In Perfidious Albion, we can be a bit schizophrenic about measurement. I was brought up in the era of decimilisation, and as a result, can tell you all about centimetres and grammes, but confess utter ignorance when it comes to hectares, litres, metres or kilometres.
I was thinking about this sitting in the traffic jam in Cheyne Walk on the way to work this morning. We're supposedly a metric country, but even today, the road-signs and speed are still measured in miles, bitter is still measured in pints, and land is still quite decidedly measured in acres. Temperature is odd, too. Every summer in London, hot weather is considered worthy of a news headline, and there's a picture of some topless bathing belle on the front page of "The Sun" or "The Mirror", stripping off in the Trafalgar Square fountains, with the headline "98 F!!!!" And yet, freezing temperatures are measured in centigrade, not fareinheit. It's always minus two, or minus one on the radio, not 30∘Farenheit.
When I started "The Greasy Spoon", I made the conscious decision not to write down the exact measurements for each recipe. Far too Delia Smith for my liking. Destroys the spirit of experimentation. I know that I have broken this rule now and again, but generally the philosophy has stuck. Obviously for certain things, like say, pastries and cakes, measurement is important, otherwise your cooking could go seriously wrong. But, otherwise, I resent being told that you need to use two tablespoons of olive oil for frying, or 3gm of butter. This smacks of control freakery. And it's often a matter of taste, isn't it?
Has anyone out there read Julian Barnes's "A Pedant in the Kitchen" ? I've been meaning to read it for months now. It's on my ever growing amazon wish-list, but I gather that it is now out-of-print. I'm looking forward to exploring the opposite point of view.
