And before you ask, no, that’s not what it means: cooking commando does not
necessarily entail throwing together a bolognese sauce while bereft of your
undercrackers, although there’s no reason why you shouldn’t do so if you
wish. Cooking commando is about deciding on your strategy, assembling your
arsenal, going in hard and fast, getting the job done, and getting out
again.
There is a popular misconception that a man who cooks (with the exception of
the summer barbie burger incinerator) is a man who is in touch with his
feminine side. The commando cook, however, does not possess a feminine side
with which to be in touch: he is not what the Governor of California would
call a girlie man.
At the beginning of the climactic sequence of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Commando
(and incidentally, forget the interminable Terminator franchise: Commando
is the ultimate Arnie vehicle), our hero emerges from the sea on to a
small island where his abducted daughter is being held by the baddies. To
every available inch of his body, and to the sound of clicks, clacks and
clunks as metal is locked on to metal, he attaches the following: a combat
knife, a Desert Eagle handgun, an M78 light machinegun, an Uzi
sub-machinegun, an M60 machinegun, an M16 assault rifle, a Heckler &
Koch G3 assault rifle, a Claymore antipersonnel mine, M67 fragmentation
grenades, a Remington 12-gauge shotgun and an M202 multi-shot rocket
launcher. He uses up the lot in disposing of the army of baddies, and in the
end he dispatches the lead villain by impaling him on a steam pipe. This is
precisely the attitude you must take into the kitchen: equip yourself
properly, use every tool at your disposal – and, in the end, improvise.
Preparation
You don’t want to spend any longer in the kitchen than it takes to read an
Andy McNab book, which isn’t long, so efficient preparation is essential.
First, you must look the part: you wouldn’t see Arnie going into battle
wearing a frilly pinny and a pair of pink Marigolds, so nor should you. The
black grease stripes on each cheekbone are possibly excessive, (they might
scare the wife when she comes into your kitchen to do the washing up), but
you should certainly invest in the camouflage apron that the commando cook
is wearing in our illustration (£14.95 from Sagaform, 020-8646 9655, formahouse.co.uk).
There’s also a matching oven glove, but since the commando cook’s hands are
like calloused asbestos, you won’t be needing that.
As to any actual food preparation, activities such as peeling, chopping,
slicing and dicing should be avoided wherever possible. You are a man of
action, not drudgery: that’s what partners and competent children are for.
Occasionally, however, a guest will wander into the kitchen to inquire as to
how matters are progressing, and at times like these the commando cook would
feel naked without a knife in his hand. Look no farther than Dijon, where
Nogent have been making chefs’ knives since 1923. Their latest wheeze, the
Trois Etoiles range, is rather clever. Each blade is serrated, which is
usually a bad idea since they tear food rather than cut it: but these
serrations are tiny, four per millimetre and almost invisible to the naked
eye, so they cut perfectly and never need sharpening. Moreover, just holding
one makes you feel like you’re in the SAS.
Strategy
The essence of commando cooking is action and speed: no wasted time, in, get
the job done, out. So no simmering sauces, no stews and casseroles, no slow
roasting, no sticking skewers in the thick part of the leg to see if the
juices run clear. The commando cook is the master of grilling, stir-frying,
searing and flash-frying. He likes his meat rare, and interruptions even
rarer – he works alone. So make sure that you have the kitchen to yourself.
This has the added advantage that, when you perpetrate the inevitable cockup,
there’s no one there to see it. In action movies they never show you the bit
where the hero forgets the safety catch and shoots off his right toe, or
leaves it a second too late to throw back the villain’s grenade and loses a
limb. Kitchen disasters should be similarly concealed. After 30 years I
still have a scar on the palm of my left hand from trying to separate two
frozen hamburgers at 3am while not entirely sober. It was the sharpest knife
in the drawer. I wasn’t. But I cleaned up the blood and no one ever knew.
Equally, in an empty kitchen you can incinerate as many sirloins as you
wish, and slice off finger-ends to your heart’s content: just clean up the
mess and start again. Any extra time needed will have been built in to your
plan.
Curiously, the professional master of commando cooking strategy isn’t who you
might think. The obvious choice would be Gordon Ramsay, all macho posturing,
effing and blinding, chop that onion if you think you’re hard enough. In
fact, the commando cook’s role model is Delia Smith: she is exact, she is
precise, her timing is spot-on and she prepares everything down to the
finest detail before picking up so much as a balloon whisk. That unflappable
precision is what you’re aiming for.
Weapons
Just as, in the military world, there are two schools of thought as to which
brand of sub-machinegun is the more efficacious (you will recall that even
Arnie couldn’t decide between the Uzi and the Heckler & Koch,
eventually plumping for both), so the commando cook is faced with a similar
dilemma in the matter of pots and pans: is it to be copper, or is it to be
seasoned cast iron? And, as with Arnie, there is no reason why the answer
shouldn’t be both.
How to acquire your pots and pans is another matter. Arnie employed the simple
expedient of driving a pickup truck through the front of a gun shop and
helping himself to the weapons he required. While this may be considered a
perfectly acceptable method of shopping in some of the less salubrious areas
of Liverpool, where people have been known to fail their driving test
because they were unable to reverse into Steven Gerrard’s front window, you
would be ill-advised to try it in the basement of John Lewis in Oxford
Street.
For copper cookware, however, the commando cook has his own variation of smash
and grab. Pay a visit to the poshest cookstore you can find – somewhere like
Divertimenti in Knightsbridge – check out the dimensions of the copper pots
and pans you fancy, and leave just as your eyes begin to water at the
prices. At home, fire up your computer and go to www.french-old-and-new.com,
a family business in Normandy run by the delightful Ella, who will sell you
top-quality Baumalu French copper cookware at prices that are frankly
risible: even a commando cook has to laugh.
Many chefs swear by copper for its even heat distribution, but just as many
would never be parted from their cast iron: sometimes with unfortunate
consequences, should they happen to grab the handle when it’s hot. As with
weaponry, much of the best cast iron comes from the United States. I have a
Wagner 10in skillet that has been in almost constant use for nearly 15
years, as a consequence of which it has developed a seasoned, rock-hard,
slippery patina that no man-made non-stick surface can match: I can cook an
egg in it without fat, and it will slip easily on to a plate. But seasoning
cast iron can be tricky: it takes a while, and if you get it wrong you have
to start all over again. Another American company, Lodge, claim to have
solved this problem by preseasoning their Lodge Logic cast-iron cookware,
which is now available in the UK.
One word of warning for commando cooks considering investing in either copper
or cast-iron pots and pans: your wallet will be lighter, but the cookware
won’t. You may have to pay a few visits to the gym and lift some weights to
prepare your biceps for the strain of hefting these beauties, and that’s
when they’re empty: fill them with food and even Arnie would be struggling.
In addition, alternate your left and right hands when you lift them,
otherwise you will develop Incredible Hulk upper-arm muscles on one side
while the other fades away to a limp and useless appendage (bar staff,
incidentally, have the same problem with beer pumps: trust me, check it out
the next time you’re in a pub that sells a lot of real ale).
Job done, get out
If your planning, preparation, strategy and choice of weapons have been
correct, the commando cook should be out of the kitchen with food on the
table no more than 40 minutes after donning your camouflage apron. Any
longer than that, and either you’re cooking the wrong food, or you have
permitted yourself to be interrupted by people offering to help (throw them
out), people asking if that’s coriander or flat-leaf parsley (throw them
out) or people asking if you would like a glass of wine (take the wine, then
throw them out).
All that remains now is for you to relax, enjoy your dinner, accept the
compliments of those for whom you have cooked, and snog the heroine. In
action movies it is quite normal to do this while reeking of sweat, gun oil,
cordite and blood, preferably other people’s, but the commando cook does not
wish to smell of onions and garlic: ginger and lemon-grass maybe, but not
onions and garlic.
The answer is a remarkable little gadget called the Rubaway (£7, from www.roullierwhite.co.uk):
it’s a solid lump of metal on which you rub your hands and fingers, and food
odours just disappear. I have no idea how it works, it just does. And unlike
soap, it’s not soft and feminine. Like you, it’s hard. Well hard.
Essential kitchen kit for the commando cook
LODGE LOGIC SKILLET
Cast iron is the preferred choice of many cooks because of the natural,
seasoned nonstick finish it develops over years of use. It’s also extremely
heavy, so doubles as a meat-basher. Prices start at £15 for the 6in skillet:
info at roullierwhite.co.uk.
Commando rating: 4/5
MEAT BRANDING IRON
A seriously macho tool – heat it up over a naked flame, then sear your cooked
steaks with R for rare, M for medium or W for well done. Not that the
commando cook would ever cook a well-done steak: he likes his blood. Costs
£10, website as above.
Commando rating: 5/5
NOGENT TROIS ETOILES CHEF’S KNIFE
Serrated knives are generally a nono in the kitchen because they tear food
rather than cut it, but the serrations on these blades are so tiny as to be
virtually invisible. Prices start at £6.50, 020-8693 5150 for stockists.
Commando rating: 5/5
HAMBURGER PRESS
Commando cooks don’t buy hamburgers, they make their own – tight, dense and
perfectly shaped, so they don’t fall apart on the grill. The hamburger press
costs £14.95, roullierwhite.co.uk.
Commando rating: 4/5
THE ROCKY KNIFE
This might be considered a bit girlie in some quarters, but there’s no denying
its efficiency in chopping large quantities of soft herbs. Costs £36 from www.formahouse.co.uk.
Commando rating: 2/5
