Dom Pannell's Blog

Cashflow for Beginners part one, or how to cook

Cashflow is king. Cashflow is king. Cashflow is king.

Thousands of business advisors, lecturers, mentors and coaches have repeated the mantra again and again. As a budding entrepreneur, I can testify that it is worth repeating it every day. If you survive starting a company and inevitably get squeezed by clients and suppliers, you’ll know what I mean – many of the former, particularly large ones seem to have an aversion to signing cheques and popping them in the post, very few of the latter are particularly understanding when you explain to them for the umpteenth time that you are STILL waiting to receive money that is owed to you.

Still, cashflow bottlenecks do bring benefits. When I throw dinner parties, I am often asked how I became such an accomplished cook (honest, it does happen quite often! My friend, the lovely Sandira, reckoned the best meal she has tasted in the UK was at my flat and she’s French, so there!). The honest answer to my cooking skills is: Cashflow.

While I have my mother to thank for the basics – when, aged fifteen, I announced I no longer wanted to eat with the rest of my family, mum told me I had to cook for myself… given that I like to eat well, I set to and taught myself how to make decent nosh – but the reason I have been getting better and better at cooking over the years is that I’ve been broke for long periods.

I believe that what one puts in one's stomach is important and, apart from an occasional irresistible late night urge for a Whopper from Burger King (the last one tasted like burned rubber so I haven’t been back in two years, sorry BK) that means I am extremely choosey about what I buy; just like buying clothes, if you pay for quality, it lasts a lot longer (and to prove the point, I have a 1930's French airman's leather jacket).

You see I love making stews and casseroles and my fridge-freezer pretty much always has a ready supply of stocks of various kinds on hand for immediate use; currently there’s what’s left of a particularly good fish stock in a jar in the fridge, as well as a handy bean one (useful if any vegetarians pop round). I had a joint for lunch/dinner today and the bones will be boiled up in due course. While I lived in Sweden, I became proficient in the art of pickling and, although I haven’t yet found a reliable, cheap source of herring in central London, I find that mackerel makes a fair substitute (goes a bit mushy if you don’t eat it quickly). My pickled vegetables are delicious.

I haven’t counted my collection of cookbooks for some time now, but it totalled over fifty several years ago and has continued to grow since – I tend to pick them up when I visit foreign countries, as understanding the food of a given culture is, together with its language, fundamental to understanding how the locals think. For good British cuisine (yes it does exist, my parents cooking being an excellent example) Nigel Slater is as good as any and I have most of the books he has written – this is also one of the reasons I tend buy the Observer on Sundays, as he is the resident cookery writer. I can also recommend Joël Robuchon for modern French delights – check out his book on the ‘humble’ potato! Carl Butler has published some great insights into traditional Swedish food, while Carla Capalba (bottom of the page) has done the same for Tuscany… mind you, pretty much any Italian cookbook is brilliant and I have never met an Italian who can’t rustle up a masterpiece with barely half a dozen ingredients. One country whose food I love, but for which I haven’t yet found a decent recipe book is Spain. I think that’s because I graze on tapas when I’m there and have only eaten ‘proper meals’ a handful of times in the many years I have been visiting that great country – on reflection, that’s not strictly true as I recall I ate everything on the menu of one restaurant, La Paloma (halfway down the page), in the six months I spent in Malaga, but that was before I started forming companies, so it doesn’t count.

I'm also very knowledgeable about which foods to carry with me in order to stave off pangs of hunger and save on the cost of dining out... Organic chocolate and pork pies are firm favourites!

Luckily, when one's finances are particularly weak and credit/debit cards are maxed out, British supermarkets seem to accept them for a lot longer than bars and restaurants... although that does mean you get stung for 'card misuse' every time you have to resort to using them. I guess it makes the food taste all the better!

Four of my friends have now told me that I should open a restaurant and two of them insist they would invest if I did… I just haven’t found the right location yet (and I’m far too busy chasing invoices!). The fact that Crisis trained me up on food hygiene can only be a good thing on this front.

[My company has just received a cheque for an invoice that was issued fourteen weeks ago, despite the stated terms of payment… obviously my beloved client – and I really do enjoy working for them – thought there was a risk I’d blow it all on corporate Christmas gifts, so they rescued me from that fate. Thanks.]

Posted by dompannell at January 9, 2005 8:18 PM