Deborah Ross
PHEW, phew and double phew. Christmas is over. Immensely stressful for everyone, I know, but especially stressful for me because I've got this rather neurotic habit of not being able to go to anyone's house without counting how many Christmas cards they got — 'Good God, I've never liked them much but they're a 76-card couple!' — and comparing it with our own tally. Not that we aren't popular. We are. Fabulously. This year, even, we got a card from 'The Corbyn Garage, Your Local MOT, Repair and Unipart Care Centre'. It was our only card, as it happens, but it was very nice, with a robin on it and glitter and everything and signed by 'John' and 'Gary' and 'Mustafa' and 'Steve', which should actually count for four, when you think about it. I was, I must confess, tempted to iron it so that it would take up more space on the mantelpiece, and so people would gasp as they left, 'OK, they're only a onecard couple, but did you see the size of it'?'
Now, on to the New Year. Resolutions? Yes. Rather. Including learning to cook something ... um .. . new? I can cook (just) and do, but it's always the same things. And when I go to the supermarket, what do I always return with? Yup, the same things. OK, sometimes I'll buy something mad to show what fun and adventurous and spontaneous and worth-knowing card-worthy people we are. Kumquats. I recently tried kumquats. Have you ever tasted kumquats? It's like sucking vinegar and meths through a lemon. It makes your mouth go as tight and pinched as a dog's bottom. `Yum-yum,' we all went, tossing them straight into the bin.
So. I decide to enrol at Leith's School of Food and Drink for one of their Saturday morning practical cookery classes. I haven't, I must say, had a cookery lesson since school, when I did domestic science 0-level and failed. However, there were mitigating circumstances, including the fact that my oven door fell off midway through the practical. My Victoria sponge? As light and fluffy and melt-in-the-mouth as a Volvo estate. 'Oh dear,' said the independent adjudicator from the Associated Examining Board. 'Oh dear,' said Miss Martin, the domestic science teacher. 'Oh dear,' said my mother, when I got home later. 'Oh dear,' echoed my little sister, smirking.
Once I've booked Leith's, I get a letter of confirmation that contains what must, surely, be the most chilling four-word sentence in the English language: 'Please bring an apron.' An apron? An apron? I don't have an apron. I've never even had an apron. Yikes. What to do? The horror and panic were such that I must have kind of blanked it because, come Saturday morning, I still hadn't done anything about the apron crisis and had to grab the only thing I could find, which was a vivid green, over-the-head overall thingy with Evansham Services' stitched across it that our cleaner accidentally left behind. Our cleaner is wonderfully useless and magnificently incomprehensible. 'Missy Debwa, I come next week on Tuesday, but not the Tuesday before Wednesday. I come the Tuesday after Wednesday. OK?' The Tuesday after Wednesday? Friday, of course.
Leith's School of Food and Wine is in smart west London, behind Kensington High Street. We are, initially, all assembled
downstairs for a coffee. There are 40 or so of us. 1 was, yes, expecting most to be rich, posh housewives called Camilla with husbands (Julian? Miles? Giles?) in banking and children called Amelia, Charles, Sophia, George, Candida and Dean (just in case the money runs out and he has to go to state school). But. no, a good lot — at least half
are men, actually. Men called Martin or Paul or John or Mike. Mostly, they seem to have been dispatched by their girlfriends and wives. 'This is my birthday present,' says a Paul, with such despondency I think he'd have actually preferred a soap-on-a-rope. Still, he comes alive later when it's time to use the Magimix and pasta machine. Men love these things, don't they? It's like Scalextric in the kitchen. Paul says that, once class is over, he's going straight to Barkers on the high street to get a Magimix.
We move upstairs to the kitchens, where all the ingredients we need are pre-weighed and laid out for us. And the pans we need are laid out for us. And a 'washer-upper' — a nice boy who stands at the sink — is laid out for us. Our menu today is: roast tomato compote, griddled pheasant breasts with homemade tagliatelle and red pesto, Sauternes and pear jelly. The staff are very nice and friendly, mingling about, giving advice. They like my overalls. They like them so much they say, 'Here, borrow a nice, white Leith's one.'
It's great, stirring and tasting without having to chop or weigh or scrub or anything. I'm not sure about the pasta business, though. Life might be too short to make your own. However, the red pesto is brilliant. Basically, it's just garlic, basil, pine nuts, sundried tomatoes, olive oil and Pecorino cheese, all whizzed up in the Magimix. But it's much, much tastier arid more authentic than the jarred sort. And a word about the tomato compote, which I wasn't looking forward to, possibly because it sounds like compost. But, actually, it's dead easy and one of the most scrumptious dishes I have ever eaten. It's tomatoes quartered, baked in the oven with brown sugar, then mixed with shallots, sage and balsamic vinegar, and served with crusty bread and goats' cheese. (All recipes can be found in Leith's cookery Bible, by the way.)
Whatever, it's been a jolly good, useful morning (best way to peel fiddly shallots? Immerse in boiling water first), well worth the £65. And I've since made both the pesto and tomato compote at home, to substantial acclaim. I might even get a pasta machine. Not for pasta, no, but it rolls things very thin and might be useful for, say, rolling out Christmas cards to make them look bigger, if you are the sort of person who does that kind of thing.
Leith's School of Food and Wine, 21 St Alban 's Grove, London W8 5BP; tel.' 020 7229 0177; www.leiths.com.
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