What’s Cooking?

Suddenly, Mr Dear has come over all DeliaÉ ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘No one has Lancashire hotpot for a light lunch’

It’s never a good sign to come downstairs of a morning and find one’s husband muttering to himself… Especially if the husband in question happens to be mine.

Scene I. The kitchen.

‘Two pounds best end and middle neck of lamb,’ mumbled Mr Dear.

He jotted something down in a notebook, and then carried on. ‘Four lambs’ kidneys, dripping, 350g of onions. Bay leaf, thyme.’

‘What on earth are you doing?’ I asked, and not for the first time, either.

‘Oh, morning, love,’ he replied. ‘Didn’t see you there.’

‘Obviously not. Er, what are you doing?’ ‘I thought I’d make a Lancashire hotpot.’ Of course. Silly me. Retired shopkeeper… kitchen… muttering… notebook. All the giveaway signs of Lancashire hotpot.

‘Why?’

‘Everybody has to start somewhere. I just thought I’d start with Lancashire hotpot.’

Dear reader, do you happen to remember that programme on the radio many years ago called Twenty Questions? Four brainy panellists were given 20 chances to identify a mystery object, knowing only whether it was animal, vegetable, mineral or abstract. Is there anybody else who recognised this show as an everyday conversation with members of their family?

On the table in front of Mr Dear were my battered copies of Delia’s Complete Illustrated Cookery Course and Leiths Cookery School: A Completely Structured Course To Perfect Your Cookery Skills.

‘What are you doing with those?’ (That’s four questions, by the way. Only 16 to go before we solve the mystery).

‘I want to learn to cook properly,’ said Mr Dear. ‘I toyed with going on one of those courses for a week at a cookery school, but it seems rather a waste of money when we’ve got all the necessary books at home. And it’s always seemed a bit unfair that you have to do all the cooking.’ ‘But I like cooking.’

‘You can have too much of a good thing. I thought I’d work my way through some recipes and see how I get on. And if I get stuck or I need any tips – how do I know when something is simmering? What’s a medium heat on the hob? – that sort of thing – I can ask you, can’t I?’ ‘I suppose so. Except I’m off to the dentist’s now… and I expect the kitchen still to be here when I get back’.

‘Tsk,’ said Mr Dear. ‘Give over.’

Scene II. The dentist’s.

The hygienist who, for many years, has peered into my mouth and told me which bits I’m missing with my toothbrush has moved to New Zealand (nothing personal, apparently) and Sue has taken over.

‘You married?’ asked Sue, setting to work. ‘Mmmggh,’ I said. ‘Oooo?’

‘Just in the middle of getting unmarried,’ she said. ‘Don’t know what I ever saw in him, to be honest. He’s 20 years older than me, and it was beginning to show. As he’s got older, his eyebrows have got very hairy. There’s nothing less sexy in a man, is there?’ ‘Mmmggh,’ I said.

‘He absolutely refused to trim them. And that’s not all. He retired at 60, and then he seemed to lose all interest in life – except the garden, I’ll give him that. He’s a dab hand with tomatoes. But what’s the good of that, I say. What sort of girl wants to play second fiddle to a “Gardener’s Delight”? If anybody’s supposed to be delighting the gardener, it’s me, isn’t it?’

‘Mmmggh,’ I said.

‘Rinse,’ she ordered.

I wondered, as I was rinsing, whether all her patients got such detailed reports on her private life. This must be an occupational hazard, I suppose, of dentists, hairdressers, chiropodists, physios – and, indeed, anyone else who works in very close contact with their clients. Perhaps not chiropodists, on second thoughts. It must be very difficult to talk about your personal life when you’re staring at a nasty case of athlete’s foot.

‘Of course,’ said Sue, ‘now the news has got around that I’m on the market again, life’s just not worth living.’

‘Mmmggh?’

‘I had to speak very firmly to an old friend just the other day by the red wines in Sainsbury’s,’ she went on. ‘I said, “I just don’t feel that way about you and there’s an end to it”. I mean, all he did was ruin a good friendship. You might like to rinse again.’ ‘Mmmggh,’ I said.

I returned home with cleaner teeth, slightly too much information about the hygienist’s love life and an uneasy feeling. Would the kitchen now be decorated in a light shade of Lancashire hotpot?

‘Hello, love,’ said the chef. ‘I’ve got lunch ready. It’s a tuna salad, and I’ve done us a bread-and-butter pudding.’

‘What about the Lancashire hotpot?’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘No one has Lancashire hotpot for a light lunch!’

‘But they do have bread-and-butter pudding, do they?’

‘Yes. Now then… I was going to surprise you with a crème brûlée, but I had a slight accident with the blowtorch. But you like bread-and-butter pudding, don’t you? We’ll have to make do with cream, I’m afraid, as my custard turned out a bit lumpy.’

And so we sat down to a ‘light lunch’ of tuna salad and bread-and-butter pudding.

‘What do you think?’ enquired Mr Dear, as we worked our way through our ample dessert.

‘Mmmggh,’ was my reply.