My interest in cooking was sparked as a very little girl, when a leaflet in my mother's possession had as its front cover a picture of a cake frosted with white cream cheese icing decorated with silver balls. I thought it looked enchanting. I also thought it probably tasted disgusting. But I was hooked from that moment on.
I always wanted to cook. I played with saucepans of dried beans for hours on end as a nipper and was never happier than when on farm holidays in Cornwall, where I could be found in a disused barn having collected kitchen scraps such as old tomatoes and the strings from runner beans, quietly mulching everything down in a handy pot and referring to the resultant mess as 'Correspondence Stew'. (No, I don't know either.)
I must have driven my poor mother demented, always hanging round the kitchen watching what she was doing with an eagle eye and helpfully pointing out over which pieces of cauliflower she had neglected to pour cheese sauce.
On one occasion, still not quite work surface height, I dragged a bowl to the edge of the counter, wondering what was in it. About a pint of liquid beef dripping was the answer, which I subsequently poured all down my front. Once it was obvious I hadn't scalded myself irreparably I was thrown rather crossly into a bath while the
kitchen was cleaned up.
For several more years the most common sound to be heard coming from our kitchen was "Oh Valerie....!!" as I continued to be helpful - in an Edwin the Boy Scout sort of way.
Eventually, I was deemed sensible enough to help rather than hinder and then my real love of cooking began. I was set to peel and chop and stir and mash and I loved every minute. My parents entertained regularly and well and so my formative years were spent helping prepare classic sixties dinner party food.
By the time I went to boarding school, aged 13, I could cook quite complicated dishes. So it was something of a surprise, when I attended my first eagerly-awaited Domestic Science lesson, to be told that we were going to learn how to make tea and toast.
I looked askance at Mrs Easlea, our teacher. "Tea and toast?" I enquired disbelievingly. "I was helping my mother make Boeuf en Croute last week, can't we do something a bit more advanced?" Apparently not. We were going to learn how to take a pot to the kettle and never the kettle to the pot. I could see how this might be sensible, since tripping up with a kettleful of water could cause a very nasty accident. But surely tripping up with a potful of scalding tea could cause just as nasty an accident and some very unpleasant staining?
Mrs Easlea and I achieved a meeting of the minds before too long. I would look at her and say "Blancmange? Are you mad?" and then I would make blancmange. It seemed to work. I left that school possessed of some of the most terrible recipes I have ever seen.
But, because I'd already formed an interest, instead of being put off by "And today, fishcakes..." I was more inclined to wonder how those horrible patties of cold potato and indifferent cod could be transformed into something that would be delicious to eat.
Because I was so young, I made lots of mistakes. And because I didn't want to waste food and thus be prevented from making anything else, I would find workarounds and rescue remedies when experimenting at home in the holidays. If a sauce wasn't as it should be, I discovered it could quite easily be used as the basis of an interesting soup "Oh didn't I say we were having a first course?"
I learned that recipe books should be used as a guide and not a bible. If the meticulously-followed recipe for a farmhouse paté, for example, lacked the depth of flavour I was expecting, I would make it again but next time I would add more garlic, or use smoked bacon instead of green, or slake the aspic with concentrated stock and not water.
Recipes are no more than a guide to someone's personal taste buds. Yes, there are some things that call for precision – cakes and biscuits spring to mind – but on the whole, the slavish following of someone else's recipe is only going to produce the sort of food that they would cook. What about the sort of food that I would cook? And you?
You don't like oregano? Don't put it in, then; try a different herb. You think a bit more cream would be nice? Add some. If, when you've made a recipe, you don't care for the end result and decide not to bother in future, don't give up. Spare a few minutes to taste it again properly and in depth and work out what it is you don't like. And then change it. In my experience – and I have now been cooking for over 30 years godwot – you have to go some to completely ruin a dish beyond repair.
And even then... I once made one of those apple flans with concentric rings of glazed apple on top of apple purée and crême pâtissière. I then delved into the cupboard underneath to bring out the pudding plates. Which I proceeded – and I still can't believe I did this – to plonk straight onto the middle of the tart. After a few minutes' swearing (one of the most important items in any cook's repertoire is a lexicon of very serious expletives) I removed the plates, scraped the contents of the flan into a blender, added some whipped egg whites and a sachet of gelatine dissolved in apple juice and shoved the mixture into a straight-sided dish, only losing the pastry along the way.
Apple soufflé, anyone?
