Pitfall Food

Should You Give People Your Food Recipes?

I do. Except for one. I don’t give that to anybody. Here is why.

I have hundreds of recipes. I keep them on my phone, in handwritten notebooks, on the computer, and in files. I’ve collected them over 30 years of cooking. All are lovingly tried and tested.

Making good food is not about a written recipe though, it is the chemistry that the maker infuses into the dish. Food is alchemy. 100 people could make Black Truffle Soup, from the recipe. And it would be good. But only when you’ve tasted the inventor’s version, Paul Bocuse, do you taste the genius.

I keep a notebook in my kitchen and jot down the basics of a recipe while I am experimenting. At the moment I am working with fermentation.

I am working on a gherkin sauce with fermented seaweed, roasted shallots, black pickled garlic, Dill, Parsley, Kefir, Mayonnaise (smoked), and fresh green peppercorns that have been steeped in gin.

I have been looking at fermentation on and off for a few years, and then recently, Malky McEwan wrote a piece and included a link to a fermentation paper. I printed it off and read it. It rekindled my interest.

It cites fermentation as a reason we have mentally advanced faster than previous generations. That’s a good enough reason for me to go study it some more. Many cultures considered superior for some or other reason, believe in fermentation. Many of those cultures also enjoy longevity. Germany, Japan, and China, to name a few.

Michelin gives a “latest trend” note each year, from various Michelin chefs. 2024 it notes, will have fermentation, as a trend. Another trend it predicts is a return to the classics. And fire cooking. I see fire cooking developing a lot.

Why am I sharing this?

I often get calls for a recipe. Or a WhatsApp asking for “Ways to cook this whole duck I was given or a whole fish on the bone”.

And I always oblige.

I get a kick knowing people are cooking food from scratch. In my humble opinion, there is no greater gift you can give yourself, than wholesome, home-cooked, healthy food.

Regardless of where you eat out, if you do it very often, you are taking in too much sodium, trans fats, and other ingredients the body does not enjoy in excess.

Eating out is a treat. Not a necessity.

Not one of my recipes is off-limits. I do have one recipe that I do not share though. And for a specific reason.

I was in Zimbabwe working with a few chefs on some new dishes and came across a group of nuns who ran a convent.

The convent was struggling financially and was about to shut down. It was a few hundred years old, and these ladies did amazing work in the community. Many young Zimbabweans had been educated at the convent, orphans given a new lease on life, and some had even gone on to become nurses and health care professionals.

One of the key advantages of being a chef, is access. For some inexplicable reason, a chef, who is really just a blue-collar labourer, can speak to kings and Presidents. And go where few get to go.

Everybody wants to know the chef. The plumber — not so much.

So they approached us and asked us if we had any ideas to keep the convent going. We decided to meet at the convent to discuss options and get a feel for the skill levels.

In turn, the nuns offered to prepare a simple lunch for us. On the agreed day we arrived and were delighted to enjoy freshly baked meat pies and a wonderful fresh salad with greens from the garden they tended.

I bit into the pie, and my mouth did a somersault. Before I knew it, I had consumed three of the pies. And was not even mildly concerned I would be branded a “glutton”, and asked to research the 7 deadly sins.

I did not give a fornication.

I had never tasted a pastry like this before. It was softly delicate and yet wonderfully crisp. Flavourful. The entire pastry had a golden shine to it, not just the egg-washed lid, but the base as well. Which was in a pie foil.

I knew how tough it was to get the base of a pie crisp and golden, with the humidity created by the foil and the filling juices. This was exceptional.

“Do you blind bake these pie bases,” I inquired.

“No,” Mother Superior said, “We bake them from raw.”

I bit into the pastry again, its flavour was incredible. And it complimented the meat so well.

“Do you only do meat pies,” I asked.

“No, we do chicken and vegetable ones too,” Mother Superior replied, somewhat flushed at all the attention she was getting.

I gave her some money and asked her to buy ingredients to make me the chicken and vegetable pies, too. I will return tomorrow. At first, she did not want the money but I insisted, pointing out why we had agreed to meet. Laughing, she capitulated. Something I do not think she did often.

The next day I returned and bit into a chicken pie and then a vegetarian option. My taste buds were singing “Stairway to Heaven.”

She had made a curried vegetable pie and a creamed spinach and Emmental cheese pie as well.

Angels sang. Symphonies played. I was a happy lad.

“Do you like our fillings,” Mother Superior asked.

“They’re good,” I replied, “But it is the pastry that I am most interested in.”

It never ceases to amaze me that people do not take more interest in what appear to be the inconsequential items on a menu. It’s like my chipped plate theory:

Why buy expensive ingredients and lovingly prepare them, if you serve the offering on a chipped plate? You may as well serve dog shit. A chipped plate disrespects all the effort and quality.

The small things matter.

I recently ate at a Michelin restaurant - 8 courses. It was good. Very good. But the star of the show was the smoked mussel butter and the incredible olive sourdough. Which were plopped on the table as an afterthought.

She smiled. “We have had that recipe for over 100 years, at the Convent,” she said, “It has been passed down from Mother Superior to Mother Superior for decades. And originally came from Europe.”

I then asked to see the kitchens. They had a very large kitchen with two massive old Chandley (English) ovens. They must have been sent out during the war, I thought. Real workhorses they were. And they were gleaming. The Sisters looked after the equipment. Which was a good start.

“I think I have solved your problem,” I said, “But there is one condition to me providing you with an economic and a production plan.”

“I’m listening,” Mother Superior replied.

“Make and sell these pies as a business, and make them expensive and put great fillings in,” I said.

“What is the condition,” she asked.

“I want the recipe,” I replied.

“Uve, if you help me set up the production line and show us how to do this commercially, I will sell you the recipe. We need supplies and more equipment and we do not have money,” she replied, smiling.

“Done,” I answered before she could change her mind. It was the finest decision of my life, and years later launched my food manufacturing business.

That single recipe saved the Convent for many years. And Mother Superior sold the recipe to me. And with the proceeds bought a second-hand cold room. I would have gladly donated the money anyway. But she gave it with one stipulation,

“You can only hand that recipe down to a chosen family member, like we do, and nobody else.”

I too have made a lot of money from that recipe. My little factory made 14,000 handmade pies a day for 8 years. Until I sold the business for a profit. The purchaser only wanted the brand and the fillings. He did not want the pastry, citing the difficulty in producing his pie and mine using two pastries. He wanted synergy. The prick.

I happily obliged. He saw the pastry as inconsequential. But then again, he was an accountant. And so he began to produce “just another pie”. And lasted 2 more years before closing shop. He could not sustain my selling prices and his margin was cut to ribbons.

He totally missed the true value proposition.

And so, I have kept it a secret for decades since. I have made money from it. But the time is coming when I must hand it over to one of my children. And they must continue the legacy. That Mother Superior is long gone, and so is the Convent today, swallowed up in the changes that make up the new Zimbabwe nation.

I often wonder if anybody in Zimbabwe is still making that pastry. I know I am. And each time I do, it receives rave reviews. And somehow I feel a little bit better about myself.

Is that what they call “being blessed.”