TOM JACKSON
Lockdown 1 saw me learn to bake bread.
Well, not exactly “learn”; more bake one
loaf, with my son (who is a professional baker),
in order to write about it in this magazine.
Lockdown 2 was all about Egg Day, otherwise
known as boiling eggs for the family on a
Sunday morning. Lockdown 3, however... Well,
Lockdown 3 has seen my culinary skills take
flight, soaring across the global menu, alighting
on a different triumph every three days. Or
every four days, if I’m busy. Or every five days,
if I can sell Nicola on the idea of a takeaway.
Fact is, for all of January and a chunk of
December, I’ve been point man on the family
dinner every few days. On the rota. Proper
cooking, not just salads and sandwiches.
Actual molecular rearrangement of foodstuffs
following the application of heat has been
occurring, as a result of my actions. Regularly.
And not a microwave in sight.
So, less than a year ago, my only
contribution to (heated) domestic nutrition
(if you don’t count cups of coffee, toast and
popcorn) was whatever I occasionally made
for the purposes of public showing off. Then,
late last summer, I graduated to boiled eggs,
prepared under sufferance and with enormous
accompanying stress for anyone in the vicinity,
once every seven days. And now I’m knocking
out proper hot food, on time, without tantrums,
more or less unassisted, twice a week. And no
one has been taken ill. At least not violently.
What’s more, Egg Day – my journey, like
life itself, all began with a simple egg so long
ago – has progressed to encompass almost
the whole range of the hallowed full English.
I’ve moved on from boiled to scrambled- and while some say scrambled is easier
than boiled, it wasn’t for me. I also do grilled
tomatoes, fried mushrooms, the occasional
rasher of bacon or possibly a cheeky sausage
and, by way of a colourful flourish, because
presentation is important, baked beans.
I can more or less get all of that to the
table in one go, each ingredient more or
less hot, or certainly still warm, and edible.
Joking apart, that’s no mean feat.
Even proper chefs say a cooked breakfast
is logistically tricky. Especially when people
don’t turn up when I call them. I used to
wonder why my doing that annoyed my wife
so much. I know now.
Magnificent as it is, Egg Day still belongs to
that classic male category of marquee cooking,
does it not? Ceremonial, look-at-me, special
occasion, linger-in-the-memory cooking, of the
sort we chaps like to indulge in, the better
to avoid the daily drudge of providing less
glamorous but equally tasty calories. All
very well, Chef Crampton, I hear sceptical
workaday cooks scoff, but what about your
evening offerings? A school night with nothing
much in the fridge – what’s on offer then, eh?
To which I answer: fish fingers and peas!
Jacket potatoes with tuna mayo! Spanish
omelette with the underside not like leather
at all! Kedgeree hash with coarse-grated spuds,
some of the hardest manual labour I’ve ever
done! And, most recently yet most successfully,
what is becoming my signature dish, mushroom
risotto with peas, green beans, manchego and
wilted blinking rocket, if you please! With no
help from my daughter after the first time,
because she’s gone back to university.
Mouthwatering stuff, right?
I won’t pretend it’s been easy. That kedgeree
hash left me a broken man, with barely enough
energy left to eat my share, a majorly long
sit-down required afterwards. Luckily we never
watched Downton Abbey when it first came
out, so that’s been taking care of the post-
dinner entertainment, me slumped in recovery
on the sofa, hardly able to register who’s
shagging who and which footman has
been nicking the claret this time. The
tortilla and the risotto take their toll too, as
I conscientiously make my way around the
Mediterranean littoral, one national cuisine
perfected before moving on to the next one.
What have I learnt? That while cooking is
all about prep, ingredients and timing, it is also
about not doing too much. I turned one tortilla
into mush because I couldn’t stop myself stirring
the damned thing. I had an anxious half-hour
continually sampling (double dip alert!) risotto
rice that refused to stop tasting like grit until
the last minute. I turned a pan of beans into
puree with endless poking and prodding. I’ve
also learnt that recipes are often wrong and the
suggested amounts never result in enough food.
I also have to avoid the temptation to douse
everything in shredded rosemary, which for
some reason seems to have become my go-to
herb, even though I don’t like it very much,
and neither does anybody else.
All in all, I’m really rather pleased with
myself. And yeah, I know it’s pathetic that it’s
taken me half a century and a hideous global
crisis to even begin to learn to cook... But
better late than never, eh? n[email protected]‘I won’t pretend it’s
been easy, learning
to cook. Kedgeree
hash left me a
broken man’
Beta male
Robert Crampton
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