By OISE Oxford Tutor Kit Villiers
By last Sunday I'd finally run out of excuses. It had been a full 6 months since I did my cookery course in July 2013; OK, I had been able to play various cards - the wounded cook (a cut finger), sheer exhaustion brought on by the course, and far more competent cooks being around - to stave off the inevitable , but on January 19th a combination of factors condemned me to at least one more bout with the pots and pans.
It was my sister's birthday. She and her husband would be visiting from Surrey, and it seemed a bit tough on her to have to spend the day slaving over a hot stove. She also gently reminded me that it had been her idea for me to do the course, and that she felt after all this time perhaps it was time that she got (so to speak) her pound of flesh.
'We' -that is they - decided that I would have a shot at 'Sausage and Fennel Seed Ragu', one of the four menus I'd grappled (not entirely successfully with last July, as it appeared to consist of four simple steps. One step not mentioned was how to obtain the simple ingredients. On the course the coach/trainer had prepared little trays in advance for d each of us (unwilling in some cases) participants. '3 garlic cloves, crushed' and 'pinch chilli flakes' proved tricky as of course I had little idea what they were or where to get them, but after some searching I finally assembled everything - except the fennel seeds themselves. My suggestion that we should cancel the whole thing and send out for fish and chips instead through the lack of this essential ingredient was regrettably turned down out of hand, and I was shown where our kitchen was and unceremoniously dumped there.
The first issue was cutting up the onion. I reflected in passing that cookery seemed to involve amongst other things mastering a whole new set of verbs. Here was the first one - the onion had to be 'finely diced'. My niece said she'd kindly help, at least to set me on my way. "It means cutting it up into small bits" she opined. "Surely your instructor taught you how to do that?" We both tackled the thing, and after frequent rests to recover from streaming eyes were faced with another baffling verb: the onion had to be 'sweated' until translucent. "That means 'cooked' my niece (now realising that little would be accomplished unless she stood guard) patiently explained - "in the frying pan".
I was starting to feel the pace a bit by now, and we'd only done step one; luckily even I was able to follow step two which basically said throw in all the other ingredients, and step three which said cook the tinned tomato for an hour. I had more trouble with the last step which required the aspiring (perhaps that should be perspiring) chef to fry the sausage meat until golden brown. I'm a bit colour-blind, but my meat never really attained this hue, and despite the cries of rather exaggerated rapture which greeted my effort I warned the party that perhaps they should temper their praise until they'd slept on it...
And the last verb? 'Season'. I thought it referred to the time of year, but apparently it means you can add salt and pepper to taste. Even I could manage that.
By last Sunday I'd finally run out of excuses. It had been a full 6 months since I did my cookery course in July 2013; OK, I had been able to play various cards - the wounded cook (a cut finger), sheer exhaustion brought on by the course, and far more competent cooks being around - to stave off the inevitable , but on January 19th a combination of factors condemned me to at least one more bout with the pots and pans.
It was my sister's birthday. She and her husband would be visiting from Surrey, and it seemed a bit tough on her to have to spend the day slaving over a hot stove. She also gently reminded me that it had been her idea for me to do the course, and that she felt after all this time perhaps it was time that she got (so to speak) her pound of flesh.
'We' -that is they - decided that I would have a shot at 'Sausage and Fennel Seed Ragu', one of the four menus I'd grappled (not entirely successfully with last July, as it appeared to consist of four simple steps. One step not mentioned was how to obtain the simple ingredients. On the course the coach/trainer had prepared little trays in advance for d each of us (unwilling in some cases) participants. '3 garlic cloves, crushed' and 'pinch chilli flakes' proved tricky as of course I had little idea what they were or where to get them, but after some searching I finally assembled everything - except the fennel seeds themselves. My suggestion that we should cancel the whole thing and send out for fish and chips instead through the lack of this essential ingredient was regrettably turned down out of hand, and I was shown where our kitchen was and unceremoniously dumped there.
The first issue was cutting up the onion. I reflected in passing that cookery seemed to involve amongst other things mastering a whole new set of verbs. Here was the first one - the onion had to be 'finely diced'. My niece said she'd kindly help, at least to set me on my way. "It means cutting it up into small bits" she opined. "Surely your instructor taught you how to do that?" We both tackled the thing, and after frequent rests to recover from streaming eyes were faced with another baffling verb: the onion had to be 'sweated' until translucent. "That means 'cooked' my niece (now realising that little would be accomplished unless she stood guard) patiently explained - "in the frying pan".
I was starting to feel the pace a bit by now, and we'd only done step one; luckily even I was able to follow step two which basically said throw in all the other ingredients, and step three which said cook the tinned tomato for an hour. I had more trouble with the last step which required the aspiring (perhaps that should be perspiring) chef to fry the sausage meat until golden brown. I'm a bit colour-blind, but my meat never really attained this hue, and despite the cries of rather exaggerated rapture which greeted my effort I warned the party that perhaps they should temper their praise until they'd slept on it...
And the last verb? 'Season'. I thought it referred to the time of year, but apparently it means you can add salt and pepper to taste. Even I could manage that.
