Cooking made easy: I reckon the world needs more accessible, easy instruction in cooking
There used to be a really great late-night cooking show on British TV, at about 3 or 4 in the morning, called "Get Stuffed". http://getstuffed.info/dir/
It was all a cookery program for beginners should be. It should come back, and everyone who aspires to teach the masses of hoi polloi how to cook _needs_ to see it. A bunch of 'em are on Youtube.
The episodes were about 10min long. That's enough. Give me a recipe that takes 2h to prepare and I am not going to do it twice, because I like food that takes about as long or less to prepare as it does to eat. That is my line in the sand.
They tended to include a single-digit number of ingredients. This is good. Frankly, if it's fancy and needs 20 or 30 ingredients and multiple prep stages, I'm probably not going to bother. I can pay someone to cook fancy stuff in a restaurant. I'm not going to waste time and money fscking it up at home.
I can cook. I am not great, and I mostly don't do fancy stuff. I can't do anything with any form of meat and I'm proud of that, because I haven't eaten any form of dead animal since I was about 14 and I do not intend to start. So, any cooking show/book that is mostly dead-animal based, I won't watch/read/buy.
In my not-even-remotely-fucking-humble opinion, it's like this: a competent artist can create art from whatever materials they're given. Give them a sheet of A4 and a blue biro, and they can still draw a wonderful picture.
So, IDGAF what any cannibalistic bastards _like_ to eat. If someone's any bloody good in a kitchen, they should be able to create interesting food out of plants and dairy. Sod the dead flesh -- keep that to a minority of the time. I am not saying ban it, I am saying well under half. 1/3 vegetarian, 1/3 vegan, 1/3 meat is a good ratio.
Yes, it's sanctimonious, and yes, I am. I judge every meat-eating bastard and I find them wanting.
Short, quick, simple, easy. Amounts should be approximations and not tied to any units system, because they don't translate. Tell people what a bit more or less will do. Detail substitutions that will work. Tools should be simple stuff -- it was a revelation to me when I used to go to the Sci-Fi Weekender events and stay in a holiday camp. The kitchens have stuff I'd _never_ use, like potato mashers & rolling pins, but lacked sharp knives. I had to try to coordinate a bunch of nerdy guys who didn't know how to fend for themselves, and I discovered that people didn't know what I consider basic stuff -- like, how to chop an onion, or how to cut up a tomato, or the fact that for most veg you don't need to peel them, just give 'em a bloody good scrub and cut out any nasty bits.
So, what I'm saying is, yes, you're right, there *is* a real need for basic public education in dead simple cookery, but I reckon a lot of people tackle it totally wrong.
A friend posted a year or so back that she was confused by healthy eating advice: there was so much of it and so much was contradictory. I was amazed. It's dead easy. Michael Pollan said it eloquently:
Eat less.
Only food.
Mostly plants.
That's it.
"Eat less."
We eat too much. Making stuff filling is a priority. Think about protein content. That means not meat and it means cheap. Any restaurant that serves me 3 artfully-arranged twigs next to 6 droplets of sauce is one that's going to get a blisteringly bad review from me. Fuck that. Entire series of Masterchef would benefit greatly from an AK-47, but failing that, I'd give 'em a budget of £5 per person and it has to feed someone who is coeliac and someone who is vegan. If your menu includes the word "jus" so help me it'll be the last word you fucking write.
"Only food."
That means, you start with elements. Ingredients, not a jar of sauce, not a can of stew, nothing frozen or whatever. Someone in the 19th century should instantly recognise it and know what to do with it.
"Mostly plants".
Self-explanatory. Meat as an occasional treat once a week or something, not as a basis. If you can't cook without meat, fish or anything containing them then you can't cook.
This is why I occasionally post my own "Chef de Bloke" cordon-blur recipes. Because I hope that they might help someone somewhere. Actually, I promised Jana's sister one in the summer, so it will have to be in basic English too. That will be an interesting challenge.