Self-satisfied, self-promoting, over-acting, and with too
complicated recipes, television chefs put me off watching their cookery
programmes.
I'm sure
(hope) that away from the kitchen, where cooks belong, these show-off
performers are all delightful and modest people when at home and not in front
of the cameras, and that the food and skills they display to their TV audience
are of great use and entertainment.
Recently,
when scouring the various TV networks with my remote control in search of an
interesting programme, I landed on a cooking one where sausages and offal in
skins were boiled slowly in fine stock to make, firstly soup, and then a feast
of the objects that had been boiled in it (just my kind of cooking).
This seemed
to me a good enough idea, and why not boil offally things that have made
certain nations famous?
I took the
specialities of three countries for my test dish – Scotland ,
Spain and Ireland .
The
stock/soup was made of pressure-cooked bones, spices and chopped-up pigs’
trotters. This was strained into a bowl, and overnight became a thick jelly
with a top layer of fat, which was discarded.
Adding
water and my international goodies, I intended to start heating up the dish
when guests arrived for 6 o’clock drinks – but forgot to do it.
When our
friends had departed (drinks in our district mean come at 6 pm and leave by
7.30 pm - 8 pm), I started the dish that I should have put heat under earlier.
Because we
were hungry, I failed to give it enough time at a slow boil. The result was not
as hot as it might have been.
At two in
the morning I rose when my body decided to rid itself of what seemed to be most
of my insides. Had I poisoned myself, and with myself, Margreet?
Still
feeling rather unwell, I kept a worried eye on Margreet – who, to my relief,
continued to sleep soundly and breathe steadily.
Thinking
that my digestive tracts were, by then, completely empty, I was surprised when
the evacuation continued - from top and bottom.
I then
realised that it was not my cooking that was causing the internal turmoil, but
the widespread norovirus, for which I
understood there was no cure other than paracetamol and patience (period of
tumult, day of bed, next day up and around).
Even though
innocent of cooking with noxious poisons in this case, I have been quite put
off from trying the dish again.
I will now
be even more determined than ever not to watch cooking programmes on
television.
