Page 85 of A Recipe for Love
‘Well I’ve given it this long.’ Flinty looked momentarily reflective but the moment passed and her usual business-like expression returned. ‘Anyway by the time you’ve finished with them today they’ll both be domestic goddesses, won’t they?’
Bella laughed. ‘They’d better behave.’
‘They’re much better in company. Usually.’
By the time her first eight students had gathered, Bella had read her plan for the day three more times and checked her ingredients twice. She was ready. Or if she wasn’t, it was too late to worry about it now. She looked around the gathered faces. Darcy full of excitement and anticipation. Veronica reserved but not actually looking as though she was chewing a wasp. Pavel, the only bloke, quiet but attentive in contrast to Jill’s buzzy butterfly chit-chat. The two women Nina had roped in from parents and toddlers were both young, and introduced themselves as sisters, Molly and Katy. ‘We bunked off home ec at school,’ Katy told her.
‘And our mum’s an awful cook.’
‘The health visitor says learning to cook’s good for the little ones though.’
Molly nodded at her sister’s comment. ‘Otherwise they grow up on chips and dino nuggets. And that’s no good.’
‘You grew up on dino nuggets,’ Katy pointed out.
‘Yeah. And I got pregnant when I was still at school.’
‘That wasn’t cos of the nuggets. That was cos you can’t keep your knickers on.’
‘She’s smug cos she were engaged before she got up the duff.’
Her sister laughed. ‘Only about twenty minutes before though.’
‘So anyway we want to learn to make stuff that doesn’t come out of the freezer.’
‘Do your partners cook?’ Bella asked.
Both girls squealed with laughter. And then Molly gasped. ‘You should do a course for them though. Cooking for useless dads.’
‘And useless lads.’
Bella made a mental note. That actually wasn’t a terrible idea.
The other two women, who’d been roped in by Jill from her congregation in Locharron, both said they cooked a little bit, but were stuck in a rut of the same five or six meals they did again and again. Figuring those were the two who probably had the least risk of setting fire to their own hair or baking the mixing spoon in with their dessert batter, Bella decided that when it came to time to move some of the group into the smaller prep kitchen those were the pair who could most safely be left unsupervised.
She took a deep breath. ‘Hello everyone! Thank you for coming. I’m Bella and this is the very first session at the Highland Cookery School. Thank you for being my guinea pigs. At the end of the day I’d really appreciate it if you could fill in the feedback forms we give you and that’ll help us plan how to get this business properly started.’
She invited the group to introduce themselves and tried to remind herself of all the names as they did so. Molly and Katy were shaping up to be quite the comedy double act. Claire and Cath, the women from Jill’s church, were friendly and down to earth. Jill introduced herself breezily. She seemed to know everyone already, and had greeted everybody with a hearty hug when she arrived. Even Veronica, who had been wholly horrified by the experience.
Pavel was next. ‘Hi everyone. I’m Pav. I think I know most people.’
Claire nodded enthusiastically. ‘Pavel did my fitted wardrobes.’
‘I did. I’m here because I rely on my mother far too much for home-cooked meals and it would be nice to be able to make something for her for a change.’
The massed ranks of the women in the room let out a small collective ‘Aw.’ Bella had absolutely no idea how Pavel was still single. It seemed like pretty much everyone in the western Highlands would happily ditch whatever partner they had in his favour in a heartbeat.
That left the two Lady Lowbridges. Darcy jumped in first. ‘Hi. I’m Lady Lowbridge, but you all call me Darcy. Now my daddy was a great cook back home. He worked in a diner and he used to say he made the best damn steak sandwich in Manhattan, so he was the cook at home and then…’ Her voice tailed off. ‘I don’t know. Alexander wasn’t really big into food and I like to watch my weight so…’ She shrugged.
The group fell silent. Bella nodded at Veronica. ‘And you?’
‘I’m Veronica, Lady Lowbridge. Good morning everyone.’
That seemed to be all they were going to get out of Veronica. ‘All right then. Well, welcome everybody. We’re going to be making three courses today, and they’re all recipes you can take away and make on their own or as part of the whole meal.’ She handed around the menu sheets she’d printed out, with Highland Cookery School at the top in neat italics. ‘First off then we have pinwheels, which sounds fancy but is basically a little pastry savoury biscuit thing. If it’s a dinner party you could serve those as canapés with drinks when your guests arrive or with some salad leaves as a starter. And by making those we’ll learn to make rough puff pastry, which you can then use again and again for pies and tarts.’
She glanced around the room. People were listening and nobody looked quite ready to run for the hills yet.
‘Then main course will be fish pie with wilted spinach. So that includes a bit of fish cookery, and we’ll make a white sauce and a really lovely creamy mashed potato. And you can add more veg into this recipe if you choose to, so great for getting kids to eat their vegetables.’
