Bad Cook

Not strictly baba ganoush, but totally great. And, hey – if Patricia Field taught us anything, it’s that there are no rules in fashion.

Advice

I am the world’s most prolific hander-out of unsolicited advice. All you need to do is ring me and mention that you’ve got a bit of a scratchy throat and I’m off: ‘Oh you must buy First Defence immediately,’ I will say. ‘It works retroactively, so just take it whenever – it shortens the life of your cold, you know. Alternatively put a raspberry leaf on your head. Drink hot water and honey. Eat/drink lemon. My advice is to take a few days off work. Go to bed as soon as you feel that tickle in the back of your throat, shut the curtains and sleep for 24 hours. It’s a miracle cure. Put your out of office on your email and then you can relax and get better. Paracetamol every 4 hours. Time it – put on an alarm. Every four hours. Honestly, it’s a miracle cure. Anyway do all of that and you’ll be better. Ring me in the morning. Nice talking to you, bye.’

And it’s not just health. Buying or selling houses: ‘Oh don’t wait for the market to do anything, buy when you need to and sell when you need to. People who try to play the market always get shafted.’ Boyfriends: ‘If he’s not dropping hints about marriage after 18 months, move on’. Families: ‘Oh, you can only have the relationship with your mother that you can have. Don’t idealise it and you’ll never be disappointed.’ Diets, pets, make-up, skincare, haircare – I’ve got an answer for everything and force it on everyone, unasked.

I’m trying not to, I swear to God. I wrote a thing once for a magazine about friendship and read a lot of stuff about how to be a good friend and how to be a good listener. And one of the top tips for being a good friend was to not hand out unsolicited advice. The other top tips, if you’re interested are:

– Don’t interrupt.

– Don’t garnish your friend’s story with a story about something similar that happened to you.

– Don’t go ‘mm hmmm’ all the time.

– Don’t finish people’s sentences.

I do ALL of these things, ALL the time. It’s a miracle I have any friends at all. Oh wait, I DON’T.

I don’t know why I have to hand out advice all the time; I must stop. And I’m almost always wrong. And don’t tell me that it comes from a place of love, because it doesn’t; it comes from a place of meddling. From a place that believes that if you’re not doing it my way, you’re not doing it the right way.

For example, I have to restrain myself from going round to my friend’s house with a bottle of Aveeno and some Eight Hour Cream for her boyfriend’s hands, which are very cracked from doing a lot of gardening. (I dispensed this miracle-cure recipe last weekend but I can tell it has not been acted on.)

And the temptation to ring up some friends of mine who are swapping their large-ish flat for a miniscule flat in London and a house in the countryside – (they’ve got two children! Who aren’t going to get any SMALLER) – in order to give them a jolly good lecture is, at times, overpowering.

The only thing I can console myself with is that I know that I do it and I know that it’s bad. I am trying to do a thing where I only hand out advice if someone specifically says ‘What do you think?’ Then I take a deep breath and talk non-stop for one hour. But no-one ever says that. No-one cares what you think they should do. They just want you to nod and smile and say ‘Oh, I am so sympathetic,’ and then tell a joke.

Which brings me to coffee and walnut cake. I was feeling a bit scatty today while I was making it and I used plain flour instead of self-raising flour. But rather than throwing the bowl against the wall and storming out into the garden to kick over some flower pots and then starting all over again, I sprinkled 1 teaspoon of baking powder over the mixture. And the cake came out better than, I think, any cake I’ve ever made.

So there we are: if you ever use plain flour instead of self-raising flour by mistake, sprinkle over 1 teaspoon of baking powder. Just don’t ring me up and say you’re not feeling well.

Coffee and Walnut Cake

Makes one small loaf – 7in x 4in

119g butter

119g sugar

2 eggs (weigh these and then use the same amount of flour, sugar and butter. Mine weighed 119g.)

119g flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp vanilla essence

1 tbsp espresso powder dissolved in ¾ tbsp hot water

50g walnuts, roughly chopped

1 Butter a loaf tin.

2 Beat the butter until it’s creamy and then beat in the sugar until pale and fluffy.

3 Then beat in one egg at a time. Mine curdled to buggery but it didn’t make any difference to the end result. You can in theory add one tablespoon of flour after each egg to stop it from doing this.

4 Fold in the flour. Stare at the recipe and then stare at your flour packet and scream ‘FUCK!!’ then reach for some …

5 Baking powder. Add 1 tsp, sieved, so there are no lumps and mix in. Add the vanilla essence, coffee and walnuts.

6 Pour into your cake tin and then bake at 180ºC for 30–35 mins or until the top is firm.

Things No-one Ever Tells You About Cooking

1 It is not easy. You have to learn how to do it, like you learn how to drive a car. Some people do find it easy – they have a natural flair for putting things together and making them delicious. But they are lucky. If you are reading this book, you are probably not one of these people and if you haven’t ever really found cooking easy then don’t worry – neither do I. And I’ve been cooking almost constantly for FIVE YEARS.

2 When you are cooking steak on a stove-top griddle or in a frying pan, don’t poke it about. Get your cooking surface hot, lay your steak down with a big sizzle and then LEAVE IT ALONE for however many minutes you are frantically guessing your steak is going to take to cook on one side. The same goes for potatoes. Get your pan hot, then lay your par-boiled potatoes in the fat, turn the heat down to medium and then don’t touch them.

3 If you want to cook the top of a fried egg without having to flip it over (and risk breaking it and then having to slit your wrists) hover a pan lid a few centimetres over the yolk once the white is cooked – the steam will finish off the top.

4 Olive oil burns! And then tastes bitter and horrible. So stop frying things in it you lunatic. Use groundnut or sunflower oil for frying and olive oil for dressing salads. If you like cooking curries, invest in some ghee – clarified butter that doesn’t burn when you fry things in it – you can buy it in Waitrose.

5 When you are leaving a dough to rise, put it in a bowl and then stretch some cling film over the top of the bowl to form an airtight seal. This means that air can’t get in and form a crust on the surface of the dough, which will stop it from rising to its full potential and also make it difficult to shape later. WHY DID NO-ONE TELL ME?! My friend Henry does a less dainty (though just as effective) thing by wrapping a clean bin liner round loaves rising on boards and tucking the ends in.

6 Salt is the key to absolutely everything. If you are baffled as to why your curry doesn’t taste nice, or your pastry is bland or your bolognese lacks a certain something, sprinkle over a large pinch of salt and see if that helps.

Valentine’s Day

When I was younger and always had boyfriends who didn’t like me, I was forced to dismiss Valentine’s Day as something that didn’t matter.

On about February 6th, whichever boyfriend who didn’t like me I was with would say: ‘You don’t actually want to DO something for Valentine’s Day do you? I mean, do you actually want flowers?!’ And I would say, as my heart broke into a million weeny pieces, ‘No! Don’t be stupid’.

Then I would be doubly crushed when they really didn’t do anything. And I would sit at work on Valentine’s Day and watch as all the other girls (who had been clever and threatened their boyfriends with castration if they didn’t get onto Wild At Heart pronto and cough up BIG BUCKS) graciously and coyly received bouquets of flowers so huge they interfered with their keyboards.

And then I got a nice boyfriend, and his name was Giles. And I confessed to him everything. I said ‘The thing is that it’s not like I’m a spoilt cow and want presents all the time and stuff, but when you’re sitting at work and everyone gets flowers except you it’s just so *sniff* SO HORRIBLE *HOWL* and you feel SO UNLOVED.’ And he said ‘Okay, I’ll send you flowers on Valentine’s Day.’

That year I got a bunch of flowers so ginormous that they prevented me from typing anything for two days and everyone complained about them for the three months I kept them on my desk. I finally got rid of them on my birthday (May) when Giles sent me another giant bouquet whose fronds stretched right over from Features to the Arts desk.

But my point is that Valentine’s Day matters. I have a feeling that I’m preaching to the converted, but I want every girl to be able to say to their boyfriend or husband without fear of recrimination: ‘Valentine’s Day matters. It might not matter to YOU, but it matters to ME.’ Not paying heed to Valentine’s Day because it’s ‘so commercial’ or ‘so fake’ or whatever other excuse they come up with not to put their hands in their pockets, is like refusing to buy Christmas presents. What are you left with? Nothing. £40 (MINIMUM) that you’ll only go and spend on drink.

So it matters, it matters to ME. And although there’s so much stuff about it and it all gets quite boring, I still don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing a bit of baking in its honour. I like these because the redness of the raspberries denotes hearts and love without things getting completely mad and out of control.

Love Muffins

(i.e. muffins with raspberry and white chocolate)

Makes eight