Everything tastes good when you’re a kid



Sometimes on Sundays when I was about 6 or 7, my mother would make scones. Not particularly memorable scones but I would look forward to her making them all the same. She would roll the dough and push out the scone shapes with a drinking glass covered in flour and fingerprints. I’d watch her like a hawk silently willing her not to roll the dough too thick, not to make the scone shapes too close knowing that I got to use what ever was left over. What ever was left I would make into a strawberry Jam tart by rolling out the scone dough to fit a saucer slathering it in jam and then if I had enough scraps I’d make them into strips and have a lattice on the top, I was all proud coz it looked pretty.
I loved the idea of putting something in an oven and having it come out totally different, of the way things magically thickened in the saucepan and of knowing how to fix things if they went wrong like how to smooth out gravy if you hadn’t been paying attention to it and it went lumpy. It was necessary, there was always a reason to cook, if someone was sick you took them something so they wouldn’t have to make the effort or if people came over you offered them a biscuit or cake or you knocked them up a bit of lunch.
I grew up in the 80’s when it seemed like the basic skills of cooking were starting to disappear, everything could be bought prepacked and then microwaved or it could be picked up or delivered in 30 mins so I felt like cooking was practicing a dying art, like learning Latin or knowing how to crochet.
This was long before any lifestyle shows or cooking programs came to light when the only contact I had with anyone cooking was at home where it was done every evening out of practicality or at church gatherings where scores of blue rinsed perms would construct finger sandwiches from a tin of tuna, some mayonnaise, cold shredded chicken and some iceberg lettuce or a bit of ham and cheese if it wasn’t lent, and a sprig of curly parsley to dress it up.
Don’t think that I talk of any of that disparagingly; I always loved those spreads, for a heap of reasons some of it was genuinely tasty too, it’d all be laid out on various table cloths grouped according to whether it was savory or sweet and there was always a potentially life threatening leaky stainless steel urn on a card table piled with a leaning tower of Styrofoam cups, a tin of international roast and a box of Lipton’s tea bags. Scores of cakes, sponge cakes, Swiss rolls, a pav in summer, neenish tarts, scones with sultana’s in, little cupcakes with that thin icing that was poured on top and set like plaster.
(I speak from experience about the leaky urn too, when I was five I stood next to it unknowingly and it dripped on my foot and gave me a blister the exact shape of a jelly bean)
Everything was arranged perfectly to give you the feeling that you were walking into bounty, no one went hungry.
Everyone had something that they could do really well, so and so made a terrific sponge someone else made lovely butterfly cakes and if they were nice then they would give you the recipe or let you in on the trick that made it all work.
My mum was an alright cook, she didn’t seem to enjoy it most of the time, probably because she had to do it everyday, but occasionally she would get revved up by something and go all out to make something different.
She got a recipe from one of my Aunties once for apricot chicken and she went all out to make fried rice to go with it ‘just like the stuff you could get from the Chinese take away’.
She pre cooked the rice and let it dry out on big plastic trays in the second fridge in the shed overnight, and chopped everything up and put them aside into little bowls that we handed to her while she stirred the wok (newly acquired from the man at the Chinese take away incidentally).
In the end she decided it was all too much hard work and you could get it from the Chinese shop much easier and she never made it again but the trying was fun.
Dad’s experiments in the kitchen seemed slightly more dangerous and unpredictable but if they went right the reward was there at the end.
Experiments that worked were the times we made donuts and the time he brought bags and bags of chocolate home from the biscuit factory he worked at and we made our own chocolates.
Ones that I wasn’t so sure about were the time he made cheese scones at 11’o clock on a Saturday night from a block of moldy cheese that was in the fridge “Eat it” he said, “that’s what penicillin is made from, its good for you” or the first time he had to look after us on his own overnight when Mum was away at some function and he tried to make us eat vindaloo. My brother and I were probably only 6 and 7 and we were desperate for Mum to come back to make us something sensible to eat, I think he sensed that we weren’t ready for Indian cuisine just yet coz after that he took us to the beach for an ice cream.
I’ve never really been taught to cook I’ve just practiced, I started cooking for my family out of necessity starting with things like casseroles or chicken schnitzels or spag bol and then when I grew up and moved out of home I’d cook for housemates coz I’d figured out how to cook a roast and sometimes I liked to show off and I got to play around a lot more then because I didn’t have to worry so much about who liked what I could just cook stuff and people would either eat it or they wouldn’t. Sometimes things would turn out really well, sometimes they wouldn’t but that’s how I learnt. I love cooking, I like invading people’s kitchens and making them dinner, though whether they like that is another thing. I love inviting people over and cooking them something they haven’t tried before or they haven’t had in ages. I like cooking for people and talking about cooking and giving people recipes and stealing bits of recipes from something someone else has cooked. There’s no real philosophy to any of it I don’t have a manifesto or anything I just enjoy the art of cooking, sometimes its really simple and sometimes its not but there’s always fun in the attempt. Most of the things I cook have a story attached to them so I like to post them along with the recipes and things that seem to work cooking wise. If you want to ask me anything about cooking feel free, it strokes my ego and I like to be helpful also if you read a recipe and have figured out a great way of cooking something post it in the comments and be revered for all eternity. I’ll put things up as I think of them and try not to waffle on too much though I promise nothing.

SCONESThis recipe isn’t my mothers; I don’t know if she followed a recipe truth be told. This one started out as a recipe from Delia Smith, (a slightly terrifying and very precise English woman who instructs people to cook as if they are idiots) but it evolved slightly as I either left stuff out or tried different things. I was given a video collection of Delia’s how to cook series once as a Christmas present and she devoted an entire episode to how to cook an egg (would you believe 3 minute eggs take 3 minutes to boil) but lets not quibble she has an OBE and I live in a flat in Preston so I’m willing to defer to her in certain instances. This recipe is great to do with kids so if you have kids bring them into the kitchen if you don’t have kids either go out and make one (we’ll all wait for you) or borrow someone else’s kid. Make them wash their hands though, they’re cute but they’re filthy.

Preheat your oven to 220c; I always forget that bit so I like to put it first.
Sift 2 cups of self raising flour into a bowl with a pinch of salt.
Add 30g of butter cut into cubes and rub this into the flour with your finger tips, Delia says its easier to rub in if it is room temperature and I agree with her there it’s a good idea to keep your butter out of the fridge anyway I find unless it’s the height of summer. It just makes it easier to use when you need it for recipes.
Once the butter’s rubbed in it’ll look like breadcrumbs and then you want to add ¾ of a cup of milk.
Stir it in with your hand and if it feels a bit too sticky add a little extra flour as needed.
Knead the dough on a floured surface until it’s smooth and either pat or roll it out to about 3 or 4 centimeters thick before you start making the scone shapes either with a scone cutter or just a floured glass. If you have left over dough you can either roll it out and make more scones or save it and make my little jam tart.
Place them on to a baking tray either spaced a little apart or collected together. There are two schools of thought on the whole scone/tray arrangement, if they are spaced apart then they get crispier tops but if you group them together the sides stay soft and they hold each other up apparently. The thought of food huddling together in an oven disconcerts me so I’ve always spaced my scones out so they can tough it out alone but you do what you like. Brush their little heads with milk and then bake them for about 12 to 15 mins, check them after about 10 mins by just cracking the oven door a bit and when they’re all nice and brown they’re ready to go.

LITTLE JAM TARTGrab a heatproof saucer and flour it a little, roll out your remaining dough to about 1cm thick and cut off any overhanging bits. Spread with a generous amount of strawberry jam right to the edges ( I like strawberry jam but you can put what you like). Use the over hanging bits of pastry to make a couple of long thin strips that you can criss cross over the top of the tart. Brush the little lattice bits with milk and bake in the oven usually about 10 mins will do it.

Eat the scones first coz the jam thing is like lava when it comes out of the oven, I learned that the hard way it wasn’t fun.