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Old 13-10-2013, 16:58
Takae
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A friend was quite surprised when she found out that my paternal grandfather taught me to cook when I was a kid. In turn, I was surprised to learn that she learnt to cook at her school and she was self-taught since then. I find this interesting because until I left home, my family were the only ones who taught me to cook while I was growing up.

The first recipe my granddad taught me was Malaysian beef curry (I unfortunately forgot how to make it since then). My all-time favourite was taught by my great-grandmother: Omurice (an omelette with fried rice and chopped spring onions inside) and home-made tomato ketchup. So easy and cheap that it was pretty much the only thing I survived on during my uni years.

The first recipe my friend learnt at school was cheese scones. Her all-time favourite recipe is pot-roasted partridges with red cabbage, which she learnt from a Delia Smith programme.

She makes fantastic dishes, so I had assumed she was from a family of cooks, but I was wrong. She explained that while she was growing up during the 1970s and 1980s, she and her parents survived on frozen food, instant food (Smash, etc.) and tinned food and once in a while, fish and chips from a local.

How about you? Who taught you to cook or bake, and what was the first recipe you learnt?
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Old 13-10-2013, 17:31
ChoccyCarole
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I only learned some cooking skills in housecraft at school

During the period of being taught at school
we learned these things ---in this order

coleslaw first
then:- Jacket potato topped with cheese
A Cod steak cooked in an oven
Rhubarb crumble and custard
Sausage rolls in freshly made puff pastry
Swiss roll filled with some jam
plain and cheese scones
Beef Stew with potatoes carrrots celery and onions
and maybe a cottage pie
and scrambled eggs

I think that was everything I was taught to make at my secondary school~before I left that school at 14 and a bit

Since leaving school I taught myself~the things I make

I did use a recipe for the first meal I made for a group of 5 people which was in the Women's weekly recipe book
for a Xmas meal when I was 19
Duck with cherries

~I also cooked many cakes in Sydney from the
same fabulous Women's weekly Recipe book
A heavenly- banana cake- which I loved and made very often
plus coffee and walnut cakes
and some chocolate cakes

apart from the above recipes
I do not cook ~using any recipes
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Old 13-10-2013, 18:28
lucyloves
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My mum taught me some stuff before I left home and then my boyfriend who I moved in with taught me some more but mostly I taught myself!

My mums an amazing cook so I'm always asking for her help with recipes!
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Old 13-10-2013, 18:33
stud u like
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I taught myself.
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Old 13-10-2013, 18:37
degsyhufc
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I did Home Ec at school but all I can remember are biscuits and sponge cakes. I can't remember any meals that were taught.

Since then i've taught myself - Even when I was working in a vocational kitchen I knew all the recipies they were teaching/cooking so didn't learn anything on the cooking side.
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Old 13-10-2013, 18:39
Shappy
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My mum.
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Old 13-10-2013, 19:11
Hotgossip
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I taught myself. Case of having to as we were on a tight budget when we got married. Didn't do cookery at school and although mum offered, I wasn't interested then.

I love cooking now and most people say they love my home cooking. I used to buy women's mags for healthy and economical recipes and learnt that way.
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Old 14-10-2013, 10:05
Jambo_c
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I was rubbish at cooking at school and when I went to uni and for a few years after I used to live on ready meals. It got to a point where I was fed up of eating horrible ready meals and one day I just thought "Cooking can't be that hard", I went out and bought a recipe book and just taught myself. I think the first thing I cooked was some kind of curry. I won't touch ready meals now and cook all our meals from scratch. I really enjoy food so looking back I don't understand why I put up with ready meals for so long!
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Old 14-10-2013, 10:12
Hotgossip
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I was rubbish at cooking at school and when I went to uni and for a few years after I used to live on ready meals. It got to a point where I was fed up of eating horrible ready meals and one day I just thought "Cooking can't be that hard", I went out and bought a recipe book and just taught myself. I think the first thing I cooked was some kind of curry. I won't touch ready meals now and cook all our meals from scratch. I really enjoy food so looking back I don't understand why I put up with ready meals for so long!
I see people buying ready meals and I shudder. Most of them look repulsive. I have a very elderly Mum and even she still cooks proper food for herself. I buy her a couple of frozen meals maybe every 3 months to just pop in her freezer for an absolute emergency. I would hate to think she lived on them all the time though.
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Old 14-10-2013, 10:13
mimicole
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I watched my Mum mostly.
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Old 14-10-2013, 10:36
Victoria Sponge
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My mum and dad were both amazing cooks but I didn't really bother to learn anything from them. I am kinda self taught, a lot of what I make are things I have invented. What I did learn from them was to always keep salt, pepper, garlic, lemon, herbs and spices to hand. It amazes me when I go to people's houses and they don't have these things!

My mum did show me how to do the Sri Lankan beef curry a couple of years ago and I wrote notes but quickly lost the notes
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Old 14-10-2013, 10:43
Kiko H Fan
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Myself.
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Old 14-10-2013, 13:43
Smithy1204
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My mum was a good cook, and she taught me the basics - making sauces, bolognese, cakes, she wrote down all our favourite recipes for us too so we could learn those.

We didn't learn much at school, we did do Food Tech but there were no actual 'meals' learned, just biscuits, cakes, and a pizza.

And then I've taught myself the rest from recipe books and then playing around with what I like.
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Old 14-10-2013, 13:56
molliepops
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Initially my grandmother, then I did home ec at school but was more impressed with my Nan's cooking and teaching than anything the school did.

My first recipe would have been rissoles I think, then fish cakes. Moving on to shepherds pie and fish pie and Sunday roast.

Then she taught me cakes and bread and biscuits.
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Old 14-10-2013, 14:00
Utopian Girl
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I hate to say it but my late Mum was a rubbish cook - but she was the 10th of eleven children so I presume she never got a chance in those days.
I learned the basics at school/ college and but realised I wanted to be a veggie at about 10 yrs old. ( I'm 55 now).

My children have been brought up learning to cook both at home & at school. Being married to my Turkish hubby for nearly 33 yrs we've always had a varied diet with his love of meat/fish & my veggie diet.

My daughter's veggie and the two boys are meat lovers - despite having a variety of local fresh fish available it's really only my husband who loves fish as much as meat.
The three 'children 32,27,26! have all left home and love cooking too.
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Old 14-10-2013, 14:12
elliecat
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I used to watch my Mum cook from a really young age, I also did cookery at junior school and then H.E. at senior school. But I taught myself to cook properly mixing what I saw my Mum do, what I learnt at school and from books. I used to bake cakes on my own on a Saturday afternoon when I was 7 and my Mum hated it because I never tidied up after myself and would leave the Kitchen a mess.

I refuse to eat ready meals and haven't had one in years, if I can't be bothered to make an ommlette or throw some mushrooms in a pan and have mushrooms on toast then I can't be that hungry
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Old 14-10-2013, 14:13
Menk
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I used to watch my mum but wasn't allowed to do anything more exciting than fetch this and fetch that. But the weekly menu was set and repeated so there was little in the way of variety and a lot of frozen stuff.

Apart from what I picked up, I'm self-taught, but with a hefty nod to the TV chefs - they really do give you the confidence to try something new and make things simple. It's surprising what you pick up.
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Old 14-10-2013, 16:08
Toby LaRhone
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James Martin on Saturday Kitchen.
My wife did all the cooking and then one Saturday I decided I'd make food that evening and copied a duck breast recipe I'd watched that morning.
I cremated it.
But... since then I've stayed totally involved and OH is more than happy for me to decide what's on the menu and for me to cook it.
I have to stop buying cookery books though - the kitchen book shelf is sagging.

Edit: I just remembered that in our college flat 40+ years ago I was the only one who made myself a cooked meal.
Once I was married OH did it all.
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Old 14-10-2013, 19:55
LaceyLouelle3
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Myself, my Mum doesn't cook...
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Old 14-10-2013, 19:58
LaVieEnRose
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Basics from my mother (baking, sauces, stews, roast dinners etc). She was a very good cook as far as traditional British cuisine went, but she was never very adventurous and never cooked with things like pasta or rice.

When I left home my scope was limited not by what I knew how to cook, nor even budget, but by limited facilities! Things that could be cooked on one gas ring predominated. I was one of the many students who owed much to "Cooking in a Bedsit" (was that Katharine Whitehorn?) and Jocasta Innes' "The Pauper's Cookbook". In fact yesterday and today we have eaten the Mediterranean beef casserole from the latter!

So it's been a combination of Mum, good recipe books and the likes of Delia on TV. Plus all those tips you pick up along the way from other people, random magazines and websites.
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Old 14-10-2013, 20:47
orangebird
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I started waitressing in a lovely a la carte restaurant when I was 14 and learned by watching & listening. Ended up being the second cook (as opposed to a trained chef). I'm lucky to have worked with some really good chefs.
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Old 14-10-2013, 21:00
degsyhufc
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My mum was a good cook, and she taught me the basics - making sauces, bolognese, cakes, she wrote down all our favourite recipes for us too so we could learn those.

We didn't learn much at school, we did do Food Tech but there were no actual 'meals' learned, just biscuits, cakes, and a pizza.

And then I've taught myself the rest from recipe books and then playing around with what I like.
The pizza i've just remembered learning at school was a stottie covered in tomato puree and cheddar
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Old 17-10-2013, 20:08
noise747
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My mum for some stuff, she taught me how to make cakes and pastry, before i went to college to train to be a pastry chef. But the husband of my mums friend also taught me some stuff as well. i used to go there when I was younger and we used to make ginger nuts and stuff like that, he was more of a biscuit person.
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Old 20-10-2013, 01:19
CrazyLoop
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Mostly my Mum & my sis. My Dad taught me a thing or too. Obviously did cooking at secondary school too until GCSE's...

I don't have a huge variety things I can actually cook but I recently cooked myself tortellini pasta for the 3rd time & got it all perfect xD Was so chuffed with myself it's ridiculous.
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Old 20-10-2013, 12:03
Sallysally
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My parents lived abroad for most of my younger life and so they always had cooks. I then attended boarding school and so when I went to University I had not the slightest idea of even how to boil an egg.
But, in my second year, I moved in with some friends - and they were the ones who taught me the basics. They all had had mothers who were good cooks, luckily for me!

When I got married I quickly learnt that spag bol and cottage pie were not going to go far so I bought a Marguerite Patten book (no Delia in my day) and set to work doing two new recipes per week - and very quickly I became good at cooking.

Now, I never buy cookery books. I rely on Nigel Slater's old ones and the internet for ingredient led recipes because I eat almost entirely seasonally now.
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