Page 46 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
‘I think we thought earlier might be better. Make a bit of an event of it.’ Jodie was only half listening, but she caught a change in Flinty’s tone. ‘And we have our own Lowbridge events expert now.’
That sounded good. She wondered who that was.
Jodie was still reeling slightly from that particular penny dropping as Flinty drove them back over to the castle, flinging the Land Rover round the bends with barely a glance at the road. ‘It’s grand that you’re sorting out the Christmas light switch-on. Hopefully having someone else involved will stop Anna and Nina turning it into World War Three.’
‘I thought they were friends?’ Bella asked.
‘They are,’ Flinty confirmed. ‘Very good friends. Who also both want to be Queen Bee, and you can’t have two queens in a hive, can you? Don’t worry, Gemma. I’m sure you’ll be able to keep the peace.’
Keeping the peace sounded like a very Gemma thing to do. Her stories from work had always been about how everything was in a mess but she’d managed to sort it out. Her team bickered like schoolkids, she said, but Gemma always saved the day.
Back in the castle kitchen Jodie tried to help put the shopping away, but every time she put something on a shelf either Flinty or Bella – or, on a couple of occasions, both – slid in behind her and moved it. Eventually she gave up and perched herself on a stool at the kitchen island to wait.
Flinty’s tattie-scone lesson started with the basics. ‘So you start off by making your mash.’
‘Great.’ Bella was opening and closing cupboards, grabbing pans and utensils. She dumped a bag of potatoes in front of Jodie. ‘How many do we need?’
‘Couple of decent-sized ones? It’s just a practice batch.’
Jodie looked at the potatoes. She wasn’t sure what they were doing in front of her. Bella handed her a chopping board, knife and peeler. Oh. Right. OK then. Peeling and chopping potatoes. Jodie clapped her hands. ‘I can do this. We did this on Tuesday.’
Flinty stared. ‘You hadn’t chopped a potato before Tuesday?’
‘Of course I had.’ Had she? Chips came from the chip shop and roast potatoes came out of a bag in the freezer or on the plate already on her roast dinner in the pub. Before that… ‘With my mum,’ she murmured.
‘Good. Well, you need to chop them up and pop them to boil with a good bit of salt.’
‘Parboil?’ Jodie asked hopefully, testing out one of Bella’s cooking words from the lesson.
The two other women exchanged a look. Flinty shook her head. ‘No pet. Just boil-boil.’ She turned back to Bella while Jodie did her best not to peel the skin off her knuckles. ‘You need a good floury potato. Nothing too waxy.’
Bella nodded as if that was obvious. Jodie didn’t even know what the difference might be. Waxy sounded like a bad thing for food.
While the potatoes bubbled they weighed out the flour. Flinty nodded approvingly at Bella. ‘I mostly do it by eye, and you’ll be all right doing the same once you know what you’re aiming for.’
That was the part of cooking that was a mystery to Jodie. She understood recipes. She couldn’t necessarily follow one, but she understood the idea. All the quantities and instructions were laid out and if you followed it to the letter you’d end up with the result you were supposed to get. That wasn’t what happened when Jodie tried to follow a recipe, but that was, she’d always assumed, because Jodie was doing it wrong. The idea that there was a world beyond recipes where you could look at a potato and know how long to cook it and whether it was floury or waxy was a whole new mystery.
Flinty prodded the potatoes with the tip of a knife. ‘They’re going to need a good fifteen minutes. Why don’t you fill me in on the big Hogmanay plans while we’re waiting?’
‘Yes. Why don’t you?’ Jodie turned towards the new voice. Veronica was standing in the doorway to the rest of the castle. ‘I asked Darcy but she said you had everything in hand.’
Veronica’s presence put Jodie further on edge.
‘She absolutely does,’ Bella grinned. ‘She’s a godsend.’
‘I don’t know about that. I’m not much help in the kitchen,’ Jodie muttered.
‘It’s not the kitchen where we need the help.’
‘So…’ Veronica pulled up a seat at the island. ‘I am all ears.’
Jodie could have handled this if she’d had a chance to prepare. If she’d had a chance to rehearse and get her thoughts and her words all into a neat line she could have made it sound like she knew what she was doing. She was almost nearly sure that she could. She had not had that time. ‘I don’t want to go on.’
Veronica didn’t reply straight away. Did Jodie catch her brow creasing ever so slightly? ‘Oh while I’m here, did you remember to give Darcy your National Insurance details?’
Out of the frying pan. ‘I…’ She what? ‘Actually, I think my old payslips were electronic. On my old laptop.’
‘It blew up,’ Bella helpfully reminded them.
