Spanish Secrets: Thank Heavens For Delia
The harder I stirred the thicker it got, until I could pick the pan and its contents off the gas ring by the wooden spoon, which was now sticking up in the middle of it like a flagpole. Craig Briggs faces up to a cooking disaster when he wrongly interprets Spanish instructions.
One thing I never seemed to find time for whilst living and working in England was a hobby, so since moving here to Galicia in Northern Spain I have tried my hand at a range of different activities with various degrees of both enjoyment and success.
One of the first things I wanted to do was to learn to cook. I started by buying a cook book entitled “Traditional Spanish Cooking” or something like that. Unfortunately the book was in Spanish.
Now learning to cook is one thing, but interpreting Spanish cooking instructions into English and then cooking what I’d interpreted brought a whole new meaning to learning to cook.
Having said that the majority of dishes have been very good even if I do say so myself. But one which still brings a tear to my eye and at the time was so funny we nearly wet ourselves was, Flangollo Canario which was meant to be a desert.
Now to be fair on myself I did have a few problems with the first three lines of the cooking instructions. It was something to do with the preparation of maize. In an earlier and very successful recipe I had used an ingredient called maizena, (which apparently turns out to be corn flour) so I decided to substitute maize for maizena, and skip the first three lines of the instructions,.
Big mistake!
The other ingredients are water, milk, sugar, lemon rind, and a drop of aniseed.
My interpretation of the instructions was as follows. In a pan heat the milk and add the sugar, lemon peel, and the drop of aniseed. In a separate pan, heat a pint of water and add 500 grams of maizena (corn flour).
Well I’m sure the ladies have already guessed, but for you men… I don’t know if when you were a child, your mother ever made flour paste for gluing things into scrap books and the like. That is exactly what I had ended up with.
Not being one to easily give in, I frantically continued to try and stir this gunk thinking it might loosen. I even added the hot milk and sugar. But the harder I stirred the thicker it got, until I could pick the entire pan and it’s content off the gas ring by the wooden spoon which was now sticking up in the middle of it like a flag pole.
After getting over the disappointment of not having a desert for the evening meal, did we laugh! We nearly split our sides.
Fortunately my cooking skills have progressed somewhat, especially after my mother-in-law bought me “Delia” for my birthday. Thank heavens for Delia!
Another of my new found hobbies is glass painting and for no reason whatsoever
I chose frogs as my subject. I even thought of posting my paintings on the web for others to view.
With internet addresses here in Spain ending in.es (Espana) I felt that my address might be f.art.es which probably says everything about my efforts.
email address
craigandmel@msn.com
