Fast Food

For the Past few years I have written an annual round-up of cookery books and, putting aside fashions and fads, it is the subject of fast food which has recently begun to dominate. The reasons are understandable enough: we seem to have less time for cooking as we have more interest in food. Women have been traditionally the producers and providers of food in the home, but now that we go out to work there’s no one to spend all afternoon making tonight’s supper. But the disinclination to spend hour upon hour in the kitchen every night is not sex-specific. No one would want, after a long day in the office, to come back and start on some elaborate culinary masterpiece. Cooking can be relaxing (although it’s interesting that it’s men rather than women who tend more often to cite its therapeutic properties), but not if you are already exhausted. And since the working day seems to get ever longer, why would you want to be cooking a meal which isn’t going to be ready for 2½ hours? What we all want is to eat something good and simple and soon.