I taught them to cook vidya4 - Flipbook - Page 16
14
Autumn Term
cooking griddle cakes. Then there are large aluminium preserving
pans for jams, marmalades and chutneys.
And sets of tins for a class of twenty or more students. Oblong
bread tins, large round Christmas cake tins, Swiss roll and domed
sponge flan tins as well as the heavily used and battered Victoria
sandwich tins. Piles of beautifully moulded tins to make éclairs,
jam tarts, fairy cakes and tiny Yorkshire puddings. Hanging on
hooks are metal rings for pastry flans – plain for savoury and
fluted for sweet. Do not put your pastry in the wrong ring. Then
some pointy tins that look like piping bags, that I reckon are used
for cream horns. Was this woman running a private bakery as
well?
At floor level there are essential saucepans, frying pans and
a collection of pressure cookers, metal colanders and sieves. And
stacks of aluminium holey steamers which fit on top of saucepans
to steam stuff like jam roly poly and treacle sponges.
She Who Ran Away seems to have taught a marathon of
baking dishes and their history can be traced from the encrusted
bits of cake, dough and burnt pastry that need to be cleaned off
before I can begin.
And if I ask Jim who is going to clean up all this equipment I
reckon I’ll get a ‘The teacher has to do it’ answer.
So tomorrow I’ll drive back in my Mini Traveller, leaving
my friends and Mark lazing on rugs on leafy Hampstead Heath
drinking wine and eating picnics with baguettes and Brie. And
I’ll be sweating in my stinky room ready to begin the filthy task.
The teacher has to do it. But this still doesn’t account for the
smell.
My early morning drive the next day is hot, very hot and the
room still smells of rot. I need to get on. We’ve got a street party
tonight and Mark will bring bottles of wine and I’ll make a pile
of sausage rolls.
Overall and rubber gloves on, I fill the deep butlers’ sinks with
scorching hot water and stir in the caustic soda crystals just like