Eat Well: The benefits of home cooking

I love cooking at home. Whether its for the whole family or just myself, I’ve developed a passion over the past 10 years for being at the helm of creating delicious food for loved ones.

Generally, I cook from a recipe, unless its a staple I’ve been doing for years. I like to get the ratios, cooking times and flavour balances right and it takes less brain power if I’m following a script. Whenever I use a cookbook, I make notes. If I substitute, if I muck something up (so I’ll know for next time: “tomato sauce means passata, not ketchup!”) and how I, or our guests rated the dish (“this was NOT a hit with the kids… they said it smelt weird”).

My cookbook collection used to be massive. When I got divorced, I literally left everything behind, including most of my beloved cook books.

The collection is starting to grow again now, expanding with each visit to a book store yielding a new addition. Most recently it was “Ikaria”, reflecting our love of this small Greek island made famous by Dan Buettner’s well reknowned Blue Zones research.

I’m an impatient home chef. I rush cooking times, won’t ever julienne a vegetable and can’t be bothered with anything that has too many ingredients or takes too much preparation. I’ll substitute ingredients so I can use what’s on hand at home rather than go out to buy the prescribed goods.

But I get immense satisfaction out of seeing people I love enjoy the food I’ve made, or we’ve prepared together. My youngest son now regularly joins me in the kitchen to cook dinner, and I love helping him learn how to throw together a meal. (OK, I pay him $5 per meal to help, it’s his preferred way of earning pocket money, but I still love it).

I truly believe that preparing, cooking and enjoying meals together at home, any time of day, is massively beneficial to our wellbeing, including:

• It’s often healthier – you know exactly what is going into (and staying out of) the food you’re eating, because you’re making it from scratch.
• Shared meals bring people together – when they were little, I would have breakfast with my boys every day, they’d sit up eating boiled eggs, drinking milo and talk about the day ahead. These days we have a standing weekly Sunday lunch with our kids and their partners, and most Sundays most of them are here, and often its a group effort of combined dishes shared with wines and laughs. Dinner time any night of the week at home is around our table, and we take the opportunity with whoever’s home to talking about whatever is current or of shared interest. It’s an important tactic to maintain and grow connection with our kids and I treasure it.
• We learn new things – new culinary skills, patience (!), team work if you’re cooking with others – home cooking can fire up some different parts of your brain, gets you curious about cuisine and of course we learn from our mistakes.
• It can be relaxing – chopping vegetables is a great meditative tool, particularly after an intense or stressful day at work. When the focus is on stirring, staying across a few work stations or monitoring what’s on the stove, the rest of the world melts away, you’re present in the moment and all of your senses are online. I often have my most creative moments whilst chopping, stirring or waiting for the pasta water to boil.
• You feel a sense of achievement and reward. When someone says “thank you” for preparing a meal, devours its deliciousness or asks you for the recipe, you get a little squirt of happiness hormone. If everything else in your life seems its going down the toilet, then someone appreciates a meal you’ve served, it feels like actually everything is going to be OK.

So, if you’re a reluctant or fearful home chef, take a deep breath and relax into it. Start with something easy, don’t be overwhelmed by what you see others doing on Instagram, and have a go. At worst, you’ll be eating toast or 2 minute noodles instead of a roast dinner or lasagne and at best you’ll have gained experience and confidence to build your home cooking regime into a regular habit.

Here are my go-to cook books and some of my favourite recipes from them, if you’re looking for some inspiration to get started

• It’s all Easy – Gwyneth Paltrow. I love Gwyneth. In a weird fan girl way, but I actually really love this cookbook. Its designed for weekday meals in busy households and includes some simple basics such as chopped salads, noodle pots (great for work day lunches) and spaghetti carbonara. She also does amazing things with avocado and enchiladas. The recipes truly are easy, with some more adventurous dishes sitting along side the staples, so from this book you can nourish you, satisfy hungry kids, or please a crowd, including if guests turn up unexpectedly. There are a few dishes that are a bit more challenging, like making your own socce pizzas (at which I failed) if you’re feeling adventurous.
• French Women Don’t Get Fat (the cookbook) – Mireille Guiliano. As a full-on francophile, I was beside myself when I bought this book in 2011 and attempted to cook every dish in it (“Julia and Julia” style). It could be the only cookbook you ever use, with recipes taking you from breakfast to dessert, casual week day meals to complete fancy banquets and everything in between. Most recipes only have a handful of ingredients and make beautiful use of vegetables and fresh herbs. There are lots of fish dishes. The magical breakfast cream was my staple breakfast for years (it’s actually yogurt with some yummy additions), the chicken en croute fiona style will change how you cook schnitzels forever and the salad of green beans, peaches and almonds will be the envy of your work mates’ packed lunches. The book also has some great wisdom on making home cooking a lifestyle rather than a chore, digging back through French history and the traditions of a simpler, more connected time in our past.
• Clean Eats – Dr Alejandro Junger. Clean eating basically means nothing processed, and is light on foods containing dairy and gluten. This cookbook is a community of recipes from lots of collaborators and is probably the book I cook from most the time these days. Our morning smoothies are variations of the ones contained here, as are our work day salads and family dinners which range from fried rice, to spaghetti meatballs and braised lamb shanks. This cookbook includes 7 and 21 day cleanses, which are a great introduction to clean eating, particularly if you’re looking to change your eating habits or try a detox where you’re not starving the whole time.
• Special Delivery – Annabel Crabb. I bought this cookbook after seeing Ms Crabb speak at a luncheon in Maitland. I was captivated by her passion for cooking, her warm intelligence and fierce humour. So I bought the book and started working my way through it. The recipes are all vegetarian (but you can augment with meat where you like) and designed to be taken anywhere – a picnic, a friend’s place or into your backyard table. I’ve now made most the dishes and they are frikkin awesome. Her moussaka is bursting with flavour and the Harira Soup just has to be doing amazing things for your soul.
• Jamie’s 30 minute meals – Jamie Oliver. Most of these recipes, in my opinion, take longer than 30 minutes BUT every dish I’ve cooked has great flavours, is relatively simple to prepare and can be adapted to suit your skills, tastes or what’s in the pantry. The tray baked chicken has become a staple, a low labour crowd pleaser packed with flavour. I also love the steak sarnie, which I’ve also adapted to sliders and served to a pack of hungry craft beer snobs.

So whether you’re already a dedicated, passionate home cook or curious about expanding your current culinary repertoire, I truly hope reading this has given you some confidence, inspiration or curiosity about the wellness and other benefits of home cooking and how it might serve you well as you move through your daily life.

Thank you for taking the time to be here with me, if you’ve got comments, thoughts or ideas to share, I’d love to hear them!

Stay well xx