PAT MCDERMOTT:
stepping out of the kitchen
Idon’t cook much anymore. I went off it after working out that by the time Ruff Red was 20 I’d cooked 35,000 breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Our children say they’re glad I’ve hung up my apron. “You’re way less dangerous without a knife,” Courtenay says cheerfully.
When they’re feeling warm and fuzzy (3pm on Christmas Day) they say they liked my lumpy gravy, chewy steak, toasted sandwiches and never-ending bowls of spaghetti bolognaise.
His brother and sisters think Ruff Red, now an accomplished chef and restaurateur, taught himself to cook in self-defence. He was nine years old the first time he made a tasty ‘Thai beef salad’ for seven from scratch.
Everyone forgets I was the one who found an antique bottle of fish sauce in the pantry and did the washing up. No-one leaves a mess like Ruff Red.
He is careful to use every pot, pan, platter, serving spoon, knife and measuring cup we own.
“What’s happened here?” a friend shrieked when she popped in for tea.
“Has someone been murdered?”
“No. Ruff Red made liver with onions for lunch,” sighed the MOTH (The Man of the House).
“But it could have been worse. He wanted to make ‘marinated, flattened quail’ but the butcher didn’t have any.” “Thank goodness!” she said.
“He’s getting some in.”
I close my eyes and it’s 1988 again – the Dinner Party Decade!
We had kids, jobs, new babies, old cars, homework to check and dogs to walk. On weekends we wanted to fall asleep in front of the TV, but there was always a cake stall in the morning and an elaborate meal at someone’s house in the evening.
“Whose place is it tonight?”
“Gavin and Gloria’s.”
“So zucchini casserole again.”
Two weeks later it was our turn. At best I’m a mediocre cook. At worst I’m a danger to public health. Why I thought I could make beef wellington for a party of 10 is a mystery.
The list of ingredients began with freshly grated nutmeg and ended, two pages later, with finely chopped shallots and 200ml of ruby port.
I got up at dawn on D-Day. I dragged the chest with my mother’s sterling silver cutlery from its hiding place. I turned the sofa cushions over to hide the worst stains and vacuumed the carpets, sucking up enough Lego to build Cinderella’s castle twice.
Dinner parties always had colour schemes. Mine was pink. Pink flowers, pink candles, pink icing on the cake.
It took an hour to get the giant fillet of beef ready. I patted it dry, browned it in hot oil, lathered it with truffle paste, topped it with Parma ham and wilted spinach and wrapped it in a puff pastry ‘blanket’.
The MOTH took one side of the roasting tin and I took the other and together we forced it into our too small oven. We poured some of the port over the beef and drank the rest.
For the price of a chocolate ‘after dinner mint’ each the children went to bed quietly, just as our guests arrived.
We shared news and gossip as the olives and crisps disappeared. Stomachs gurgled and people looked discreetly at their watches. The beef wellington would be ready ‘in all its meaty glory’, as Nigella would say.
And no doubt it would have been if only I’d turned on the oven.
When everyone stopped laughing and telling me not to cry because my mascara was running, we ordered pizza and opened more wine.
Thirty years later we still reminisce about that night and how we had the best time, talking until 5am.
Which is when baby Ruff Red woke up. AWW