I don’t give a fuck about cooking. So I was extremely excited when Chad suggested we start Recipe Club off with something from Yumi Stynes’ “The Zero Fucks Cookbook”. Here is a food philosophy I can get behind.

I should explain, I don’t give a fuck about cooking. In the sense that I wish I never had to do it. It’s a necessary evil. My mother doesn’t cook (ever). My dad’s repertoire is steak and stir fry, and my sister once did a french cooking class but never made anything from it.

I like eating. A lot. But when it comes to cooking I find it an extremely stressful experience. I once challenged myself to make the Tasty giant cinnamon scroll cake. I did it (picture below). But in the process I drank an entire bottle of wine as a stress-coping mechanism.

So I guess you could say that I give no fucks about cooking, but that causes me to give all the fucks. Like, so many fucks. I get massive anxiety just at the thought of  cooking for other people. I strongly believe that if a recipe isn’t followed to the letter then it will all either spontaneously combust, or more likely, cause my guests to suffer from horrible food poisoning.

So here I am on a public-holiday Monday night doing the prep for the BBQ Shapes Chicken. I am told it is 25 mins of prep. The actual preparation is pretty easy: wack all the ingredients in a bowl, mix it all up, and then coat the chicken in and leave it to marinade overnight before cooking. But if we’re evaluating this recipe on the name of the book, I have several problems with it:

• If you genuinely give no fucks when it comes to cooking, you are very unlikely to have many of the ingredients in this recipe to hand. Castor sugar (only if you bake, and what, now that I have a packet I’m going to be trapped in a weird cooking/baking guilt spiral?), tomato paste (is that the same as tomato sauce? No… apparently), and a spice called sumac.
• Finely grate two garlic cloves. Why? What’s wrong with using a garlic press? This is certainly NOT a no-fucks-given method. I also can barely type today because I shredded my right index finger on the grater.
• I have to assume that people buying The Zero Fucks Cookbook are predominantly like me, and have very little experience / interest in cooking. And so (as above) we follow the recipe to the letter. And THERE IS NOTHING MORE ANNOYING IN A COOK BOOK THAN AN AUTHOR TELLING PEOPLE TO MIX INGREDIENTS TOGETHER BUT PUTTING WET AND DRY INGREDIENTS IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER. Yes, all caps intended. Unless you own several measuring spoons of the same size, it is super annoying to measure out a wet ingredient like balsamic vinegar, only to be told to scoop out some sumac. You have to wash your measuring spoon for fear of either contaminating your entire sachet of sumac or, if you’re just pouring it into the spoon, having half of the amount stick to it. At this point I was giving so many fucks there may have been a bottle of rosè opened.

And so, dear reader, this is where we end for now. with a bloody finger and some chicken thighs marinading until tonight. I will report back on the actual taste and an overall score soon.

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And so now the cooking has been done (in fact leftovers have been eaten), so I can do a proper review.

The cook itself was easy. I put all the chicken thighs into my Airfryer for 33 mins, turning over after about eight minutes to get them crispy on both sides. I served with some roast zucchini and capsicum, and a rocket salad with tomato, danish feta and mushroom.

The chicken itself was flavourful. I’m just not sure its flavour was BBQ chicken shapes. It tasted sweet (thank you castor sugar) and marinading it overnight certainly helped. But it tasted more of an Asian/soy type dish than an Aussie savoury cheese-cracker with seasoning.

Like a gay man ready to be toppped, it presented well.

Clean-up was pretty simple thanks to the prep time the night before.

The consensus from the crowd was that it was tasty, but somewhat unremarkable. Or rather, everyone remarked because I had over-hyped the evening because it was the inaugural Recipe Club.

All in all, a good recipe, and I am certainly glad I made it. I’m also glad i’ve Been introduced to sumac. I will definitely use it again for chicken seasoning. But would I go out and buy castor sugar and finely grate two garlic cloves for this again? Probably not, because I don’t really give a fuck.

Who put forward the recipe: Chad

Where’s it from: The Zero Fucks Cookbook, Best Food Least Effort

Author: Yumi Stynes

The story begins way before me. There’s even a Sundance-winning film about some of it.

For Recipe club, what you need to know is that I moved to London in 2008 on a whim, and an old school friend Rob introduced me to some the best people I’ve ever met: Alan (Rob’s now-husband), Chad, and Khadeeja (and her now-husband Dan). About a year later one of my oldest and closest friends Adam joined the pack after moving to London via a stint in deepest-darkest Bavaria. Together we made a judgmental group of pre-millennials in their 20s and 30s eating and drinking their way through London.

Fast forward, and Khadeeja, Adam and I live back in Sydney, Australia. And Rob, Alan and Chad are still living their European fantasy (European at least until the UK Brexits its way off the main stage and back to the workroom to become a middle-power).

Recipe Club is pretty simple. Each month someone in the group picks a recipe that we all have to cook and review. There’s no standardised scoring method (yet), it’s entirely personal opinion.

Are we cooks? Nah, not really. I think we all like to eat more than cook. But, we eat a lot, and we know what we like. So our opinions are somewhat valid. But really, this is our opportunity to say what we like. Because it’s our blog, not yours.

(PS, be prepared for some drag racer references, because… you know.. the zeitgeist)

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton