What I learned from trying to perfect 500 recipes

On 18 January 2010, Barack Obama became the first US president to send a tweet, UK prime minister Gordon Brown visited St George’s Hospital in Tooting and the Guardian’s website published the first piece in what, some weeks later, evolved into the series How to cook the perfect… Although that one, 14 years ago, was actually about whether you should wash mushrooms (tl;dr: yes).

Since then, the column – in which I attempt to create a perfect version of a popular recipe – has covered more than 500 dishes. I usually prepare at least six versions before arriving at my final one, so I must have cooked well over 3,000 in the pursuit of perfection. I took only a single week off, when making seven miso ramen from scratch was so overwhelming that my editor took pity on me and extended my deadline. (I think the results were worth it.)

People are fascinated by the practicalities of this gig. The most common questions I’m asked are whether I really test all those recipes (yes, and I have the terrible photos to prove it) and what do I do with the leftovers (push them on friends, colleagues, neighbours, fellow food bank volunteers and the ever-accommodating dog).

Before I get to that stage though, my editor and I have to agree on a dish I haven’t already covered, which is well enough known to be interesting and sufficiently complex to contain several variables. And I must find at least five credible recipes with significant differences, either online or in my enormous library of cookbooks. (Occasionally, I’ll even visit the British Library, as when someone recommended I consult a 1958 French-language Moroccan cookbook on lamb tagine.)

Once I’ve picked the recipes, I make a shopping list. Luckily, living in central London, there’s not much I can’t get locally, but finding piri piri peppers for the beloved Portuguese chicken dish, lye water for boiling bagels and corn syrup for marshmallows all involved a few missions farther afield; I miss the South American stalls in Elephant & Castle and the Irish grocers on Holloway Road, who supplied me with Peruvian aji amarillo for ceviche and properly floury spuds for Irish stew.

Having made everything in my tiny kitchen, and canvassed opinions on the merits of each dish (although I’m afraid my decision is final – like the great Darina Allen, you may like parsnips in your beef stew, but the devil’s root is never going to please my tastebuds), I finally write the actual recipe, bringing together the best bits from each in my perfect version. (I cannot stress that “my” enough: this is what works for me, and your tastes may differ – such is the joy of cookery.) Then I test it, tweak it and test it again. Sometimes, the simplest of dishes are the trickiest nuts to crack; I remember my relief when a message from a chef revealed the trick to getting a school dinners-style gypsy tart to set was, counterintuitively, to reduce the cooking time. After all that, I photograph the dish and persuade people to come round with empty Tupperware.

In all the years I’ve been doing the job, I’ve never been defeated by a recipe, although some have been more fun than others (I nearly burned the whole terrace down deep-frying porchetta). My favourites, though, remain the ones where I might have made life easier for a few people – sharing the secrets of no-stress hollandaise or mayonnaise, for example, or promoting the little-known fact that you can make great pizza in a frying pan (pictured top).

The other question I’m asked a lot is which perfect recipe I make the most. Sadly, I rarely get the time to repeat them – by the time you read them, I’m already working on dishes for columns three weeks into the future.

The best thing I ate this week | Even if you can turn out a towering souffle in your sleep, it’s a thrill to see familiar ingredients through fresh eyes. On that note, I strongly urge you to seek out the carrot, pickled raisin and hazelnut salad in Irish chef Anna Haugh’s forthcoming Cooking With Anna, out in May. I was lucky enough to eat it at an International Women’s Day dinner recently and I can’t wait to discover what else she put in (tarragon? star anise? magic?) to make it so good.

TV dinners | In the odd moment when I’m not pigging out myself, I enjoy watching other people do so – and few are more joyfully enthusiastic than Phil Rosenthal, who travels the world stuffing his face for his Netflix show, Somebody Feed Phil, and not even pretending to be cool about it. In the latest series, he visits Julie Lin at her Malaysian-inspired diner Ga Ga in Glasgow, before heading over to Leith for a Scottish fry at the Roseleaf with the hilarious Tony Singh. Almost as good as being there in person.

What I made this week | Recipe testing doesn’t leave me much time to make anything other than toast, but I was delighted to shoehorn in two meals by friends: a warming sweet potato and peanut butter stew from Samuel Goldsmith’s new The Tinned Tomatoes Cookbook, and a fresh and crunchy cauliflower, preserved lemon and chilli salad from Angela Clutton’s even newer Seasoning for lunch a couple of days later. Both were even better than toast – and I really love toast.

Drooling over | I have a weakness for cheese toasties – the absolute best use for stale bread and hard cheese. For me, the secret of success is to butter the outside generously, then weigh it down in the pan to encourage the bread to brown and the filling to melt. I usually use my mortar, but an American company produces a specially weighted “chef’s press” to do the job more efficiently.

Comfort Eating with Grace Dent

Sliding into Grace’s sitting room this week is comedian, playwright and musical theatre creator Daniel Foxx, who shares his different incarnations – from coming out age 11 to donning a string of pearls post-lockdown. His observational obsessions have helped to feed his viral hit The Supervillain’s Gay Assistant and Grace and Daniel unpick its threads with scurrilous delight.