Читать книгу Bad Cook - Esther Walker - Страница 20

Home Alone

Giles has gone skiing and I’m in the house all by myself. Actually, he hasn’t gone skiing because he doesn’t like skiing; he’s just gone with some people to Switzerland who are skiing and he’s vowing to stay inside and read books. But he also took some emergency ski kit with him. No, I don’t understand either.

It’s always the way when Giles goes anywhere: I rather look forward to having the place to myself without his constant clattering, singing, shouting, cackling and raging, conducting his professional feuds and world-domination strategies in his office next door to mine, fielding phone calls and hammering away at his laptop, which always sounds, when he is in full-cry, like a troop of teenaged boys galloping down the stairs.

He leaves the house after consulting me eight times about every single thing he’s packing:‘Are you sure? Are you sure the red socks and not the striped ones? Sure? They’re going in … Sure?’ and looking briefly miserable on the doorstep. After I close the door I punch the air and shout ‘YES’ and vow to leave the bed unmade, do no washing up, watch Judge Judy all day and drink the kind of cheap white wine that burns holes through carpet.

Within an hour I’m a gibbering wreck, wide-eyed at my spooky, silent house and jumping at small noises.

And I don’t know what the hell to eat. Working within Giles’ strict things-we-can-and-can’t-eat thing means a trip to Waitrose is a logistical assault. Nothing non-organic, basically no fish at all because it’s all endangered, nothing processed, nothing from abroad. It’s why we’re constantly eating roast chicken. Sometimes I think to myself ‘Gosh, wouldn’t it be easy to go shopping if I didn’t have to cook for Giles and all his arseholish ways’ but then I GO to Waitrose as I did just now and I can’t find, or think of, anything that I might want to eat. Not one thing.

So I’m going to make a chocolate cake instead. Definitely something I can’t do with him around what with his terror of sweeties.

This is a really fantastic chocolate cake. Like something you might buy in a shop, which is my highest accolade. It’s dark and rich but also springy and light at the same time. Bliss.

Chocolate Cake

 225g plain flour

 350g sugar

 80g cocoa powder

 1½ tsp baking powder

 1½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

 2 eggs

 250ml milk, any sort

 125ml veg oil – I used groundnut

 vanilla essence, two drops (I do not like a lot of vanilla essence because I think it makes things taste very plasticky)

 250ml boiling water

1 Put everything except the boiling water into a bowl and stir until smooth.

2 Gradually add the boiling water and incorporate, stirring each sploosh in – it’ll end up very wet and this is normal.

3 And that’s it! Pour into a deep 23cm tin (this is important, so do make sure you have a tin the right size) and bake for between 30–35 minutes at 180ºC.

What you do with this after cooking is up to you. You can stick it together with a chocolate ganache if you like (I don’t like chocolate ganache with chocolate cake … bit sicky … which is why I haven’t done it) or with cream, or top it with cream and fruit, or sandwich together with raspberry jam or whatever, really. But it’s quite interesting on its own.