Esther Walker - Bad Cook

Contents

I once read in a magazine I forget which one now a problem on the problem pages that went something like this:

Q. My husband refuses to pick his towel up off the bathroom floor. It drives me demented. How can I punish him?

A. Instead of wanting to punish him, why dont you think to yourself, as you pick the towel up off the bathroom floor, of all the nice things he does for you without you asking? It is little acts of devotion like these that keep marriages going.

Here are some of the annoying things that my husband does:

• He doesnt pick up the bathmat off the bathroom floor.
• He clears his throat in quite an annoying way.
• He steals my car key because he cant be bothered to find his, then accuses me of having used, and lost his key (thus forcing him to use mine).
• He will turn to me and say Shall I have a shower? Or not?.
• If the TV is on and he wants to say something, rather than finding the remote and pausing the programme he will shout PAUSE! which is my cue to find the remote (under his bum, usually) and pause the programme for him so he may deliver his opinion.
• He will suddenly decide that the house is a mess and pick things up randomly (an unopened letter, a pair of flip-flops, a babys toy) and say What's the story with this? Should it be here?
• He will walk into his own kitchen and wonder aloud where we keep the knives, forks, salt, pepper, plates and so on.

Here are some of the annoying things that I do:

• I pick at my cuticles. Constantly.
• I clear my throat in a nice way. But I do it ALL the time.
• I never open my post, particularly anything that looks financial.
• I interrupt.
• I give my husband death stares.
• I am a sluttish washer-upper.
• I sometimes only empty half of the dishwasher and then wander off to do something else and forget to unload the rest.
• I throw money (his) at any problem.
• I leave the area around the toaster a mess, attracting ants and wasps.
• I dont make the bed.

Here are the nice things that my husband does for me:

• He doesnt make me go and get a job.
• He does my tax.
• He takes out all the bins and deals with the compost.
• He sorts out the cars, the tax for the cars, the maintenance of the cars.
• He doesnt make me see people I dont like.
• Hell make any phone call for me that Im too scared to make.
• He cleans all my hair out of the trap in the shower.
• He can fix almost anything in the house that has broken.
• When I have been devastatingly amusing about someone, he doesnt declare that I am a bitch.

Here are the nice things that I do for my husband:

• I hang up the bathmat.
• I always make sure there is enough deodorant, shampoo, shower gel etc in the bathroom.
• Ditto for the kitchen.
• Ditto stamps, birthday cards and wrapping paper.
• I sort out dinner, pretty much every night.
• I make sure theres always enough cash for the cleaner, ditto cleaning products.
• When we go on holiday I cancel the papers and the milk.
• At parties, I whisper names he has forgotten in his ear.
• I dont give him shit about going out and getting drunk.
• I dont give him shit about his swearing or bad taste jokes.

Whenever my husband has done something annoying and I feel enervated, I always run those lists through my head. Its what my marriage balances on, like a fat elephant on a plank of wood on a ball bearing.

But a few years ago, I realized that my husband was NOT aware that there was this careful balancing act going on. He did not think, as he ignored my throat-clearing, cuticle-picking, death-staring grotesqueness, that he was simply keeping up his end of the bargain. He believed that he was bearing the brunt of marital irritation, while I sailed through life blithely un-irritated. One day, things exploded in a terrible row about me not making the bed.

I wont lie, there were tears.

Then I explained about the list. About the importance of acts of devotion. And he got it, more or less. And thats why Im always sorting out dinner; its part of the deal. Its why I try to find new things to cook, rather than just doing a roast chicken or pasta over and over again. If its going to be my area, I might as well have a big repertoire. It makes everything easier.

Which explains why I tried out this lamb shank curry. Yes, fine, its just another bloody curry, but the appealing thing about this to me was that it is tomato-based and therefore unusual and new and exciting.

• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 ripe tomatoes, or a generous handful of cherry or vine tomatoes
• 1 tsp cumin powder
• 1 red chilli
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tbsp fresh ginger
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 2 lamb shanks
• small bunch fresh coriander

1. Preheat the oven to 150C.
2. Blend everything except the lamb shanks and half the coriander in a whizzer to make a paste then slap it over the lamb shanks and leave for as long as you can. All day, ideally, but an hour will make a difference.
3. Heat a bit of groundnut oil in a big casserole and tip in the lamb and the marinade. Cook for 90 mins. Turn occasionally if you can be bothered. Garnish with a bit of fresh coriander to serve, while you ponder the secrets of marital bliss.

Lets go now. Lets fly you and I away from this gloomy now, to a different time, back six years, to when I was working on Londoners Diary, which as Im sure you know is the gossip page of the Evening Standard.

One day a new girl appeared in the editors office. The editor liked to have a lot of girls around and she was very mean to all of them. She thought she was in TheDevil Wears Prada or something and that being mean to your assistants is terribly glamorous, but we knew that we were actually in a scummy daily newspaper office in West London and that people who are mean to their assistants are bitches who will rot in hell.

The editors girls didnt usually last. They all had office affairs eventually, which then went sour, then they went on sick leave, then never came back. But Connie, or Beautiful Connie as she quickly became known, was different. She was smart. She couldnt have been less interested in the skinny boys on news or any of the grizzly bears on the back bench. Her boyfriends were always incredibly tall mega-Sloanes shed known since she was six, who thought journalists were dismal little people. Yet there was a steely glint in her sleepy brown eyes, a hard edge to her long blonde hair and a no-nonsense air about her flower-patterned mini dresses.

The editor had finally met her match.

Connie was my best and, sometimes, only friend at the Standard. I would often poke my head into the editors office, where she sat drinking pot after pot of fresh ginger tea that was so strong that when you drank it, it felt like your whole face was on fire. She would shriek, quietly: ESTHER!! Oh my God Ive just eaten an entire Bounty and TWO packets of Maltesers!!!

I have been thinking about Connie recently because I came across a mention of a mango salsa, which she used to make for me in the weeny galley kitchen of her top floor flat in Notting Hill. Roasting hot in summer and freezing cold in winter (I think another bad January might finish me off), Connies flat was a miracle of survival, like those plants you get in the desert, or 100,000 miles under the sea.