I once wrote in a cookery book that my wife, Margreet, was “not used to
cooking”.
It was true. Having
spent her career in the Dutch Foreign Service, there had always been someone to
cook for her.
Then she retired,
started to cook, and loved it. Now we cook one week on and one week off.
She would still like
to measure things, but often uses my recipes that mainly decline it.
She gets better by the
week, and is now showing imagination.
Here are two of her
excellent ideas:
When using cooked cold green beans that had grown in foreign parts and
almost tasteless, she coated them with a vinaigrette and finely chopped-up
anchovies. They became delicious.
Rather in the same vein, she cleverly used up rather nice-looking but
not very tasty little sweet corns. Having been boiled, she fried them in butter
with garlic. This brought out all their flavour.
