Andrew Kay: Cooking up a Storm

Andrew Kay says if you can’t stand the heat, get back in the kitchen

I’m back! No really, I am back. Forget the hospital episode, the scary illness. Forget the gout, all of that is of little consequence when compared to that feeling of not being quite one’s self for the last year.

I hope I have managed to disguise that fairly well; you know, the same weird sense of humour, the same sillinesss and lack of respect for convention. I have tried not to let it show, but for twelve months I have felt somewhat cut adrift. It doesn’t matter why, I just did – and now I am back.

How do I know? Well, it started with a conversation with my bezzie girlfriend M. We were chatting away, and she pointed out that I didn’t seem to do something that had always given me so much pleasure. Don’t worry, it’s nothing that I can’t write about here. What she meant was that I had stopped entertaining. Yes, my big love has always been cooking for my friends, and I suddenly realised that I had not done it in over a year. To be honest, nearly two years.

From being sixteen years old, my idea of fun has been shopping for fresh foods and spending a day or two creating dishes in the kitchen. As a student, I cooked all the time. I once made taramasalata; the recipe was good but it didn’t say that it would make enough to feed a small battalion. I ended up trying to give it away to the neighbours, who, on the whole, were rather lovely Bengali families. Of course, taramasalata was not in their field of culinary experience. It did rather put me off the pink stuff for some time.

I had a similar disaster one easter when I decided to make hot cross buns. The recipe said that it would make twelve, and being a household of six I decided that it would be neccessary to double the quantities to provide enough for us all, and our guests.

“I have felt somewhat cut adrift. It doesn’t matter why, I just did – and now I am back…”

I mixed the dough and left it in a big bowl to rise – which it did. Oh how it rose, monster-like, until it spilled over the edge of the bowl and onto the work surface. I followed the instructions and knocked it back, leaving it to prove for a second time. It grew and it grew and it grew. When it came to rolling the buns, I soon realised that it was going to make far more than 24.

I decided to re-read the recipe, from my favourite book by the inimitable Dorothy Sleightholme. It read like this: “Hot Cross Buns: makes 12 buns, and one fruit loaf.”

ONE fruit loaf, not OR one fruit loaf. Again, I started to tread the street, this time trying to palm off (forgive the religious pun) easter buns to my non-Christian neighbours.

Last Saturday I broke the pattern of not entertaining. I went shopping, called friends and cooked up a storm. We ate and ate and we drank and laughed and they finally left at 2.30am. I was complete again. This was the real me; exhausted, replete from good food and great company, slightly merry (understatement) and very happy. It took a great friend to point me in the right direction once again, and for that I am in her debt once more. Bon appetit!

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