LOVING TO COOK

I think I have mentioned that my love of food, or, to be exact, my love of eating, came from my childhood.

But what about my love of cooking?

At home there was little opportunity to experiment, and then, inspiration was lacking when I moved back to Chesterfield to live with my grandparents. My maternal grandmother was not a cook, other than for sustenance!

A piece of beef for Sunday lunch was roasted for an eternity on Saturday afternoon, until it was dry and crumbly. Vegetables were cooked with bicarbonate of soda to preserve the colour – she was totally ignorant that this killed most of the vitamins. I even watched her simmer tinned carrots for 90 minutes!!!

My real interest came about once I stated to live by myself in a bed sit. Buying kidneys for the first time, far too many for one person of course, but delicious they were, or so I thought!

Inviting my future in-laws for afternoon tea and serving them stuffed eggs – I thought this was the height of sophistication, totally oblivious of the fact they hated mayonnaise and anchovy …………. bless them, they had seconds!

The first full meal that Sheila and I cooked, was again for Tommy and Muriel (they survived the eggs and became much loved parents in law) was chicken with grapes. Tommy gave us the cash and he, and, Muriel took off for a drive while we prepared the meal in their kitchen. It was a Fanny Craddock recipe, laden with cream and butter. We even de-pipped the grapes. I seemed to remember it was quite a nice dish – but, of course far too rich for them!

Really the true interest started after Sheila and I were married. We both had no fear of trying anything new – that’s still so to this day. But I dread to think what our Spaghetti bolognaise was like – we used to throw so many things into it, courgettes, aubergines you name it!…..and then serve with a whole packet of the long spaghetti!!

On buying our first house we agreed with some friends that a monthly dinner “party” would be a good idea. Taking it in turns. We tackled this with relish – making our own pasta. (hanging it on a line in the kitchen to dry!) Sheila had a practise run, with making the pasta: she made ravioli. Well Ravioli it was not, they were the size of envelopes, one was sufficient, but, tasty. On the night we served it as Lasagne -baking whole mackerel with gooseberry sauce – crab tarts.

We loved this time of experimenting.

At this time our bible was the Readers Digest Cookery Year Book. Our copy recently disintegrated after 40 years – but a friend generously gave us her pristine copy.

Italian food was a favourite to begin with, then a love of Indian food developed (Madhur Jaffrey being and inspiration).

In Chesterfield at that time it was not always easy to obtain ingredients for “experimental” cooking. Asking for a red pepper in our local green grocers we were greeted with “No chance in these parts! But I have frozen sweet corn with bits in it, you could pick those out.”!!!!!!

Then in a short space of time Tesco and Sainsburys arrived – I remember the traffic queue on opening the days.

In no time at all a whole new world was opened – no lack of inspiration, no lack of ingredients.

I will save for another posting some of our most memorable meals over the intervening years – not all successful I might add!

Bon appetite