Always ask an expert
They always know something that you don’t. And that no other expert knows, either.
I used to put fresh vegetables and fruit in the chiller part of my fridge. Then I invited a homeless woman to share my roof. She told me that the chiller is fine for vegetables and fruit “if you want them to rot.” After all, she’d worked in a professional kitchen. As what, she never revealed. But she could cook.
For 40 years, I did it all wrong. So, now, I leave fruit and vegetables out of the fridge. Where, eventually, they rot. Maybe not as fast as in the fridge. But I do think they attract flies and ants. In California, potato crisps attract roaches, so what hope a tomato?
She left, and someone else came. A new lodger. I put left-overs in sealed plastic boxes in the fridge. I think everyone does. No, not everyone. Not my new lodger. “I always judge the ingredients to ensure there are no left-overs when I cook,” said he. But, when he put too much for me on my plate, he then protested that I needed to eat it up. “No,” said I, “I’ll put it in a plastic box in the fridge.” Anathema.
He will open a packet of sliced cheese or ham and pop the remainder of the packet, in the packet, in the fridge. At least that. I put them into sealed plastic boxes. “Don’t put them in sealed plastic boxes,” he wailed. “Why not?” asked I. “I can’t see what’s in the plastic boxes.” …
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“Then, open them,” said I, almost adding, “dear Henry, dear Henry.” Shades of Mr Belafonte. His name is not, however, Henry.
He would come in with magnificent contributions to our foodstuffs, comprising entirely end-of-shelf-life produce. Salads, in plastic. Filled sandwiches, in plastic. Ready meals, in plastic.
He told me all the sugary stuff is for me: yoghurt, fruit juice, cream pudding. He does keto (or is it kito?). He makes soup and adds a block of 250 grammes of margarine, so it’s nice and fatty. I said, “It tastes fatty.” It seems it’s meant to. “It makes me want to puke,” I said. Seemingly, it’s not meant to. But it does. “Can you separate my portion off and not put margarine in it?” I asked. No, that would involve a plastic box. “You shouldn’t eat so much sugar,” he tells me. “It’s bad for you.” Says he who buys it. And then doesn’t eat it. Hm.
I wondered if our sourcing these products contributed to, or reduced, the incidence of plastic in the food chain. He was unsure, but doubted it. I doubt whether he’s right to doubt it. We went from filling one PMD (plastic, metal and drinks cartons) waste bag a fortnight to filling three. At least it’s being recycled. And he freezes salmon salads. Seriously.
“Put what you don’t want right now into the freezer,” said I. He’s a technician who can repair freezers. But he hasn’t a clue how they work as a food storage device. “Every time you want to eat something, you have to plan it 24 hours ahead.” “Yes,” I replied, “it’s called planning. Twenty-four-hours-ahead … planning.” The freezer is as opaque to him as a sealed plastic box in the fridge. When the door’s closed, that is. Which is most of the time. Until-you-open-it.
But he had one tip: when you put chilled produce in a freezer, it takes energy to freeze it. Put the frozen produce in the fridge to defrost, it will save you energy in the fridge. Good tip. I bet no other expert ever came up with that tip, even those who’d worked in a professional kitchen. But 24-hours-ahead planning becomes 48-hours-ahead planning. Hee-ho.
He leaves home-made butter out because he can’t spread it direct from the fridge. He asked me to smell it. What did I think? “I think it’s rancid,” I said. “I think that comes from making it from cream you’ve left out of the fridge for 24 hours. It’s okay,” I added, “the portion I had was straight after you’d made it. If I die, you’ll know it never was any good. But at least now, you know it was good for a day.” I, too, can be an expert, if pressed to it.
I have a friend, a few years older than I and a few idiosyncrasies stranger than I. She eats nothing I eat. No glutens, no lactose, no … nothing. The only thing I know that she eats is choux-fleur velouté. It’s a thick cream made of cauliflower. It tastes of cauliflower, which is something I love. But I don’t love it velouté, for some reason. Is texture a part of food enjoyment? I’m used to eating cauliflower raw with dips. Velouté seems strange. More anathema.
Mixers, olive oil, fat, sugar, salt, orange juice, fruit, aspartame, herbs, spices, spatulas, kito (or is it keto?), Teflon coatings, gas v. induction, bains-marie (I checked), steamers, frying pans, woks, kitchen robots, air friers. For 40 years, I’ve been getting my cookery wrong (if my plurals right). But at least, every now and again, someone comes along to tell me how to do it right. Until the next one comes along, that is.
I still use the food mixer my mother bought in 1955. It still mixes. But, it seems, I am flying on a wing of a prayer. “It’s not slow enough.” Could I gear it down? “You’ll bugger the motor, which is on its last legs.” I’m on my last legs. And the mixer’s still going. Strong, I might even add.
I used its potato-peeler attachment to peel two pounds of ragged old potatoes. My sister-in-law uses a knife. Wouldn’t use a potato peeler if it was the last utensil in Christendom. Nor would the woman who had worked in a professional kitchen. Why are people so snotty about potato peelers? Anyhow, for once, I used the Kenwood potato-peeler attachment. Yes, you could hear the laugh from here to Acapulco.
Still going strong. Still getting it wrong. Still here, though.
Hee-ho.
(At least I know what italics are for now.)
First published 28 January 2021
The tale of the indispensable Kenwood potato-peeler attachment
“I’ll make some potatoes,” I said to myself. I checked myself. “You don’t make potatoes, now, do you?” Well, it’s an interesting question. At what point do you stop preparing, peeling and boiling something and start making it?
Any road, my old mum had a Kenwood potato-peeler attachment. It’s the third of the odd objects I got from my parents that linger in my basement (the other two are a Remoska and a deep-fat frier, which apparently fries squashed avocados) and, yes, they do exist (the peelers, that is, not the squashed avocados). I know these Kenwood potato-peeler attachments exist, coz my mum’s is in my basement.
And, what’s more, I’ve got the Kenwood mixer it fits onto. Got that from my old mum too. I don’t know quite how she came to be the possessor (proud or otherwise) of a Kenwood potato-peeler attachment; like as not she’ll have been sitting one evening watching telly with my dad and there’ll have come an advert for it, and she’ll have exclaimed something like, “Well if there was ever something that I need, it’s that!” And my dad will have roused from his dozing to catch the final screen shot of this gleaming Kenwood potato-peeler attachment, and have made a brief mental note, “Christmas, a doddle.”
Whether it was like that or not, I don’t know, but I knew my mum and dad enough to lend credence to the supposition. Well, however it happened, the Kenwood potato-peeler attachment duly came into my mum’s possession and, I’ll admit, I did see it in action on several occasions, so it was no white elephant.
My mum was probably gobsmacked when she duly unwrapped it one Christmas Day long ago and, if she knew anything, she knew not to look gift horses in mouths; so she used it. What you had to do was put your potatoes in it, add some water, set it whirring and in – I won’t say no time, but in some time – it did what it said on the box. It peeled the potatoes.
What it didn’t do was boil them and, indeed, it didn’t remove the eyes or the really scurvy bits of blight you sometimes unsuspectingly discover as you hand-peel potatoes. So, like all labour-saving devices, which will announce to the world that you need to add a plug, or batteries or shoe shine or whatever, it never disclosed the one fact you know about all of them, and that’s that you need to add an occasional application of elbow-grease.
I contemplated the Kenwood mixer, with its dust cover, ensconced behind the food processor and the cornflakes and then contemplated the bother of hoiking it out of its recess, plugging it in, trudging to the basement to get the Kenwood potato-peeler attachment and dust it down and add the water and fit it to the Kenwood mixer; and then I contemplated the four potatoes that I wanted for lunch. And I laughed. All the way to Acapulco. I’m not sure how many potatoes go into the Kenwood potato-peeler attachment, but I suspect that it’s not actually many more than the four potatoes I had before me.
I laughed again. “So, what when it’s done its peeling?” Well, I suppose you then either take a scrubbing brush and scrub it clean; or you consign it to the good care of the dishwasher, set that labour-saving device going and then, an hour later, remove it and then scrub it clean with a scrubbing brush, because the dishwasher won’t quite have done what it said on its box. And then put it away, which in my case is back in the basement.
I looked again at the four potatoes, and reached for a curved bit of metal called a potato peeler and, in three minutes, the potatoes were on the hob. And I’d saved an enormous amount of labour.
In some ways, life’s easier if you just sleep through the adverts. In the time it took to muse these musings, the tatties are done. Lightly charred. Just the way I like ’em.