rhubarb.

Today, I thought we would start with a game. It's called "Guess What Mother's Cooked" and is often more challenging than you would think.
Up first, this bowl filled with a questionable substance. Here's a hint, it smells like burnt cheese on toast.

As an extra clue if you're struggling, this is the saucepan it was cooked in.

It's rhubarb, obviously! The sad thing is, this isn't the first time that rhubarb has met this fate in the Harvey household. You see, Mum loves rhubarb. But as we have learnt from this blog so far, she does not love cooking. This week, she decided to buy some fresh rhubarb to cook and happily (ish) stood in the kitchen, peeling and chopping her rhubarb. About half an hour later a sad and dejected looking mum wanders into my room. "I burnt my rhubarb" she said sadly. "I was really looking forward to that and I burnt it. And I broke the saucepan." Periodically for the next 30 minutes she would wander in and out like a child who has lost it's favourite doll, lamenting the loss of her rhubarb. I felt a bit sorry for her really.

However, mum has never really been one to take pride in the actual cooking or presentation of her food. As you've probably gathered, she's not a huge cooking fan. Many a time have we been presented with burnt or overcooked food. Food poisoning is never something that I have to worry about from mum's cooking. Cancer from the carcinogens from her burnt food perhaps. But not food poisoning. Mum doesn't like to use timers, partly because she doesn't know how the timer on the oven works, but still. Her motto is "when it's burnt it's done". A good example of this would be when mum cooked chicken once. Just chicken. Three breasts wrapped in tin foil so they look anaemic when they are finally pulled from the oven. These unlucky chickens didn't make it to anaemic though, they bypassed that and went to well and truly burnt. Did you know that when chicken is cooked for long enough it will actually go red? Mum will usually attempt to eat whatever in edible meal she has presented us with but even this was beyond her. "I suppose it is a little bit chewy" she said. (Ps, on reading this blog to her, she just reminisced: "I remember that night. It was crap.")

In Toast, Nigel Slater describes his mother making peas and it reminded me of the lack of effort akin with my own mother's cooking: "My mother emptied a cellophane sachet of dried peas into a pan of water. There was never any mint or butter. Sometimes she even forgot to put salt in the water." My mother never put salt in the water. Actually, she never put salt in anything. Slater seems shocked at the thought of not seasoning food. Mum on the other hand said "if you want salt put salt on it yourself. The only things I salt are beetroot and chips."

It's not just the actual cooking that Mum doesn't bother with, presentation isn't exactly her strong suit either.

This was a casserole she cooked the other week. Here, I admit, I'm being a bit pernickity, but some chefs wipe the edges of their plates.
For dessert however, mum really went all out on the presentation.

That's fruit salad with a rhubarb and custard dessert from M&S on top, for those of you not familiar with that dessert classic.
While chefs dedicate chunks of their cookbooks to the presentation of their foods and others dedicate entire books to the subject, Mum merely shrugs it off and slaps it on the plate.

Even when presenting the most basic of foods, Mum adds her own personal touch: "I always like slap my hand down on a sandwich when I make it. And it always makes me laugh. I think it's because I don't really want to make the sandwich."

Last night, we watched The Great British Bake Off Easter Masterclass together and Mum decided we would try to make hot cross buns, and perhaps the chocolate custard tarts ("but we'll buy the pastry, why on earth would you bother to make it?!").
This is the entire thing, I couldn't find any short clips on YouTube. I'd recommend watching it though, partly just because Paul Hollywood is a bit of a silver fox and partly because I wish Mary Berry was my nan. And the show itself is pretty good too.

Even though Mary and Paul make the recipes seem really easy and enjoyable and emphasise the point that kids could help with a lot of it, demonstrating how easy it is, mum decided she didn't want to try most of them because they were "too much of a faf." The hot cross buns seemed easy enough but the rest of it, well, why would you bother doing all that?! Mary and Paul work together and take the viewer through each recipe, step by step. The tricker points are then repeated by the voiceover at the end of each recipe to really give the viewer confidence and highlight the difficult parts, of which there were very few, making the recipes seem simple and look delicious.

We also watched The Great British Menu (BBC2 were having a foodie night).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01rmn1n/Great_British_Menu_Series_8_Finals_Fish/

These chefs are the polar opposite of Mum. Obviously, they are attempting to win a competition, Mum is only attempting to keep us alive so presentation is not as key in her cooking. The pain staking lengths that the chefs go to, emphasise the importance of presentation. The potato cage (which my clumsy fist would have gone straight through had I tried to pick it up) or Tom Aiken's scallop dish which even had the waiters dressing up show how much people care about the presentation of their food. Having watched the rest of the series, it is clear that presentation that doesn't demonstrate a HUGE deal of effort drastically lowers marks. Part of me would like to see my mother on that show. Just for the judge's reactions.

As per usual, I'm getting a bit off track. The main point of this blog was showing the emphasis that chefs put on the presentation of their food and the care they take in cooking it.
Mum bothers with neither of these ideas and even after watching chefs present beautiful dishes, Mum would still prefer to continue slapping sandwiches.