Cooking has never been my forte. My early teachers were my mother and grandmother; neither of whom could be called good cooks; resulting in a lifelong avoidance of the kitchen. My grandmother would boil her vegetables to a mush in a solution which can only be described as brine. I remember well how she achieved this by using an old Ostermilk baby milk powder measuring scoop to add a full measure of salt to each pan. And her pastry could have been used to sink a battleship. My mother on the other hand never used salt at all when overcooking her vegetables. However, she was a past master at taking a perfectly good recipe and adapting it because she hadn’t got the right ingredients. Sometimes none of the ingredients would match the recipe but that never deterred her and made for some very interesting meals. So neither of my natural early influences gave me a good basic knowledge of how to cook well. I was, however, quite adept at honey sandwiches by the time I reached my teens!
My next experience of cooking came in the form of cookery lessons in secondary school. The only things I actually remember learning to make were a slice of toast, which I burnt, and the topping for an apple crumble. I did cook something in a casserole dish once but only remember it because it spilled into the bottom of my bag on the way home, covering my schoolbooks. Needless to say, I didn’t continue with home economics beyond my second year. In fact, along with needlework, it was suggested that maybe it wasn’t the right subject for me. They could obviously see I wasn’t going to achieve my full potential stuck in a kitchen. When I met Paul who, even at the tender age of 22, could cook, it was like fate had taken a hand. I could continue into my adult life knowing I wasn’t going to starve. I found the daily task of producing mediocre meals for a family quite boring and it also interfered with doing much more interesting things. Like sunbathing for instance. So much so that I have always been quite happy to leave him to it; managing to spend the majority of forty four years of marriage avoiding this chore as much as has been humanly possible.
Throughout my working years he has looked after me as well as any house spouse could. He has cooked, cleaned, done the laundry and brought up five daughters. In fact, he could be described as a Domestic God. My whole family, and many of my work colleagues, are fully aware of my domestic shortcomings and this avoidance has seen me as the butt of many a joke throughout those years.“The kitchen? Oh, that’s the room she has to cut through to get to the garden!” was a staple of Paul’s for a long time. Since redesigning the dining room and kitchen it became “ she doesn’t know where the kitchen is now she doesn’t have to go through it to get to the garden!” Or his other classic, “she spent six weeks trying to change channels before she released it was the microwave and not a new TV !”
The girls personal favourite is, on the occasions Paul is away from home for any reason, “ she’ll be fine, she’ll live on take-aways, Tescos deliver Walkers crisps!” He once; to the amusement of family and friends; left me a nice, detailed diagram of where I could find everything I needed to sustain myself whilst he was away.
When I do venture into the kitchen Paul becomes quite territorial. His initial reaction is to tell me to “step away from the kitchen!” When that doesn’t work he prowls around muttering under his breath every time I pick up another utensil and I can sense his hands itching to get hold of the dishcloth to clean up after me as I go along. I admit that I am not the tidiest cook out there and sometimes the kitchen does resemble a mini disaster area, the makings of my dish scattered everywhere and pots and pans marching their way across the work tops towards the already full sink. It’s a good job we’ve got a big Belfast sink.
But it’s not just the pots and pans that bother him. If my recipe involves flour it also involves a near deep clean of the kitchen afterwards since I seem to be able to leave a thin dusting over every flat surface. Another classic is butter cream. I make a very good butter cream. My Dad taught me how. A simple recipe, just butter and icing sugar whisked together. Being lazy and not very good at hand whisking I opted to use the electric whisk. On high speed. The result? A vast cloud of fine icing sugar filled the kitchen before settling on everything, me included, covering it in a fine, sweet coating. But anything I cook results in some kind of coating on various surfaces. Frying is another cause for his anxiety within bemoaning that I have either let my fat get too hot or I’ve got the heat up too high. He has never really trusted me with frying since he caught me throwing my freshly cut chips into a pan of smoking hot fat from the opposite side of the kitchen so I didn’t get splashed.
So, if I have spent so many years avoiding the kitchen and all that it entails, what prompted the above exchange of comments? Since retiring and with time on my hands rather than sit around reading or playing mindless games on my iPad all day, and before anyone comments, yes, I still play them, I decided to venture into this unknown territory and try my hand at cooking a few meals. To my astonishment I found I quite enjoyed creating a tasty meal and that I was quite good at it as well. Since making this discovery I have trawled through cook books, surfed the internet and even asked family and friends in my quest to become a domestic goddess. There has been a lot of trial and error; everyone remembers the roadkill jam roll poly seeping slowly along the worktop; but along the way I have found many interesting and tasty recipes and have enjoyed making them so much I want to share them with you.
I still make a mess and use as many pots and pans as possible; why only use one pan when three will do the job better; but at least I have started to clean up as I go along. Paul has stopped muttering under his breath when I enter the kitchen, although, I think, he is still feeling some loss of control over what he has always seen as his domain.