Extract from ‘Kitchenella’ by Rose Prince

My earliest memories are full of the voices of women, telling me things. I did not want to hear all of it, but thanks to women, I can cook. Their kitchen secrets, handed down, were at the heart of good suppers then – and they still are. I continue to collect more and more of them. I can’t resist the opportunity to ask, “How did you do that?” when I taste something good.

At its best, feminine cookery is heroic, creative, practical and above all, nurturing. Nurture is a deal, an agreement that can be a real struggle to keep up – especially when there is a ready-meal industry there to take care of it for you, for better or for worse. Stepping into the kitchen raises a number of dilemmas. Often the need to cook is just a matter of answering hunger with whatever can be bought with ease on the way home from work, and prepared quickly. For many, it is about pleasing children while nourishing them, too. Others want to cook something special for guests without drama, and some need to learn to cook to save money – younger aspirational cooks, for example.

It isn’t that I wish to promote some sort of Fifties kitchen deity, a martyred oven slave whose reputation lives and dies by the lightness of her sponges. The truth is, women are opting out of cooking completely. Some reason that the fight for equality in jobs and pay had to have its victims, and home cooking has been one of them. But cooking has to go on if we are to deal with both the rising rate of obesity and the wider social problems related to poor eating habits.

Now that the mothers’ voices are silent, creating a generation of kitchen “orphans”, it is left to the potent influence of television to provide that all-important food education. And, with television cookery dominated by male chefs, feminine cookery is in danger of disappearing from the mainstream. The few women given prime time by the broadcasters must play the role of pouting goddess or headmistress demanding obedience rather than practical mother cook. Stereotypical male traits characterise the chef shows; we watch generals in command, not home cooks in action.

If the chaps are not out there hunter gathering or demonstrating extraordinary technical prowess with a pig’s extremities, they are going head to head in gladiatorial combat in contests where the weakest have no chance of survival. It is cooking for show, not showing how to cook, and sometimes it is just bullying, dressed up as fun.

Knowing what it is like to manage a full-time job, children and a small budget is something a celebrity can only pretend to understand. But cookery shows are about entertainment: nurturing cookery is a reality show too far perhaps. Too simple, too modest, far too unexpecting of applause – yet to me, feminine food is the finest you can eat, whether at home or out in those restaurants where it finds a marginal place.

The profile of cookery and food has soared thanks to television, but amazingly this still fails to get people cooking. We are better at eating out, standards in catering have risen. A 2008 government report showed that since 1998 – that is, during the decade when television became obsessed with food – sales of convenience food had risen by 300 per cent. The number of people who aspire to cook has doubled, however; but mostly – and not surprisingly – this is only the occasional showpiece meal. Traditional home cookery remains in decline.

In the end, no matter how many schools adopt cookery as a subject as a result of high-profile television campaigns, it is home influence that changes everything. It may be as easy for a woman to rise to the top in her profession as a man, but supper is usually her responsibility, whether she decides to cook it herself or not. Feminism has not changed everything: 70 per cent of women in work have dependent children and more children have women as their main carers than they do men.

Kitchenella was inspired by a meeting with a Greek chef, who passed on to me his mother’s advice about cooking perfect aubergines. I had just eaten this extraordinary dish of non-greasy aubergines cooked with tomato, goat butter and mint at his taverna in Crete, and I asked how it was done. The technique had survived generations, yet no one had written it down. It occurred to me that there must be thousands of secrets, floating in the ether, which are now not finding an ear – if her son had not wanted to become a cook, would this secret have been lost forever?

I wanted to turn that frequency back on and record all the most useful things I have learnt, and put the feminine voice into one book – a sort of mother for kitchen orphans, if you like. Recipes and ideas from people I love and trust: my mother, sisters, aunts, cousins and friends; recipes from historical figures I’ve studied that fit perfectly into the mother cook type, and also recipes from honorary mothers – the men whose cooking often imitates the most delicious feminine food – people such as Nigel Slater, Mark Hix and Jeremy Lee. Then there are those people like my Greek mentor above. You may meet them fleetingly, but you’ll never regret asking the essential question: “How?”

Nurturing cookery is the opposite of “cheffy” food. It is imaginative, but it is simple. The need to cook comes around so often that ways are found to make it quick and easy. It combines generosity with an eye on the budget, and there is a fail-safe element, too, essential in many homes where uneaten food is financially disastrous. It has to fit in with life, and must include ingredients that are not too difficult to buy.

Ultimately there is the battle of how not to become bored of cooking: not to see it as a chore. I myself find it hard to maintain enthusiasm, and it is my job to cook. The cure is creativity. Hilda Leyel, an early 20th-century food writer and herbalist, called cooking “the gentle art”. With a good basic recipe, like a tomato sauce cooked until it is sweet, you can make at least a dozen other things. Once you know the way to make a simple beef stew, there are eight different ways to make it more interesting. You only need to have one dough recipe to be a baker, or learn one simple terrine method to be your own charcuterie. When you find something that works, repeat it. This is what your children will remember you for.

Kitchenella is laid out as a series of dilemmas. What to make that is cheap and filling? Which dish will please the children? What can I cook when I come in late that is quick yet good for you? How can I remove the fear I have of baking, choose a menu for a special dinner, or use up leftovers in an imaginative way? And how can I plan in advance, so it is hard to be caught without something good to eat?

This book is a conversation between people who share an interest in finding answers. Good food should naturally lead to a moment of chat – a chance to discover a solution to a problem. The opposite is silence. Listen carefully for Kitchenella’s voice, though. It is not the loudest. She won’t show off, but nor will she bully you. She just wants to leave her mark: an indelible, delicious influence.