A few thoughts on how recipes are made

- and a recipe for Pan-fried red mullet with potato, leek and fennel gratin

I’m sometimes asked about how cookbook writers come up with their recipes. The answer will, of course, be different for every writer and every book. Speaking entirely for myself I read a wide mix of new and old cookbooks for inspiration. I think we all try to stay attuned to what is going on around us not just in terms of food but also broader cultural vibes. (Will Rivals kickstart a revival for 80s food….) And I – like many food writers, I think – keep recipe notebooks.

Mine live in the kitchen. Or at least, the current one does. Whenever I am just riffing on an idea of something to cook I try to remember to get the notebook off the shelf and scribble it down, with the date. Sometimes they are little more than a few thoughts. Occasionally they are fully worked out and even weighed recipes. Mostly they are sketches of a recipe and its building blocks of ingredients / flavours / time. These might turn into fully fledged recipes at some point – even if that’s years down the line, as with this recipe below – or they will just give me a nugget of an idea to develop. I find them such a useful way of keeping track of the instinctive, intuitive way of cooking that feels natural to me.

They are recipe diaries, I suppose. And when each one is full I go through it, adding the dates and recipe headings to what might be called a Recipe Development Database were it not just everything typed out on a page. When I was putting together Seasoning that list of dishes and these notebooks were the foundations for being able to take stock of the big picture of how I cook / eat / feel across the seasons, across the years.

Much of the time if I need to do a particular recipe for something I will head to the notebooks first. And the entry for 23rd October 2020 has gifted me just the thing to round off October’s cookbook club fish theme. As you can see from the pic of the page, it’s one of the ones with a clear steer to build the recipe from, even though it has no actual quantities written down.  I have worked this up for 2 people, because that will certainly be how we had it for dinner a smidge over 4 years ago. It is easy to scale up for more, though – and I think the kind of meal that can as happily be cooked for 2 or 8 or more.

I choose for this red mullet that are small enough to pan fry whole. If you can only find larger ones then fillets will do just fine. As would another fish, or maybe even some sausages. It is good with the mullet, though.

Serve with steamed veg or some simple green leaves on the side.

Pan-fried red mullet with potato, leek and fennel gratin

Serves 2