How to Enjoy Cooking

If it’s true that 60 per cent of us serve supermarket ready-made meals at home, even when entertaining, that makes for a lot of people who are missing out on the pleasures of cooking. There is great enjoyment to be derived from cooking, first in the preparation and creation of appetizing food from a selection of prime raw materials, and then from the appreciation of those who eat it. Food and wine are one of society’s more civilized and inclusive pleasures, and far from the most expensive. I find our puritanical distaste for them hard to understand.