A proper chef…

To be honest with you, today could have been about anything. The weather, the strange disappearance of airliners, I even thought about a rant at the Old Testament God. Talk about tipping my lance at pepper mills. Anyway, after looking at all the options, my new cook’s apron won the day.

Well, when I say new, it’s new to me. Gaynor gave it to me and she was given it by one of her colleagues who used to work as a chef at the college where Gaynor teaches restaurant cookery students. I guess you might call it pre-worn, pre-loved if you really have to, but either way it’s a good strong cotton chef’s apron and just the thing.

I’ve had a hankering for a proper apron for a while now. Oh, I’ve had apron’s before, but there comes a time when wearing an apron decorated with a woman’s body dressed in scanty underwear, or covered in brightly coloured parrots, simply won’t do - at least not if you want to be taken seriously in the kitchen.

And I do.

By the way, did I mention the Sabatier knife incident?

Another reason I wanted an apron is because I dropped Gaynor’s best Sabatier knife the other evening and, whilst it was a flexible blade, it wasn’t as flexible as I’d hoped and the point snapped off when it landed. Of course I immediately went online and ordered two replacements. Yes two. Well, that seemed the only way of making amends given Gaynor’s vitriolic response to my knife dropping incident. Anyway, the knives arrived and Gaynor forgave me and I sheepishly asked if I could have the old one. ‘You’ll be wanting a chef’s apron next,’ she lovingly sneered, to which I replied: ‘Yes, I really would,’ and that’s when she gave me the pre-loved apron plus a nice white chef’s tunic. It even fitted, well almost.

‘Where is this going?’ You may ask.

Listen I consider myself a bit of a chef. I’ve had no training, as I’m constantly reminded, but years of cooking at least a couple of times a week has given me some insight into the culinary arts. There’s nothing I like better than to go to the fridge, take out a few things, and prepare a ‘nice’ meal. No recipes for me; I’m a chef, not a recipe following cook, slavishly weighing out ingredients and step-by-stepping his or her way to a mediocre dinner.

Of course sometimes my dishes aren’t quite what I may have expected; sometimes they are what can only be described as ‘interesting’. But that’s what chefing is all about – experimentation. You can’t make a good shepherd’s pie without losing a shepherd or two in the sheep-pens, and I wonder how many eggs were cracked before the first blue cheese, cherry, and spring onion omelette was created?

Anyway, the point of all this is to say that now I have my cast-off chef’s outfit and my blunted Sabatier knife, I’m a little like a kitchen Don Quixote. Perhaps Gaynor will now give me the respect I deserve in the kitchen. Perhaps, at long last, she’ll start answering me with ‘Yes chef’ when I tell her to blanch my asparagus tips.

What do you think?