The Worst Case Scenario Cookery Club

by Chrissie Manby

  A lump came to Liz’s throat when she saw that the first Instagram like was from her daughter. Though she did worry that Saskia spent too much time online, on this occasion she was grateful.

  Thirty seconds later Saskia had also left a comment.

  ‘Looks like someone already ate it and threw it back up. #homeentertaining #cookingdisaster #gladIwontbeeatingit.’

  Ah well.

  And later that night, Liz did throw the fish pie back up.

  Mussels.

  She knew she shouldn’t have added those bloody mussels. Bloody Dr Thomas. She’d never have even bought the mussels if he hadn’t been there. It was all his fault.

  ‘Isn’t it, Ted?’

  Ted, who had stolen his own portion of fish pie from the dustbin, agreed.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Liz was very glad that there was to be no fish at the third session of Alex Barton’s Beginners’ Cookery course. She really didn’t care if she never saw a fish pie ever again. She would certainly never bother to make one. Not even if her worst enemy was coming for supper. Not that her worst enemy, Brittney #veganpure #vegangoddess would have touched it anyway.

  Liz met John as they walked into the community centre.

  ‘Did you enjoy your fish pie last week?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She really didn’t want to get into the whole saga. ‘You?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said John. ‘Though it was rather a large portion for one.’

  Liz nodded. So he was eating alone as well. She didn’t know much about John beyond what he had told the class at their first meeting but he seemed to be a nice bloke. She hoped he didn’t feel as lonely as she sometimes did.

  ‘Whatever we make today, I’m going to take it along to the NEWTS,’ he said.

  ‘You’re a NEWT?’ Liz asked.

  ‘I certainly am. Have you heard of us?’

  ‘My daughter Saskia has just joined the youth group.’

  ‘Oh, that’s lovely. They’re a very good group. One of the old members has been an extra on EastEnders three times. Has Saskia signed up for Seven Brides?’ John asked.

  ‘She has.’

  ‘I hear they’re having trouble finding the seven brothers.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Demographics, you see. Am-dram attracts a lot of ladies of a certain age. Might have to make it Seven Brides and Some Twins.’

  ‘Is that the Mormon version?’

  ‘Exactly.’ John laughed. ‘Anyway, I’m sure I’ll see you in the NEWTS bar when the performances start.’

  ‘Getting pissed as …’ Liz quipped.

  John laughed as though he had never heard anyone say that before. Which was kind, Liz thought.

  Bella arrived at class five minutes late that day.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ she was all apologies as she rushed in, wearing another smart little suit and carrying a briefcase. She always seemed faintly harassed. Liz was grateful once again that she could leave her own career firmly at the dental surgery door. Which wasn’t to say that tartar wasn’t a very serious business. She wished more of her patients would understand that.

  Alex beamed when he saw that all three of his students had turned up again. His class may not have grown over the three weeks he’d been teaching but at least it wasn’t shrinking, which meant that he must be doing fine in the eyes of Bella, John and Liz at least.

  ‘How was your fish pie?’ Alex asked then.

  Liz trotted out the same flannel she’d told John.

  ‘And you made another one on Saturday I noticed,’ Alex commented.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I follow the hashtag #homecooking on Instagram. It looked amazing. Did you add mussels?’

  ‘Yes,’ Liz groaned.

  ‘I hope your guests enjoyed it.’

  Liz didn’t know where to look. Did John now think she was weird for not having mentioned the second pie? Did Alex somehow know that Liz had lied about having people over? She blushed.

  ‘You’re so brave to have people over,’ said Bella. ‘I always worry that I’d end up poisoning someone.’

  Which was ironic, thought Liz, remembering her middle of the night dash to the bathroom.

  ‘You won’t poison anyone if you stick to the rules about hygiene,’ said Alex. ‘And don’t do anything stupid like add a dubious mussel to the pot. If it ain’t open, it ain’t going in. Remember that. Never try to force a closed shell and use it anyway.’

  Liz nodded along. That was exactly what she had done. She’d spent a lot of money on those mussels and at least half of them hadn’t opened up in the boiling water. Was she supposed to throw them away? Yes, as it turned out.

  ‘Right, today we’re going to be working on another basic sauce. Tomato sauce. Now, to listen to many amateur and professional cooks I know, you would think that it’s impossible to make a decent tomato sauce unless you were born in a Mafia household in Sicily.’

  Bella smiled at that.

  ‘That sounds like my grandmother’s theory,’ she said. ‘But who has time to stir tomatoes picked from the foot of Mount Etna for three days just to stick it on top of some spaghetti?’

  ‘I bet it tasted delicious though.’

  ‘Yep,’ said Bella. ‘It did.’

  ‘I’m going to get you to tell me more about it,’ said Alex. ‘But right now I’m going to show you the perfect tomato sauce for cheats. And it all comes down to the onions.’

  Alex had already set up the three students’ stations with chopping boards, an aluminium bowl and the enormous knives with which they’d learned their knife skills at the very first session. Now he handed each of them a small red onion.

  ‘You could use any type of onion for this sauce in an emergency but if you use a small red one like this, you’ll be giving yourself a head start.’

  And heaven knows I need one of those, thought Liz.

  ‘You remember how we chopped those onions three weeks ago?’

  John, Bella and Liz nodded.

  ‘Good. What we’re going for today is fine slices. I’ll show you one more time to refresh your memories.’

  Whack. The onion was cleaved into two perfectly equal halves.

  Alex’s chopping had a compelling rhythm as he quickly turned those two halves into slices so fine they were all but transparent.

  ‘Easy? Huh?’

  Liz was already sweating at the thought.

  ‘Another trick beginners often miss involves ensuring that your pans are hot before you start cooking. If you throw these onions into a cold pan, you’re not going to get the caramelisation we want. At least not quickly. So, make sure your pan is hot and the oil is ready to begin its work. Then just throw those onions in, shake the pan to spread them around a little and leave them.’

  ‘Don’t you have to keep stirring them to stop them from burning?’ asked John. Sonia was a big fan of stirring constantly, no matter what she was cooking. John thought that was the mark of a good cook.

  ‘No. We want them to caramelise. If you keep stirring them around, they won’t have a chance. They’ll cook too evenly. Leave them to go a little brown around the edges first.’

  The worried faces that looked back at Alex told him that it seemed counterintuitive.

  ‘It gives us time to prepare the garlic,’ he added.

  Alex took a clove of garlic and covered it with the blade of the knife laid flat.

  ‘This is how you take the skin off.’

  He brought the heel of his hand down on the blade with a smart clack. When he picked up the garlic again, the skin was loose and fell away easily. He then chopped it into slices as fine as the onion.

  ‘But I’m not going to throw it in just yet. One of the most common mistakes people make when cooking with garlic is to toss it in at the beginning with the onion. Onion and garlic may go together like mac and cheese in most people’s minds but they actually need very different treatment. If you throw the garlic in with the onion and cook the onion for as long
as it needs, you’re going to have burnt garlic. And while there is nothing quite so delicious as garlic, there is nothing quite so awful as garlic that has burned.’

  Liz could certainly attest to that.

  ‘The smell lingers for days.’

  ‘Yup,’ said Liz. She thought she could still smell a whiff of garlic in her kitchen though she hadn’t knowingly cooked a clove of the stuff since the summer of 2014. She couldn’t remember what it was she’d made but she knew it had ended in tears.

  ‘So give the garlic a chance. Wait until your onion is almost half done.’

  Alex looked into the pan where the onion had been left to its own devices.

  ‘Perfect,’ he said, shaking the pan and then showing his students something which Liz, at least, thought looked like a disaster already. She could probably manage that.

  ‘It burned,’ she said.

  ‘No. It browned. This is what we’re looking for. See how the edges of the onions are crisping up? This caramelisation is going to give us a delicious richness. Now you can turn the heat down, add the garlic and give the mixture a stir.’

  Leaving the onions and garlic to mingle, Alex reached under his counter and pulled out a tin and a tube.

  ‘Now this is the point at which the Sicilians would send for the village virgin to hand peel a half-dozen tomatoes and squeeze them into the pot with her toes. But we’re going to add a tin of ready chopped. And a squirt of my secret weapon.’

  He showed them the tube then squirted a snake of tomato puree onto the bowl of his wooden spoon.

  ‘Sacrilege!’ Bella announced.

  ‘Don’t tell Grandma,’ Alex winked.

  He tipped the tomato puree into the onions and garlic and gave the whole thing another quick stir. Finally, he added the tinned tomatoes and a sprinkling of oregano.

  ‘And that, give or take a few minutes of simmering, is that. Of course you’ll need to season. Do that gently. Too much is always harder to fix than too little. And you might want to add a few more herbs. You could add some chilli. Or some basil …’

  Alex handed each of them a teaspoon.

  ‘Here’s your chance to taste it. You could chuck this straight over some pasta. A bit of cheese. A glass of red. There’s your easy dinner. But I’m going to show you a show-stopper. We’re going to do something with this.’

  The three students waited to hear what was coming next.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about the conversation we had last week. About the food that takes us back in time and the recipes that remind us of the people we’ve loved and lost. I’d like to try and recreate your special recipes with you. Bella, I hope you don’t mind if the class starts with yours?’

  Bella’s eyes glittered. It was clear that she was moved. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course I don’t mind.’

  ‘Then here goes. Bella, I hope this will live up to your memories.’

  Alex pulled out an aubergine. It was almost as big as Hercules, the obese Chihuahua from Waggy Weight Loss. Liz had always thought there was something faintly obscene about aubergines. They certainly drew her eye at the supermarket with their wet purply shininess but she had never actually picked one up. They had an air of ‘touch me and I’m yours’ about them and she wasn’t really sure she wanted the commitment. Now Alex handed her one of her own.

  She was surprised at its texture. Spongy yet firm. Oddly familiar. Bella didn’t seem quite so surprised.

  ‘I’ve never touched one of these in my life,’ said John.

  ‘Then you don’t know what you’ve been missing,’ said Alex. ‘Today we’re going to make melanzane parmigiana. Melanzane being the Italian word for aubergine. But you all knew that.’

  I didn’t, thought Liz.

  ‘So, Bella,’ Alex continued. ‘Tell us about your dad’s version of this dish.’

  ‘It was one of the classics on the menu at his café. It was something we ate all the time at home. Dad said he could never understand why the British didn’t seem to like aubergines. For me, it was the dish I always asked for if I was given a choice. Dad would cook it to cheer me up. I remember when I was fourteen and some silly boy at school broke my heart. Dad cooked his parmigiana and we sat in the kitchen and he listened to me whine on while we ate. At the end he just said, “What does he have in his packed lunch at school?” I didn’t know where Dad was going but I told him. Dairylea on white bread. Dad put down his fork and leaned back from the table. “The boy has no taste. He’s unadventurous and he’s going to stay that way. Never fall for a man who doesn’t appreciate food, Bella. That’s a man who doesn’t appreciate life.” I promised Dad I’d take his advice. It hasn’t served me wrong.’

  By the time Bella finished her story, Alex had sliced his aubergine into layers as thin as petals.

  ‘That looks beautiful already,’ said Bella.

  ‘It looks difficult,’ said John.

  ‘Don’t look so worried, John. I promise you it’s really very easy. The trick is in the slicing.’

  ‘Well, there goes mine,’ said Liz.

  ‘Come on Chopper, you’re going to slice that aubergine like a professional,’ Alex said.

  Liz came closer to losing a finger than she would have liked but she did manage to slice the aubergine exactly as Alex directed. The aubergine had to be fried ahead of being layered with the tomato sauce. She enjoyed painting on the oil with a pastry brush – it made her wonder if she should do an art course next – and when she cooked them she managed to get all the slices nicely transparent without any nasty burnt bits.

  Assembling the parmigiana in an ovenproof dish was easy. A layer of aubergines. A layer of tomato sauce. Aubergines. Tomatoes. Aubergines. Tomatoes. Then cheese. Tearing the ‘pizza’ cheese (similar to but not the same as mozzarella) Alex had chosen into chunks was rather satisfying, as was grating on the parmesan. The smell that began to fill the room minutes after the dishes went into the oven was heavenly.

  Surely Saskia had to like this one. It was vegetarian. It was healthy. Sort of. If you didn’t think about the frying. The scent of triumph was in Liz’s nose.

  At the end of the class, Liz carefully loaded her parmigiana into a basket she’d found in the garden shed the previous day. That way she could carry the dish into the house without mishap. She hoped.

  When everyone was ready to go, Alex handed out a fistful of flyers.

  ‘Here’s tonight’s recipes sheet and,’ Alex paused, ‘an invitation. It’s my birthday on Saturday and I’m having a little party. I’d be really pleased if the three of you might see fit to come along. It won’t be very grand. I’m having it here at the community centre. But there will be fantastic food and some great wine. I’ve got some friends in the business. And there’ll be music and dancing if you like that kind of thing.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said John.

  ‘Sounds great,’ said Bella.

  ‘It’s very kind of you to invite us,’ said Liz.

  ‘Well, I hope to see you all on Saturday,’ said Alex. ‘Until then, happy cooking.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  This time, Bella was the last of Alex’s students to leave the community centre. There’d been no phone call to drag her off ahead of the end of class. She helped him to tidy away the last of his equipment and waited as he locked the centre door.

  ‘Where are you headed?’ Bella asked. Alex had a big box of things to take home that night.

  ‘West Cliff,’ he said.

  ‘I can give you a lift,’ Bella suggested.

  ‘No,’ Alex shook his head. ‘It must be out of your way. ’

  ‘Nothing in Newbay is really out of the way,’ said Bella. ‘It only takes ten minutes to get from one side of the town to the other.’

  Alex insisted. ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’

  ‘It’s no trouble,’ said Bella. ‘That’s me over there.’

  She pointed to a little blue Audi.

  ‘Nice wheels.’

  ‘Thanks.’


  She popped the boot open.

  With his kit stashed in the back, Alex climbed into the passenger seat. Bella made sure he was strapped in before she pulled away from the kerb. She was an exemplary driver and not just because she had a melanzane parmigiana in the boot.

  ‘Wouldn’t do for me to end up in the magistrate’s court with a speeding conviction,’ she explained.

  She pulled out of the community centre car park, making sure to indicate. Alex wondered what to say next. It was strange seeing Bella in a new context. In the classroom he had his cooking to give him confidence. But in her car … Fortunately, Bella jumped in.

  ‘Thank you for teaching us melanzane parmigiana tonight,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you how excited I am to have that to eat later on.’

  ‘I was worried,’ Alex said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I didn’t know if you’d think it was weird, having to cook one of your dad’s old recipes. I mean, it seemed to be something you had good memories about but I wasn’t sure.’

  ‘I have great memories of it,’ said Bella. ‘I would have made it myself but when Dad showed me how to make it, I never had quite enough patience to let the onions and the aubergines cook for as long as they needed before putting the whole thing together. I could never get it quite as melt-in-the-mouth as I wanted it. Until you reminded me how.’

  ‘I hoped you’d be pleased.’

  ‘Oh, I was delighted. That smell. It took me right back, though your cheat’s tomato sauce would have caused outrage in my grandma’s village.’

  ‘Where is your grandma’s village?’

  ‘Western Sicily,’ said Bella. ‘Near Trapani.’

  ‘I’d love to go there.’

  ‘You should. I definitely should. I mean, I haven’t been for years. We used to go every summer when I was a kid. Grandma died years ago but I’ve still got cousins I could visit. Never seem able to find the time now.’

  ‘You work very hard,’ Alex observed.

  ‘It’s just a desk job. It’s not as though I’m slaving away over a hot stove all day. Working in a restaurant is what I call hard work.’