sitting and watching someone else making it when I should have been writing).

By the way, potato scones are very good with chutney.  But I have a confession to make. My granny bought them ready made and none of my cookery books produced a result I liked (even Tommy couldn’t eat all the trial versions I made before the World Kitchen went live).  In the end I found a good recipe on the internet though now I can’t remember whether it was the BBC’s Irish version or the more buttery Scots one that  I liked best.

One thing.  Has anyone designed an apron for the laptop?