Cooking with Nicky #1, #2, #3 and #4

It was around a year ago that I started this blog.  I haven't really written that much in it, the photos aren't spectacular (although I like to think that they might be getting slightly better as I take more of them) and I have no idea who actually reads it, but I've really enjoyed doing it.  Although sitting at a computer is sometimes the last thing I want to do on a weekend or after a day of looking at a screen, the sense of satisfaction after having actually written something, about putting my thoughts into a concrete (though virtual) form, never lessens.  So hopefully I will carry on writing about food for at least another year.

One of the effects of this blog is something I did not expect at all, which is that I have apparently acquired Knowledge.  Over the past year, I have frequently heard the phrase "you must know x about x foodstuff, you have a blog".  In all honesty, dear readers, I know diddly squat about food.  I have had no training, I've never taken any cookery lessons apart from those in my final year of primary school and I certainly have no qualifications.

Yet somehow I have started teaching a friend how to cook.  This makes total sense.

'Cooking with Nicky' did not get off to a particularly auspicious start.  After a request to 'learn more about meat', I started off by showing her how to make a quick pork dish - pork loin steaks served with a honey and mustard sauce, accompanied by mashed potato.  Not the best dish in the world when it turns out afterwards that The Student doesn't really like mustard.  And has since confessed not to really like potato that much either.  Still, onwards!

Lesson #2 went waaay better - everyone likes cake, so we were already on to a winner when I showed her how to make Nigella's carrot cupcakes with cream cheese icing.  Just look at the beautiful things that she created!  Oh, you can see why mothers cry when their children bring them something homemade...

Oh, the heart swells.

Heady with the success of Lesson #2, we bravely returned to meat for Lesson #3, to make Diana Henry's Pacific Lime Chicken.  Chicken thighs marinated in soy sauce, honey, sugar, lime juice and thyme, deftly manoevred with knife, fork and spoon so as not to actually touch anything that would remind The Student of dead flesh, were then roasted in the oven and served with a green salad.  So unbelievably easy (even with the manoevring) and so delicious.  I unfortunately did not take a picture this time, but I've made it myself before and it looks a bit like this:

Mmm, golden crispy skin.

Lesson #4 was rather impromptu and involved another chicken number, this time to use up some chicken breasts and veggies.  Now, I am not a natural rustler.  I am not one of those people who can always produce some amazing feast out of half a potato, some cold beans and an orange, declaring 'oh, I just rustled it up'.  Admittedly, my rustled dish will usually be edible (note the word 'usually'), but I feel a lot more confident with a cookbook by my side.  My mother would say that this is because of my upbringing - not that she always used a cookbook, oh no, the very opposite as she was a very ambitious rustler, hence me learning to cook 'to survive'.

So thinking what to do with chicken and vegetables, not the most taxing of challenges, took a remarkably long time.  Eventually, we plumped for roasting the veg in a dish, then halfway through the cooking time, smearing the chicken with sundried tomato pesto and sitting it on top of the veg to roast along together.  See, see how ludicrous it is that I should be teaching someone how to cook?!

And yet, I do.  Because she is lovely and humours my insistence on free-range chicken, my weird request to take the bones home with me to make stock and my kitchen fascism on the most efficient way to peel a garlic clove (flatten it with the heel of your hand first, the skin will pop off a treat).

Next lesson: more cake.