Don't Sweat the Aubergine

 
    The most stressful event in your life, I have read, is moving house. Giving a speech is up there too. Weddings can cause a good degree of anxiety. Here’s another scenario to get you in a sweat: there are eight people coming to dinner, you’re attempting a dish you haven’t prepared before, and it’s not going well
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    Why did you buy a whole leg of lamb? Boning it might have taken Gordon Ramsay five minutes, but took you forty-five. You have spent a further half an hour inserting little bits of rosemary and garlic, which stuck to your fingers, into the flesh. The cannellini beans to go with it were supposed to be cooked by now, but the one you’ve just tasted had the consistency of a pebble. Lacking a ‘gratin dish, preferably earthenware’ for the gratin dauphinois, you made do with your old Pyrex, and you stuck to the quantity of milk and cream specified in the recipe even though the liquid came only halfway up the potatoes. Now the liquid has evaporated, and the potatoes are still crunchy. Then there’s the pudding: did you allow some yolk to seep into the whites when you separated the eggs? After ten minutes of beating, the whites have barely turned white, let alone risen to what the book describes as ‘soft, snowy peaks’. Meanwhile your flatmate/boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife, having promised to lay the table and clean the glasses, is still in the bloody bathroom.
    I think that we get into these flaps because food experts, and our own insecurities, have led us to think of cookery as the fulfilment of recipes. The recipe sets the standard to which we aspire. If the dish doesn’t work as the cookery writers suggested it would, we must have done something wrong. We have all felt those moments of panicked helplessness when natural processes have refused to conform to our hopes.
    The recipe said, ‘Heat 200ml of cream and 50ml of milk, and pour over; the liquid should be level with the top of the potatoes.’ But the liquid wasn’t level with the top; it came only halfway up. I must have sliced the potatoes too thin, you conjecture. Or too thick. Or used the wrong kind of dish. But the recipe specified that amount of liquid, so I’d better not add any more, or something else will go wrong. Oh, no: the dish has dried up and the potatoes are uncooked. I’m a failure.
    Let me illustrate the drawbacks of adhering rigidly to recipes with a couple of examples. Both dishes contain lamb, and both sound as if they should be straightforward, flavourful and unfussy.
    The first appeared in my Sunday colour supplement. It’s lamb cutlets with Mediterranean vegetables. You cut plum tomatoes lengthways, sprinkle with olive oil, sea salt and icing sugar, and bake for about two hours. You colour halved onions and whole shallots, sprinkle them with oil, sugar and thyme, and bake them in a foil parcel. You sauté sliced courgettes for two to three minutes; you sauté sliced aubergines for five to eight minutes; you put all the vegetables together. You wash and top some green beans; you slice fennel with a mandolin. Then you season your rack of lamb, colour it for two minutes each side in a frying pan, and put it in the oven for five minutes. Boil the beans, add them to the fennel with some olives, olive oil and basil. Assemble the lamb, bean mixture and courgette mixture on four plates.
    There is a place for this kind of recipe. That place is in the kitchen of the Michelin-starred chef who wrote it, or in the homes of enthusiastic amateurs such as those who appear on the television programme
Masterchef
. I am an everyday cook. I am never going to prepare this version of lamb cutlets with Mediterranean vegetables.
    The second recipe is typical of the hearty stews you find in books celebrating country cooking:
    Lard
    1kg shoulder of lamb, cubed
    4 carrots, sliced
    3 onions, thinly sliced
    1 dstsp flour
    1 glass white wine
    4 medium turnips, sliced
    1 bouquet garni
    Salt and pepper
    In a casserole, heat a layer of lard, and brown the lamb in it. Add the carrots and onions and, when golden, sprinkle on the flour. Throw in the white wine, and the turnips. Add the bouquet garni, and season with salt and pepper. Simmer for two hours, adding a little water if the stew is in danger of drying out.
    That looks like something I might be bothered to tackle. But I have some doubts about the details. Lamb is fatty; with lard as well, the sauce in the stew is not going to be easy to digest. Like many stews, this one has