Cooking By Ear

By Grant P Cunningham

After our sons left home they kept calling home for recipes to impress their lovers or friends. Got tired of doing it three times for everything and ended up writing this cook book for kids leaving home. It is very popular.COOKING BY EAR is a cook book for those who are leaving home and have a need to feed themselves and others well and economically. This book is for the teenaged, or older, as they make their way out there in the world of fast, bad food that will leave them fat, sick and poor.It includes sections on shopping for food, the simplest tools you need to cook food and how to have fun as you do it.Also includes food philosophy and humor.A good companion on the road to independence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grant P Cunningham
• Release date: Feb 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311299475

Grant P Cunningham

Grant Cunningham was born in New York City in 1950 and immigrated to Australia in 1971. He has collected live animals in the wild, been a zoo keeper, research assistant in forestry, natural physician, sculptor, surfer and diamond hunter. He has also written a number of popular books including THE CROOK BACK BOOK, INNOCENT BYSTANDER, THE MARKS WE MAKE and THE LITTLE BOOK OF MEDITATION but hopes this will not be held against him. Isn’t it funny . . . here I am a writer and I do not like writing about myself. Yet I am told you are curious about me and there it is. I must I must I must . . . I was born in New York City General Hospital on the East River in 1950 to a large Irish Catholic family. Had a chaotic family life built around love and alcoholism, with wee bits of madness and some jail time too. The family moved to Westport, Connecticut around 1955 and ended up at Edgewater Hillside on The Old Mill Pond with the swans and the clams. Industrial grade Catholic guilt and the pursuit of the American Dream. Indeed we were McCall’s Magazine family of the year in 1956 just before the whole act fell apart. Divorce, madness, jail. The whole deal. I was raised by my brothers and sister Lee and I owe them my absolute love and affection. They have it. My father dried out with AA when I was 11 and I owe him and them my mind. I lived with him and my bother Noel in New York City for a few years. John was a Harvard boy and he gave me to the Jesuits while reading William Burrough’s THE NAKED LUNCH aloud to me when I came home. It was a fine and terrible thing to do to a child for which I am profoundly grateful. Ta Jack. My bother Sean and I were speaking not long ago and he mentioned that the thing about having alcoholic parents is that they promise to do this or do that or take you here or pay for that, and they don’t. Oh, they mean to when they say it but . . . So what it does is to train the children of drunks to realize that if they want something or to do something they better do it themselves because nobody else is going to do it for them. Not bad training really. Keeps all the equations about life simple. I attended either 12 or 17 different schools ( l lost count ) before I graduated from Berkeley High School in 1968 as a hippie and a rebel. Was living with my brothers Kevin, who was in the Marine Corps and stationed at Treasure Island, and Noel. Went to all the venues, saw all the bands with a lovely PhD student named Janice who took me to every Janis Joplin concert in the Bay Area. Country Joe and the Fish were the local band in Berkeley, Credence Clearwater Revival were up the road in El Cerrito, the Pointer Sisters were in Oakland and Santana were third billing at the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon ballroom. Traveled to Africa to collect live specimens of mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects for the Steinhardt Aquarium and the California Academy of Sciences. Bill Gaynor and Ted Pappenfuss. Reality in Africa drains one of illusion. There is illness, there is death, there is war, there is this thing we call life and it is not as we would wish but rather as it is. I was 18. Got back to the States, worked in Mike Malkin’s singles bar on 77th Street, got itchy feet and immigrated to Australia. Good move. I was 20 years old and Australia is where I have lived my adult life. Worked for the Forestry Commission, Taronga Zoo, started a leather craft business with Errol, lived naked on an island on the Great Barrier Reef with Sue, went back to school to study osteopathy and found an isolated house by the sea where I have remained since 1977. Fancy that. Time to write and sculpt and, lucky me, have a family. The good woman Donna, three lads (Bracken, Liam and Brean) and the ocean. Got to help a few people, write a few books, make a few images. A small life. Works for me anyway.

Book preview

THESE RECIPES

Cooking By Ear is just that. Everything is an approximation rather than an exact solution to be followed unfailingly.

You must vary these cooking ideas to you, your larder, your taste and your style.

Vary the amounts, vary the ingredients and see what comes out. If it looks good and tastes good, you have won.

And if you don’t . . . well, the person who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.

One of the most important consequences of our being animals is that we have this bottomless pit called the stomach.  This fact has colored our entire civilization.

Lin Yu Tang 

WHY COOK?

There are many good reasons why we should all be able to cook. Among them are these few and there are probably 20 others that I've forgotten.

It is useful. We all eat at least once and more probably 2-3 times a day.

It is a wonderful way to express love and affection for family and friends. There is joy in a well received meal for both the giver and the receiver.

It is better than restaurant and takeaway food. It is fresher and, as you get used to it, cooked with the flavors and spices you enjoy. It allows you a wider menu of better foods.

It is also much more economical so it allows you to do more with less. We have to earn that money we spend to eat out frequently. If we eat at home we need to earn less.

SOME SIMPLE RULES

Develop the habit of not eating out.

Learn to take good food with you when you travel or work.

Raw is better than cooked.

Steamed is better than boiled.

Lightly cooked is better than overcooked.

Pan fry, do not deep fry.

Do not over cook. Not only fish and eggs but vegetables as well. Almost everything tastes better and is more nutritious if cooked lightly.

Use more vegetables! In virtually all recipes there are not enough fresh vegetables and most meals taste better if you add two or three times more vegetables than the recipe calls for.

THE GOAL

The goal is a good, healthy, interesting meal on the table in 20 or so minutes with little fuss.

The wok, the fry pan and the steamer for vegetables are the main tools.

Lots of lightly cooked vegetables are a big part of most of these meals. Sometimes steamed, sometimes stir fried, sometimes raw.

Do not worry about the mess. Cooks do not often have to do the washing up. However it is an excellent habit that if you are waiting in the kitchen for something to boil or cook, start cleaning whatever is not in use.

Do what you can with what you have is an excellent axiom for cooking (as the rest of life). That is if the recipe calls for carrots but you don't have them, do not run to the shop. See what is there in the fridge or cupboard. Onions, so use them. Potatoes, so use them. Or broccoli or celery or bok choy or green beans.

Or the recipe calls for chicken and you only have tuna. Use that. Or eggs. Or nutmeat. Or tofu.

Or the recipe calls for rice. Not there. Try potatoes, or noodles, or cracked wheat, or rolled oats, or pumpkin.

The same principle applies to spices. No Thai curry paste? Try Indian curry powder or ginger or a fresh chili or garam marsala or cumin.

Cooking by Ear is mix and match with what you have.

JUDGEMENTS

Try to learn to make approximations. You are cooking for three people, have a look at the quantities on the chopping board or in the pot. Is that enough? Yep, seems fine. There's a knock on the door. Two old friends have arrived with their friends Sven and Knut from Norway. This food is not going to feed all of you. Make more noodles, cut more veggies, have another look. Should do and if it doesn't you can make pancakes or French toast for dessert.

Trust yourself. You'll soon be able to feed 10 people as easily as 2. Only the quantities change. It's actually easy.

Here are my three treasures.  Guard and keep them!  The first is compassion, the second frugality, and the third refusal to be foremost of all things in the world.

Lao Tze

TOOLS

Good knife/s

Pots with steamer/s

Soup Pot of about 5 liters

Cast iron fry pan

Wok

Graters for vegetables and spices

Garlic press

Stock Pot of about 10 liters if you are going to make stocks, which is a good idea.

SHOPPING

 Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.

Michael Polin

We live in the age of chain supermarkets.  Much food-like stuff can be gotten there but it is not the place for good fruit