Читать книгу Kitchen Memories - Lucy Boyd - Страница 24

My memories of cooking with Rose picture her slicing, prodding, mixing, tying, rolling, chopping – she loved her mezzaluna for chopping the herbs when she was making salsa verde. Kitchen equipment essentials were quite basic. Pasta was rolled out with a glass bottle if the rolling pin couldn’t be found. Mayonnaise was made in the pestle and mortar; pastry, cakes, eggs and cream were hand-whisked in a bowl. Meat was minced in a hand-operated meat grinder clamped to the side of the table.

Not having a food processor or KitchenAid made the preparation of food both social and instructive; friends would be given a board, a knife and a glass of wine with directions on how finely to chop the garlic or how to remove the sprouting, bitter green shoot in the winter cloves. Peppercorns were crushed in a crude wooden bowl with a large round stone just before cooking so that their oils remained fresh. Pressing ‘pulse’ on the processor seemed a cold and distant way to chop the civilising herbs … Rose’s hands were constantly moving like little birds – lots of contact with whatever ingredient was being prepared seemed to bring life into every aspect of the making of a meal. A good friend remarked, after Rose’s death, that she had taught him how to live.

Rose was an incredible teacher in that you came away from your experience of cooking with her and somehow life had changed. Her attention to the possibilities of the ingredients she used and the nature and character of the condition they were in would determine how she prepared and cooked them. She was also quite scary – if I questioned whether it was really necessary to peel the individual skins off every chickpea she had boiled (and a normal 500g packet is a lot of chickpeas), she would give me one of her intensely penetrating glares.