I’m addicted to cookbooks and was lucky to receive these beauties for Christmas.
A new cookbook isn’t just a book, is it? It’s potentially life changing. It won’t just turn me into the cook I’ve always wanted to be (talented, creative, never harassed). It will also make my life just like those atmospheric photos in the book - the ones that aren’t of actual recipes, but of ‘things’. Like a bundle of antique cutlery on a zinc-topped garden table, surrounded by honeysuckle and photogenic dogs, and Nigel Slater tending his alliums in an oatmeal polo necked sweater.
That’s what I want! I want Nigel Slater’s life. He gets up at 6 am, apparently, to read and drink coffee in silence from a handmade earthenware cup.
I try to haul myself out of bed by 8.30 then sit writing in my PJ bottoms and an Asda Christmas jumper. However, when I leaf through these books I actually believe my life will be like that - that I’ll actually have Nigel Slater’s zinc-topped garden table if I stare at the photos hard enough.
For instance, from my beautiful new Diana Henry book:
I want THESE apples instead of the wizened articles in our fruit bowl with the sinister runny stuff at the bottom!
I want to wake up and walk in this snowy landscape, instead of passing the fly-tipped fridge-freezer and rain-sodden chicken nuggets on my way to Londis for milk!
I even want these PIGS!
Then I realise that my life will never be like a lavish cookbook, because neither Nigel nor Diana would do this…
Inspired by my new books, I decide to do something incredibly show-offy. I buy a huge sack of dried chickpeas (3kg for £5.99 I kid you not!), drag the bastards home and tip them into a bowl to soak.
Look at me, I think, soaking legumes! It feels as if this simple, wholesome act will cancel out all of my hardcore pub-and-ciggies years in one fell swoop.
It’ll undo all the bad things I’ve ever done in my life - like buying my ex an answerphone for his birthday because I wanted one, and stealing a carton of candied lemon slices from the Spar in Bourtreehill, Irvine, in 1979. All that is cancelled out now because I’m a thrifty legume soaker!
I’m not saying there’s not much excitement in my life, but I find myself watching the chickpeas swelling up.
Granted, you can’t actually see much going on. In that respect it’s a bit like watching a woman being pregnant. The changes aren’t visible, but you know it’s all going on inside.
By the time Jimmy wanders into the kitchen, the chickpeas have swollen so much they’re sticking out of the water like a lumpy beige island in the (very) full bowl.
‘That’s a lot of chickpeas,’ he remarks.
A couple of hours later they’ve swollen more than I could have ever imagined. If I could halt the process, I would. I suppose I could take them out of the water, but what use would they be then, to man or beast? So I decant a load into a second bowl, and then a third one, as they seem to keep on swelling.
Jimmy comes into the kitchen again to make a coffee. ‘Oh my God,’ he says.
‘It’s fine,’ I insist. ‘We love chickpeas!’ Meaning daughter and I. But do we love them this much, I wonder as I boil them up in our biggest pan, which is actually a jam pan?
‘Making chickpea jam?’ Jimmy enquires.
I’m too overwhelmed to reply. Overwhelmed by the enormity of deciding what to do with the blighters apart from make humous, obviously, and a fragrant cauliflower and chickpea curry that might be delicious, but will be forgotten instantly as people only remember my cock-ups.
‘What was that thing you once made?’ Jimmy asks now, watching as I drain the scalding chickpeas over the sink, one sieve-full at a time.
‘Can’t remember,’ I reply.
‘You know. That horrible stuff, that stuff you made—’
‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’ I takes nine sieve-fulls to drain the fuckers. Nine!
‘Was it some kind of terrible chickpea paste?’ Jimmy asks, frowning.
‘Why are you saying “chickpea paste”? It’s called humous—’
‘What was it again?’
Having dealt with gallons of bubbling chickpea water - only just managing not to take my skin off - I’m in no mood for this. ‘It was Jamie Oliver’s butterbean dip from one of his early books. A very early book, when he still rode a scooter and looked like a child—’
‘That was it! Remember how gassy we all were after it? How it made us all—’
‘Will you ever stop going on about that?’
‘—So, so gassy. Felt like I had a hot air balloon strapped to my—’
On he goes, reminiscing happily about the terrible gas incident of 2005. Didn’t we have to cancel a social engagement due to embarrassing bloat?
On and on he goes until his words have no meaning, and FAART - as I think he’s saying - might as well be an IKEA shelving system, compatible with the PUMPA worktop and BLAASTO drawers as I stopped listening an hour ago. Instead, I’m doggedly bagging up boiled chickpeas, to be frozen for later use (as road aggregate, perhaps? Or to pelt at burglars?).
Finally twelve bags of chickpeas are ready to go in the freezer, when they’ve cooled.
Jimmy retires to bed, having enjoyed an evening of chickpea merriment and now thinking no more of it.
For him, a line has been drawn under the chickpeas.
But for me, there is no line. I now have to sit up and wait for the bags of warm chickpeas to cool, so they can be frozen. It’s as soul-sapping as sitting up waiting for your teenager to come home. Time seems to slow to an agonising pace.
I keep looking at the clock and it hasn’t moved. Has time actually stopped?
NO I CAN’T GO TO BED I NEED TO SIT UP AND MAKE SURE THEY’RE ALL RIGHT!
Okay, I know the chickpeas would be all right if they sat out cooling all night. But now I’m this invested, I’m determined to see it through.
So I wait and wait as the seasons change and my face crumples and sags and my life slides away. Chickpea fact: they take about seventeen weeks to cool down enough to go into the freezer.
Finally, in they go.
Sweet dreams, hateful pellets of doom!
I’d like to say I plan to make delicious curries and stir fries and even chickpea sandwiches, as suggested here.
But you know what? I’ve gone right off them.
Love,
Fiona xx
PS Looking for something that’s the very opposite of doom? My new novel, The Woman Who Ran Away From Everything, is out on March 14 - and you can pre-order here!
You know what the problem here is? Jim has no sense of hummus...
Thank you Fiona, as always, for making my morning so much brighter with your fabulous humor!! :))
It's a wonderful way to laugh away the grey, and snowy weather.