Coffee House Blog

Food is something that’s very important to me.  I’ve always loved it and, according to family legend, even as a baby never been happy with something that came straight out of a packet or tin.  The snag is that I’ve never been a great cook, preferring to eat out whenever possible.  After three years of living in Italy I thought I’d discovered a great way around this.  Only cook Italian.  Why not?  It’s exceedingly fashionable, cheap and supposedly very easy.   So I got Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook as it seemed good at explaining exactly what to do and doesn’t demand a host of hard to come by ingredients and was ready to give it a go. 

One of OH’s friends was to come round for a “business meeting” – that is to watch the Sci Fi channel and if time allows muse over about possible future projects.  I decided to cook instead of ordering the usual takeout.   Jamie’s pasta e ceci – pasta and chickpeas soup – looked easy and tasty and for once I had in all the ingredients it needed.  So I told OH I would make a ‘chickpea and pasta stew’ – as OH has an irrational prejudice against any kind of soup.  I read the instructions on the chickpea packet and was assured that if I put them in water the morning they would be ready to cook for dinner. 

That evening I’d started to cook when I realised I’d added up the cooking times wrong.  What I thought would need twenty-minutes was in fact going to take more than an hour.  Nor – due to my snacking habit having denuded the fridge – did we have anything to offer to ward off starvation till dinner was ready.  Disaster was averted only as our guest phoned to say he would be very late.

OH then sidled into the kitchen and looked at the pan suspiciously.  “Where’s the meat?” he wanted to know.  I explained that the pulse and grains of pasta and chickpeas made a complete protein, just like meat did.  “Hmm” he said.  “I thought we were having stew”.

An hour later and OH’s friend had arrived.  The chickpeas still retained a ‘crunchy’ texture.  Everything else in the pan was disintegrating into a gloopy mess.   I suggested to OH that dinner was going to be inedible and maybe fish and chips were a good idea.  “No, no,” he reassured me.  “It’ll be fine.” 

Our guest politely stirred the glutinous mush round the bowl for a bit before giving up any pretext of eating.  He claimed not to be hungry and said that he was a picky eater.  My humiliation was complete as he then polished off a large bowl of ice-cream. Depressed, I realised the truth of his comment about pickiness.   Even had the dish turned out as it should have, the result would have been the same.  How on earth had I convinced myself that the kind of dishes that are such a hit in Rome would translate to a small-town England where many of our acquaintances are somewhat narrow-minded about anything that’s not red meat and no veg?  Looking at what they actually do like and I can cook means that next time we will probably be having egg and chips.  And I am never again using dried chickpeas.  Ever.