About This Site...


A Different Point of View


This website is dedicated to those reluctant cooks who regard time spent in the kitchen in much the same way as a convict might view a rock pile.

If that's you, please, take another look.

For years now I've been cooking in a style completely free from what I call the tyranny of the recipe. It wasn't always so easy.

There was a time when I approached what I regarded as 'problem' dishes with trepidation, fearful of having the 'wrong' ingredients, unable to convert cups to grams, and even worrying about whether or not I had the right type of mixing bowl!

Any of that sound familiar?


Avoiding disasters
It was recipes which caused this. They frequently induced a kind of culinary paralysis which prompted me to abandon a meal altogether rather than follow the tortuous and potentially disastrous pathways set down in domineering black and white.

Even today, whenever I read a cook-book (and I frequently do) I feel a sweat breaking out if I see the word 'authentic' anywhere in one of the recipes.

Or I spot an ingredient which I'm well aware is available only to those living within camel trekking distance of a deli specializing in central Andean ethnic spices. Such 'essential' inclusions are usually followed by some comment like  'if unavailable, nutmeg may be substituted but is much 'inferior'.

How are you supposed to feel after reading that?

Right.  You give up.  Someone is bound to spot your obvious gaffe and the last thing you need after hours of stress in the kitchen is one of your guests sniggering (or worse!) into a napkin.

See what I mean by tyranny?


Well, kiss it goodbye!
I did that the first time I walked into a French kitchen, looking for a job. The chef handed me a potato peeler and pointed to a mountain of vegetables.  "Depechez-vous".

Apart from this exhortation to get on with it, repeated many times over the next couple of months, that was the extent of my training.  My acceleration to the dizzy heights of sous-chef was much more dramatic.

It followed one of many wine-assisted evenings  when the Belgian second chef attempted to ride his velocette over a bridge, the far end of which hadn't existed for several hundred years.

Neither he nor his motorbike were  much in demand for quite some time after that.

But I was, largely because I was available.

Do it your way
Marc Cramenet, may his tribe increase, was a chef of the old school who wasted no time in writing anything down.  His 'depechez-vous' now changed to 'regardez'.

He made no attempt to teach me what to cook.  He simply taught me how to cook and I took to it like a drowning man to a plank of wood.

It was as if the shackles had been thrown off and a whole new world of food preparation opened up to me. Through the facilities available at The Cool Cooks Club I hope to do the same for you.

Just remember - and I can't emphasise this enough - there is no right or wrong way to cook. There's just your way, and if the end result justifies the effort you put into it - that's all that counts.

Best wishes
Michael Sheridan
Kiama 2005




Contact us for more info