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Ready, steady, cook
I suppose I’d always known deep down that I was never going to
be any good in the kitchen — and that was even before the time when
I forgot about the pizza in the oven and nearly set the house on fire.
So by the time I had reached my early 20s I had resigned myself to the
fact that I would never be Ireland’s answer to British culinary
queen Fanny Craddock.
As soon as I left home and started life in university I became firmly
entangled in a delicious affair with ready meals.
It was so easy to fall into the honey trap.
A few simple steps and it was goodbye hunger pangs and hello Tesco spaghetti
bolognese.
It was only ever a matter of: Remove packaging, leave for three minutes
in the microwave and serve.
Then of course there was the added advantage of having no saucepans to
wash up — bonus!
It was so quick and simple that even I couldn’t mess it up.
And so the years have passed by and thanks to the abundance of convenient
stock on local supermarket shelves I have never had to worry about perfecting
my gourmet abilities or unearthing the domestic goddess within.
Until now that is!
I work for a small pr and communications agency in Holborn and in a desperate
bid to win over my colleagues I casually suggested an evening chez moi
where I would cook up some of the best Irish fare they had ever tasted.
And before I could say soda bread and stew there was a chorus of “love
tos, next week?” and “perfect, see you thens”.
Oh holy cr*p!
If there’s one thing that I have realised since I move to London
it’s this: There is an abundance of amazingly fine world cuisine
on every corner and everyone claims to be a food expert.
So for a girl coming from a background of well-done meat and cooked fish,
sushi rolls and blue steaks are a terrifying thought.
How would I ever manage to turn years of domestic neglect around?
Like all well-balanced children I lay the blame for lacking skills in
this department squarely with my mam — your typical Irish mother.
You know the type — opinionated, easily worried and always right…
about absolutely everything!
I had spent my childhood blissfully unaware of the fact that food did
not just appear on the table, piping hot and ready to eat.
It was a completely alien idea that each meal had in fact been painstakingly
laboured over by said mother for many hours beforehand.
And as Mr ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ Ramsey would say himself, I
truly felt it was a case of: Hungry, dinner, done!
Until the age of 18 I had never so much as peeled a vegetable, cooked
a chicken or boiled an egg.
Although there are far worse culprits than I — a case in point being
my first university sweetheart who did not even know how to heat up a
tin of beans (I’m not joking!).
So last week as I was panicking about what to make or better still how
to un-invite my three colleagues (including my boss!) I came face-to-face
with what I thought would be my saving grace — Delia Smith’s
new book How To Cheat At Cooking.
I couldn’t believe my luck — more than 140 recipes that promise
to “save you time and energy while compromising not a jot on flavour
and quality”.
Everything from made-in-minutes Creole prawns to ginger-infused (huh?)
Caribbean chicken.
There was even a special cheat sticker pointing to what products to buy
in which supermarket.
But little did I realise that home-cooking guru Delia Smith always manages
to whip up a feeding frenzy any time she releases a new recipe book.
And so when I arrived at my local Sainsbury’s there was a four person-deep
line in front of the key cheat ingredients I was looking for.
There was no choice but to move on to Plan B — and quickly I turned
on my heel and headed towards the nearest M&S where I loaded up on
of their Italian pasta range with accompanying side dishes.
And so to my ever-forgiving boss Anthony and to Danny and Claire —
who were so full of praise for my homemade pasta sheets smothered in freshly
prepared tomato sauce — I can only say this: You might be able to
take the girl out of Ireland but you sure can’t take the urge to
microwave out of the girl. |
