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‘It was easier when we were in Italy,” said Hannah, slamming her little fist onto the pile of misshapen pasta pieces in front of her.
They squashed into a messy dough, now grubby-looking from excessive handling by Hannah’s eight-year-old hands.
Her mother, Jackie, had to agree. When they’d done the pasta-making class on their summer holiday in Tuscany, it had seemed like a doddle.
Hannah had effortlessly rolled the pasta dough into a creation she seemed to make up, but which had turned out to be a bona fide pasta shape. The child had been thrilled with herself when the teacher asked if she’d done this before.
It was partly Hannah’s thrill at her first taste of Italian charm, but she’d rolled perfect pasta on the back of his compliments.
Hannah was a picky eater at the best of times, but she had tucked in to a big bowl of the pasta made by the class. She hadn’t even objected to the sauce.
At home, Jackie blended her home-made tomato pasta sauce, but in Italy, the child ate without one complaint about the bits. And some of those were the much-dreaded green bits; shreds of green basil threaded through the barely cooked fresh cherry tomatoes.
Hannah’s enthusiasm for her Italian lunch made Jackie wonder if she’d been approaching the feeding of her child incorrectly for all these years. She’d tried the ‘cook together’ approach many times, but to no avail.
Perhaps, Jackie had thought, the things they’d cooked together were just patronising the child. All those baked potatoes dressed up to be mice, and pizzas with animal faces on them. Sure, they fooled no one, Jackie concluded.
Perhaps, Jackie surmised during the Italian cookery lesson, Hannah had a far more sophisiticated palate than she’d given her credit for.
When they got home, she had decided, they would recreate this success together.
The recreation was not proving a success. Hannah hadn’t the patience for rolling and shaping under Jackie’s eye, and Jackie wasn’t sure they had the consistency right.
Their centrally heated kitchen also lacked the romance of shaping and rolling under a canopy on a Tuscan hillside. Not to mention the lack of being lauded by a handsome Tuscan chef.
As for the sauce; it was plain to see that rock-hard Irish tomatoes weren’t going to behave like their Italian sun-warmed cousins.
It felt like hard work, really; a chore rather than a charming bonding exercise. It really had been easier in Italy; it was time to let the summer go.