Читать книгу Love Bites: Marital Skirmishes in the Kitchen - Christopher Hirst - Страница 5

GIVEN OUR COMMON INTEREST, it was appropriate that Mrs H (as she then wasn’t) and I met in a kitchen. It was at a party in south London, Darling Road to be precise, in 1982. When one thing happily led to another, food emerged as a joint passion. The first meal I ever made for Mrs H was a giant pile of smoked salmon sandwiches. I noticed that they went down well. This was promising. I doubt if a longstanding relationship would have resulted if she had turned out to be one of those females whose main nutritional intake is a breath of air.

The first meal she ever made for me was a Mongolian hot pot. This takes the form of a great plate of raw titbits – slivers of chicken breast, pork and steak, along with prawns, sliced scallops, broccoli florets, mangetouts – that you cook piecemeal in a large pot of stock over a methylated spirit burner. When you’ve simmered a piece, you eat it. Mongolian hot pot is an ideal dish for a couple in the exploratory stages of courtship. Because you use chopsticks to fish out the various items, there is plenty of scope for intimacy. You might steer your companion towards a succulent piece of steak, while she hands over a juicy prawn. There might be a certain amount of light-hearted competition for a scallop. The culinary foreplay is prolonged but not so heavy on the stomach as to preclude subsequent activity.

The meal was a revelation. My passion for food began when I became passionate about Mrs H. After living in an all-male flat, where food was fuel rather than feast, I was astonished by the flair and generosity of her cooking and also the remarkable amount she spent on ingredients. Not that I was entirely indifferent to food when we met. I don’t suppose many men would have proposed the Royal Smithfield Show as a destination for a first date. Somewhat to my surprise, Mrs H expressed keenness to attend this agricultural jamboree. The first thing we saw inside Earls Court was several lamb carcasses suspended over an enclosure containing their living siblings. Mrs H did not seem too alarmed by this vivid depiction of before and after. We bought a pair of pork chops at the show, which she grilled for supper. They were excellent.

Nibble by nibble, our relationship blossomed. We did a certain amount of the restaurant work that courting couples are supposed to go in for. Not that we had many candlelit dinners for two. Economy was a greater priority than romantic surroundings. Restaurants don’t come much cheaper or less romantic than Jimmy’s, the Greek joint staffed by famously cheerless waiters in Frith Street, Soho, while Poon’s on Lisle Street came a close second. Though far from ideal for a tête-à-tête – you ate at shared tables covered by greasy oilcloths – Mrs H was impressed by the robust generosity (she says ‘greediness’) of my ordering: roast duck, sweet and sour crispy won-tons, oyster and belly pork casserole…

Mostly, we dined at home. Since I spent almost all of my twenties in the pub, I missed out on the prawn cocktail era. Mrs H introduced me to a few delights of that distant time – snails in garlic butter (I was impressed that she owned snail tongs), kidneys in mustard sauce, chocolate mousse and cheese fondue. I’m still fond of her fondue, made in a large Le Creuset pan, though we restrict our intake of this dish, which is of doubtful value for the arteries unless you have spent the day climbing an alp or two, to once or twice a year. In her turn, Mrs H had missed out on certain areas of gastronomy that I regard as essential. I brought pork pie, rhubarb tart and shellfish to her attention. This did not, however, prevent her from refining my technique for moules marinière. ‘You don’t need great big chunks of onion. Could you chop it finer?’

Through Mrs H, I discovered the difference between proper paella and the Vesta variety. I also enjoyed the revelation that curry could be a pleasure, where you tasted the ingredients, rather than a form of trial by ordeal. She acquainted me with homemade pâté and salads that did not involve floppy lettuce. She even maintains that I didn’t like broccoli before we met. I find this hard to believe. I’ve always been a big fan. ‘You haven’t! YOU HAVE NOT! And, it’s only in the last couple of years that you’ve eaten curly kale and spring greens.’ Well, she may be right on the last point, though I can now see the point of such vegetation. Mrs H also recalls my eruption when she tried serving flowers in a salad, which was fashionable some years ago. ‘You objected very strongly and described it as “poncing it up”.’

I gained an additional impetus towards culinary matters when I began writing a weekly column called ‘The Weasel’ in the Independent. Though its contents could be anything of a vaguely humorous nature, food and drink began to make a regular appearance. As with any habit, it started innocuously enough. You happen to write a piece about eating muskrat (dark, tough, springy meat not unlike Brillo pad) at a restaurant called Virus in Ghent. Soon after, you find yourself eating betel nut near Euston station, aphrodisiac jam in Paris, illicit ormers in Guernsey…

This new direction for the column bemused some executives on the paper. Objections to the high gustatory content were passed from above (‘Can’t he write about anything else?’), but I found it difficult to comprehend such griping. After all, what could be more interesting or amusing than food? Indeed, what else is there? Maybe I did ease up on the nosh from time to time, but this only produced an even greater flow of food pieces when I turned the tap back on: setting fire to the kitchen when trying to crisp Ryvita under the grill (they curled and touched the electric element); blowing up the fusebox when I tried to put a fuse on the fridge; making frumenty, the alcoholic porridge that prompted Michael Henchard to sell his wife and child in The Mayor of Casterbridge (‘Well, I’m not sold on it,’ said Mrs H).

Perhaps the real theme, which steadily emerged in column after column, was the difference between men and women in the kitchen. Or, at any rate, the difference between Mrs H and me in the kitchen. Though I came to spend much time cooking in the kitchen – more, possibly than Mrs H – it remains her bailiwick. Never having been taught the essential rules of the kitchen, such as tidying up and putting the right thing in the right place, I came in for a certain amount of brusque character analysis. Recently, when I foolishly asked Mrs H to refresh my mind concerning my shortcomings in this milieu, it prompted a Niagara-like flow that proved hard to turn off.

Woman on men (i.e. her on me)

Men want a huge amount of praise for anything they do.

Whatever they do, men always create a vast amount of washing-up, but they never think of washing up as they go along.

Men are reluctant to follow recipes in the same way that they are reluctant to ask for directions when they are lost.

Men plunge into cooking without sorting out the ingredients and utensils they will need. Then they can’t find what they want. When things are found for them, they never put them away.

Men tend to over-season. They think that if a little is good then a lot will be even better. This particularly applies to salt and Tabasco.

Men give up easily – e.g., if they get a pain in their arm when whisking cakes.

Men disappear if they have to do some work, but they are quite handy for reaching things from high shelves.

Men are not keen on washing burnt pans. (This is simply not true. I’m always washing up pans that Mrs H has managed to fuse food on to.)

Men always want to pinch a bit of a dish that is in the process of being made. They are very keen on eating between meals.

Men fill the dishwasher any old how so it seems packed even though there aren’t many items in there.

Following these lacerating comments, it struck me that Mrs H might appreciate a few words of mild correction. Hence:

Man on women (i.e. me on her)

Women are very, very, very bossy.

Women tend to be excessively pedantic about recipes and timings.

Women are very keen on vegetables, even when old and fibrous. They have an inexplicable fondness for purple-sprouting broccoli that is too woody to eat.

Women take a lot of luring into eating oysters. When you finally manage to do this, they can often be sick and look at you reproachfully.

Women are very difficult to get out of kitchen shops. Their favourite reading tends to be the Lakeland catalogue. They spend money like water in such places. I’d never spend £18.99 on a jelly strainer set, though Mrs H says, ‘It’s worth its weight in gold.’

Women always remember to put on a pinny when cooking. Despite the consequent stains and splotches on my clothes, I would never wear such an emasculating garment.

Women are obsessed with cleanliness to the extent that it imperils our natural resistance to bugs and germs.

When clearing cupboards, women have a tendency to chuck out perfectly good foodstuffs that are only a year or two past their sell-by date.

Women are very willing to eat lobsters and most forms of fish, but show a marked reluctance to kill, gut or scale these creatures.

Women constantly complain that they have not received an equal share of food. They are particularly assiduous in checking the level in their wine glass. ‘It’s not fair!’

So why did we decide to test our relationship further by cooking the stuff in this book? Lots of food books will give you the recipes, but this one tells you what it was like to make these dishes, and where irritations and cock-ups occurred. We tried a variety of methods and recipes for items ranging from pasta to raspberry jam, pizza to pancakes. While avoiding outré ingredients (OK – we did a hamburger with wagyu beef) and complicated techniques, we aimed to produce versions that were, if not exactly perfect, pretty damn good and capable of being reproduced on the domestic range. From Lady Shaftesbury’s hot cheese dip (page 56) to Fergus Henderson’s seed cake (page 247), I’d recommend that anyone even vaguely interested in cooking should have a bash. There are, however, some exceptions. Heston Blumenthal’s Black Forest gateau is definitely not easy to do. Rocket science is a doddle by comparison. I would never have dreamed of making the damn thing if the features editor of a newspaper had not com missioned me to do so. For sanity’s sake, I earnestly entreat you not to try it. Mrs H would say the same about geoduck clams and similar maritime oddities I treated her to in Chapter 11.

Most chapters involve the tutorage of Mrs H. I suppose I could have gone to other authorities for instruction but this would have caused problems. Having experienced several cookery schools over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not very good at being taught things in the kitchen. I claim this is because I’m too much of an anarchist to take orders. ‘Actually,’ says Mrs H, ‘you don’t listen when people tell you things.’ Well, yes, I do seem to have some kind of mental block when people try to teach me practical skills. (After four years of learning woodwork at school, my sole production was a test-tube rack with three wonky holes.) Having lived with me for twenty-odd years, Mrs H was able to put up with this minor foible. Even so, several dishes were seasoned with salty language and peppery outbursts. But our flare-ups, both verbal and actual, were quickly extinguished. Mostly, it was a rewarding, or at least filling, adventure. Some couples climb Kilimanjaro: we made a pork pie.