Baig cooking - how to cook for five days in two hours?
A well deserved cerveza by Ferran Adria (el Bulli) after testing Baig Cooking. Enjoying great company.
‘As a professional chef, you probably know what Baig Cooking is? I saw it on LaVanguardia.com’, Jasper -my partner- asks. We are in our ‘casita’ in Begur, a hamlet in Catalunya and another lock-down is apparent.
Jasper’s body is his machine and food is there to fuel it. Left on his own he happily runs a repertoire of the same five recipes week-in-week-out. These meals are picked for nutritional value, speed of preparation and his desire to use and clean only one pan, knife, fork and bowl. My relationship with cooking -and some other crucial things in life- could not be more opposite. When working in a professional kitchen I program for efficiency. After all, customers do expect a consistent meal when they arrive. At home I take every opportunity to create and try new stuff and at least reach for the pans once a day.
‘Baig cooking’ turns out to be a section in the Monday issue of La Vanguardia – a major Spanish newspaper. José Baig -the author- claims that in one afternoon you can buy and prepare all meals for a week. To me potentially a great way to feed a family during confinement. In essence bakeries and small restaurants are the living rooms and kitchens of Catalunya. Here you gather with friends and family for lunch and breakfast, not in your cramped home. How do you eat and feed when they are closed?
Intrigued I ask Jasper to test this concept together. A bit of convincing is needed to change his routine. ‘I need you, you are not an expert cook, so will know whether the instructions are clear enough to do this in a couple of hours’, does the trick. Men.
José Baig is a journalist and graduated in culinary arts at ESHOB in Barcelona, later in his career. He created ‘la cocinata de papa’, a blog and book for healthy and fun cooking with the whole family. La Vanguardia discovered rising interest in batch-cooking in Spain and asked José to develop a weekly menu.
‘Batch cooking is nothing new. My name Baig pronounced in Catalan sounds like batch, so that is a wordplay they came up with’, says José. ‘I want to promote home cooking and the ‘flexitarian lifestyle’ Baig uses his tried and tested recipes with a reduced number of steps. The Meatless Monday is easy to remember and on the other days the ratio in the recipes is one meat or fish to five vegetables. This also means that kids can help. ‘They can safely join in, peel the garlic and scrape the carrots. When kids prepare a dish themselves, they will enjoy eating it’.
When probed whether this is gaining popularity Baig says: ‘These are not the usual Instagram and commenting crowd. I get a couple of questions each week and that’s it. Yet the minute the Monday menu goes online, La Vanguardia see 300-400 new users logging in’. Hardworking people living in small towns. They buy at their local supermarket and enjoy this quick and cheap way of making healthy family meals for the workweek. efficient. La Comedista – a competing newspaper- is now also publishing a menu every month.
Our test weeks’ Baig cooking starts with praising the joys of late autumn, the richness of leek, pumpkin and hearty meals and the concept of meatless Monday. We get an overview of the week-menu and a shopping list, well-organised per category in the supermarket. Loads of fresh seasonal vegetables, fruits and legumes, modest amounts of fish and chicken. Rice, spaghetti, pitta and bread. Wholewheat as instructed. Of course, some condiments. We can get it all in our supermarket and thanks to the list we swoosh through in thirty minutes. Five days of food for two is at 55 euro’s a steal. For once Jasper loved the shopping.
Monday lunch: Leek and potato soup with wild rice and redbean salad. foto: sheila struyck
No unpacking and storing the three full bags, Jasper jumps into the first of the fourteen steps instruction. The logic is the same as professional chefs use. Recipes are divided in steps and certain preparations are used for more than one dish. The oven is your best friend. No need to check or stir intensively, so in the meantime you can do other things.
One bed of ‘sofrito’ gets split between Mondays’ wholegrain rice and red bean salad and Fridays’ oven grilled rape with vegetables and sweet potatoes. (adding raw sofrito to rice and water before cooking is a great trick which I pick up from Baig). Whilst we cut and grate the sofrito, the oven bakes a savoury zucchini ‘cake’.
Jasper enjoys the pace and even notes the oven times on the instructions, to keep track. The smell is delicious and our windows steam up. My task is to keep the sink empty -clean as you go- and answer his technical questions. Often with Google translate. Our Spanish is so-so, and José Baig likes to spike his text with poetic meanderings.
Two hours in. Step 9 finished, 5 more to go. We have only one oven-rack. It is impossible to put both fish dishes -in quite large casseroles- in the oven ánd roast the aubergine, red bell pepper and sweet potatoes at the same time as instructed. Our container collection to store in between steps falls short. ‘Raw’ dishes, oven-hot stews and bowls with chopped vegetables are spilling over the counter. All hobs are working. ‘I quit; this is no fun at all.’ Jasper stomps out.
Crowded countertops block mental planning space, so I start boxing, cleaning and storing, whilst cooking the spaghetti for Tuesdays’ pasta salad. The mini pizza’s with grilled vegetables, tuna and cheese for Friday are assembled and popped into the freezer.
Three hours after heating the oven, all steps in the instructions are done. Not all meals are assembled or cooked, so it still feels a bit out of control. ‘I wish he would tell me the result I should expect at each step and explain how to store. I lost it because I lost the overview’ Jasper concludes from the sofa where he is resting.
Tuesday and Thursday supper mixed together: roasted pepper and aubergine, pita and lentil / poached egg salad. foto: Sheila Struyck
For me the real experiment starts now. Five days no cooking. With the daily explanations in hand, we re-heat, mix pre-cooked ingredients with some fresh finishing touches and enjoy. Succulent chicken legs stew with potatoes and carrots, lentil salads and hummus with pita. I cannot help myself and add a poached egg and balsamic to the lentil salad. The pre-cooked pasta is transformed to Asian-style salad with sesame oil and some of the ginger. We confused calabaza (squash) with calebasita (zucchini) for the savoury bread, but the resulting slightly sweet and sticky ‘cake’ gets devoured in two days. These great tasting honest meals are high on vitamins, fibres and legumes and low on animal protein.
‘Shall we do a Baig again?’, I ask Jasper who is looking into our empty fridge on Saturday morning. Our kitchen has never been cleaner during the week. We used dramatically less plastic and packaging compared to normal, and we had no food waste. Things he loves. ‘I am not sure; I like my normal routines. It was a lot of work on one day’ concludes Jasper I feel a twinge of disappointment. Five days without shop runs, big pot washes and no thinking up of dishes freed a lot of headspace for other creativity. But I rest my case.
When discussing Jasper’s tantrum, José laughs: ‘I realised that people need more instructions when they are first time users, so we now include how to cool and store. Great idea to also indicate that dishes for end of the week can be frozen to maintain freshness. The next step could be combining with a storage system that can go from oven to fridge and then reheated. That would make life even easier.
Since it was Monday night, I asked José what they were having for dinner. ‘Not sure yet, we recently moved to a new neighbourhood and I don’t have our shopping routes under control just yet’.
‘Do you have the new menu for Baig?’ Jasper asks out of the blue a week later. ‘I think we go towards atighterlockdown and this can minimize our trips to the supermarket. I am sure we can do it, since we are now used to this different way of thinking’. What an interesting turn of events. I make a mental note to self: Force Jasperto read all the steps, collect the pots, pans and ovenproof containers before we start. No need for another meltdown
Great other batch cooking or meal prepping sites
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/meal-prep-recipes
https://www.chowhound.com/food-news/230253/best-meal-prep-cookbooks/