That’s not a recipe…

That’s not a recipe, that’s just a way to construct a dish.

In my cookery book collection I have a 1980s recipe book from Sainsbury’s. There are some interesting recipes in there, but this recipe caught my eye, Prawn and Artichoke Vol-au-Vents.

No, this wasn’t a recipe which inspired me, it was more that I couldn’t quite see how this was a recipe.. This was a way to construct a dish.

Take some processed food and put it all together. Don’t make a sauce from scratch, just use a sauce mix. Throw in some canned vegetables and defrosted frozen prawns. Don’t make pastry, just bake some prepared frozen vol-au-vent cases.

To me if this was a recipe, it should be about making a sauce from ingredients, cook some vegetables over using canned. I’ll let the prawns go on this one. Make come vol-au-vents, rather than use ones from the freezer. The construction process isn’t wrong per se, just that I think it shouldn’t be in a recipe book.

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