It's all been done before

"It always seems impossible until it's done."

Nelson Mandela

I have to admit that of late I have slipped somewhat with writing this blog. I have resorted to various of my fall-back writer's block tricks more frequently than I should, or else just done nothing at all, with the excuse that I have been busy with other things. Which is sort of true but not really - if inspired I can always find a moment or two.

Last week I resorted to my 'first recipe' ploy and chose the cover recipe rather than the first recipe. So today I thought I would do the actual first recipe - shown on the left, and, because it was a breadcrumbed dish I thought I would expand it into a blog on breadcrumbs. I researched a bit and got quite enthusiastic, but all the time there was the niggling thought that I had done it before. So I checked to be sure. And yes indeed I have. So that's the end of breadcrumbs. A trail that was eaten up with nothing left to explore for it was quite a comprehensive post. I might have found a couple of new recipes but they were really just variations on the themes laid out there.

So now what do I do? Well I think just a few words on the recipe. Making a start anywhere, might just lead to somewhere.

Being a Donna Hay recipe it looks amazing. She did have the services of one of the best food stylists in the business after all - Steve Pearce. It is also amazingly simple and I suspect an example of style over substance. But then again maybe not. In outline - there is no need for the detailed recipe - you just coat the pork chops with mustard, then with a breadcrumb and dill mixture and fry until cooked and golden. The bit underneath that the chops are sitting on, consists of some slices of speck fried, to which are added some canned lentils and balsamic vinegar, and finally some canned or bottled red cabbage sauerkraut. It's a store-cupboard/leftover dish with the only things that you might not have to hand being the pork chops and the dill. Well I guess you might not have the sauerkraut unless you are a sauerkraut fan. I am and I do. Anyway a quick trip to the supermarket will get you everything you need. Which is interesting in itself. In my youth you would not have been able to source the Dijon mustard, the balsamic vinegar, the speck (bacon would have had to do), the red cabbage sauerkraut, the dill, the tinned lentils (they would have been red and dry - no Puy lentils then - not even brown ones). And you would not even have been able to find the olive oil. How times have changed. And how almost impossible this recipe would have been to achieve in post-war England.

Now I might sound critical here, but I'm not really. When you look at something like this you do wonder why people say they cannot cook, and/or they have no time to cook. It takes as long as it takes to fry some pork chops and open a couple of cans. You don't even have to slice any onions - well prepare any vegetable at all other than chopping the dill - and you could probably get away with just stripping the leaves off the stalks. It's also quite nourishing and needs nothing else to accompany it - maybe a chunk of bread to soak up the juices and a green salad to refresh the palate, but there is no need for any other dish. You have carbohydrates, protein galore, vitamins, minerals and good old olive oil. The textural contrast would be interesting, as would the sharpness of the vinegar and the sauerkraut contrasting with the earthiness of the lentils.

And yet I bet there are very few people who actually need such recipes who will (a) have bought the magazine and (b) have made the dish. Donna Hay is sort of food porn in some people's eyes I think - my younger son being one of them. I might give this recipe a go though - maybe even serve it to him sometime.

It comes from a section entitled 'Easy Weeknights' and as I was flicking through the magazine prior to finishing this post I found the next section entitled 'Staff shortcuts' included this recipe for Fresh linguine with Parmesan-Rosemary Broth, which featured - guess what - breadcrumbs - plus another leftover thing - Parmesan rind. Again it's a nothing recipe really - a broth from chicken stock rosemary, garlic and the parmesan rind which is poured over the linguine and scattered with fried breadcrumbs and rosemary. Style over substance again perhaps. And maybe not quite as nourishing - no greens or other vegetables in this one and not much protein either. Well that depends how much parmesan you add at the end. Tempting looking though - again thanks to Steve Pearce the stylist.

"Food cannot simply taste good, our instructors said. It must look good, too — because we eat first with our eyes." Corey Mintz - TVO

There is a whole lot more to be said on that topic vis à vis Instagram, et al. but with respect to recipes I think it is important to entice people who might not otherwise give its a go, to cook something different. It is up to the recipe creators to (a) make something that is genuinely nourishing, (b) make it look supremely tempting and (c) to make it appear simple, and, ideally, actually make it simple. And I think both of these dishes do achieve that purpose. The pork chops look beautiful, and you can make it look that beautiful too.

It's like Picasso's drawing of a female bottom. My grandchildren look at it (I have a cheap print on the wall) and say they could do that - and they could because it's so genuinely simple, but they didn't think of doing it, Picasso did.

"A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort." John Ruskin

Which is true. They (and I) can merely copy. But we can copy Picasso's drawing and as long as we don't pass it off as our own invention - that's OK. It probably won't have quite the right shape anyway. But on a more mundane plane we can certainly copy Donna Hay's recipe and Steve Pearce's presentation too if we want. And surely the whole idea is to make us give it a go. Doubtless the cynics would say they just want us to buy the magazine, but I would like to think that most cookbook writers genuinely want to pass on their expertise and encourage others to try. And if a stylish photograph will do that, then all power to them.

I see I have strayed a bit from my meaning at the start of this post but look I have written one. I started out thinking that I had nothing to write about anymore, and I have managed to waffle again. So maybe you just have to start typing.

"Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe