Page 34 of Mistaken Impression

“Yes, you do. You’re an actor.”

“I’m not acting now, Ella.”

I’m not sure this is helping, and I’m struggling to breathe for some reason. “I—I think you’ve probably got it now. Try again with the chef’s knife.”

He releases my hand and steps back, letting me move out of the way, and he picks up the chef’s knife again.

“I take it I’m supposed to imagine I’m holding your hand?” He looks at me with a slight smile touching at his lips.

“If it helps.”

He adjusts the handle and I have to smile, because he’s holding the knife perfectly now.

“Who taught you that?” he asks.

“Nobody.”

“So you didn’t have to hold your tutor’s hand to learn how to use a knife?”

I chuckle. “No. He wasn’t the hand-holding type. He just shouted at us when we got things wrong.”

“Hmm… I think I prefer your approach.”

I give him a second onion and watch while he repeats my earlier actions to perfection, needing no additional instructions.His techniques might be lacking, but he’s got a great memory… I’ll give him that.

“What do we do with them now?” he asks, standing back.

“Put them into the roasting pan.” He does as I’ve said and I grab a couple of potatoes. “These are big, so we’ll cut them into wedges instead of chunks.” I demonstrate how to do that, and he copies me yet again.

“So, when we’re recording this, there’ll be a tray of vegetables already prepared, and I’ll just cut up a few more and add them, while talking to camera?” he says, scattering the potatoes on top of the onions.

“Exactly. Like I say, you’ll have to add the oil and spices by yourself, but I’ll show you how to do that in a minute.”

“Okay. What’s next?”

“The bell peppers, please.” He hands over the two large red ones, and I put them on the chopping board. “There are few different ways of preparing these, and while a lot of professional chefs would pour scorn on me, I’m going to show you the simplest way… just because you’re less likely to cut yourself.”

“Sounds good to me.” I look up and he smiles down at me, although he quickly averts his gaze to the pepper as I show him how to take off the top and de-seed it, cutting it in half before I slice it.

“We don’t want it too thin, or it’ll burn before the potatoes are cooked.”

I hand him the second pepper, and although he wastes a little more than I did and struggles with the de-seeding, he does a reasonable job and adds the slices to the pan.

“We’ll have the zucchini next.”

He stares at me, then looks at the remaining vegetables lying on the countertop. “Zucchini?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry. What on earth is a zucchini?”

“Oh… I forgot. Even though we speak the same language, we sometimes don’t.” I reach over, picking one up. “It’s a courgette to you.”

“I’m sure it would be, if I knew what to do with it. But I’ll need to remember to call it a zucchini during the recording.”

“It might be useful if you could, yeah.”

I slice it at an angle. “Why are you cutting it like that?” he asks.

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