British Fetish

Lately we’ve been watching a lot of British TV. It’s a bit of an addiction. In addition to some excellent crime dramas (Cracker and Prime Suspect w/ Helen Mirren), we’ve sampled some sitcoms (Chef!), a multi-part documentary about a family trying to go green (aptly titled “It’s Not Easy Being Green”, though an even better title would be “Don’t try this at home unless your husband is an engineer, your children are in college, neither of you has to work, and you can afford to buy a farmhouse in Cornwall with three acres of land. P.S. Make sure you know lots of people you can rope into working for you.”), some nasty reality TV (“How Clean is Your House?”), and even a game show (like Jeopardy, but for college students and much more intense).

But the biggest discovery for me has been Oliver’s Twist – a cooking show with Jamie Oliver.

To truly understand the significance of this, you need to know that a) I don’t really cook; b) I never watch cooking shows; and c) until recently the only cookbook I used was Help, My Apartment Has a Kitchen.

So why Jamie Oliver?

The answer is, it’s simple! He makes everything look easy, he does a lot of basic dishes like a roast chicken, mashed potatoes, or grilled vegetables, and he’s very casual about the whole thing -- more picnic than a formal dinner party. And of course it doesn't hurt that he's cute, charismatic, funny, and very much down to earth. Also he cooks foods I never knew how to approach. I mean, what do you do with squash, for example? Or parsnips?

Having watched a handful of episodes of Season 2, I’ve become a convert – drizzling my salads with olive oil, adding “a good pinch of salt,” and pronouncing “herbs” the British way – to the dismay of the sales clerks at the Willimantic Co-op.

I also went ahead and ordered a couple of Oliver’s cookbook. And that’s when I made my biggest discovery. There are people (see: Movie Dictator) who can’t read instruction manuals. Well, I’m that way with cookbooks. My mind goes blank at the sight of a recipe. All the steps get confused almost immediately, and I can never remember the ingredients. Nor can I picture any of it. Like when a book says “Preheat your oven and an appropriately sized roasting pan to 450 degrees,” what do they mean by “appropriately sized”? Do I even have a roasting pan?

I gave up on the books. My new approach now is to watch a show, pick a dish, take notes, and then try to do it. Everything is done right in front of me, I can see what "roughly chopped" means and what a roasting pan should look like. So far, I’ve discovered that I don’t like the taste of watercress and that I like mashed potatoes better without spring onions. I now own a small pestle and mortar. The other day I bought some summer squash and a small rosemary plant. I still get confused, of course. I still don’t know how to keep the smock alarm from screaming whenever I fry a pork chop. Also, dealing with the hot olive oil jumping off a frying pan is still a challenge. And speaking of the frying pan, can it go into the oven or not? Movie Dictator seems to think I’ll end up with a pile of melted plastic. I tell him, Jamie Oliver did it and his frying pan didn’t melt. Anyway, you get the idea. Not throwing a dinner party yet, but give me a year and who knows, I might even master something like Baked Cod with French beans.