Page 54 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
What? Of course she had. Or rather Gemma had. Gemma who would have laughed at the idea of studying something as frivolous as art. ‘Yes. That’s right. Seemed more sensible for careers and things.’
‘You will draw a visitor map for us though, won’t you?’ Bella was beaming. ‘It would be so great, for the cookery school packs, and if we’re going to open to the public for castle tours at some point.’
‘If you think I’m good enough.’
‘Seriously,’ Bella tapped the roll of discarded wallpaper in front of them, ‘anything half as good as this would be incredible.’
‘Another thing to pay you for,’ Veronica added. ‘Did you ever find your National Insurance number?’
Jodie shook her head. ‘Slipped my mind. Sorry.’
Chapter Eleven
Pavel’s mother was on her hands and knees cutting back dying growth in the front beds when he set out for the castle. ‘I can do that.’
‘I’m sure you can.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you implying I can’t?’
‘Not at all.’ Pavel knew better than to risk suggesting any such thing.
‘Is it cooking today?’
Pavel nodded.
‘Good. Important skill if you’re going to pin down a busy working woman like the minister.’
‘Pin down?’
‘Tie up.’ She hesitated, suppressing a giggle. ‘If you know what I mean.’
‘Mum!’
‘I meant, it’s not like when I was growing up now, is it? You can’t expect your wife to do all the cooking.’
‘You didn’t do all the cooking.’ Pavel’s dad hadn’t been part of his life, but they’d lived with his grandfather who was a force of nature in the kitchen.
‘Your granddad did the three things his mother taught him and nothing else. And a right performance he made of it too.’
That was fair. Granddad’s days in the kitchen were marked by using every single pan and utensil in the place and then declaring that it wasn’t the chef’s job to wash up. ‘I miss his makowiec though.’
His mum smiled at the memories of poppyseed roll at Christmas. ‘Me too.’
Pavel almost swallowed back the thing he wanted to say next. ‘I’m sorry I never went to Poland with him now.’
His mum sighed. ‘Why didn’t you?’
Honestly, Pavel wasn’t sure. ‘It never seemed the right time. Things needed doing here.’
That was true enough, but his granddad had talked more and more about visiting Warsaw again after he got ill, and Pavel hadn’t fixed that for him. He planned to. He’d got as far as looking at flights and thinking about how and when he might fit in a break from working, but it had never felt like the right time, and, in the end, he’d left it far too late.
Pavel fell into step with the two lads from Lochcarron as he crossed the Low Bridge. ‘I did chips for Becky and the bairn at the weekend,’ one of them enthused. ‘She said it was better than the chippy.’
Inside, the Strachans were already gathered, and Gemma was perched on a stool to one side of the room. She raised a hand in greeting and quickly dropped it again.
Today’s recipe, Bella announced, was lasagne, and they were going to end up with two things to take home. A fully cooked lasagne ready to pop in the oven to reheat and a whole additional family portion of ragu that they could freeze and use at home for lasagne or bolognaise. ‘And for dessert,’ she continued, ‘sticky toffee pudding.’
As with all Bella’s meal plans this one seemed to be designed to drill a whole range of basic kitchen skills into them. Béchamel sauce for the lasagne involved making a roux. ‘We did that on the practice day,’ Pavel remembered.
‘Was that before or after you passed out?’
