It was a day like any other day. I got up. I did what I had to do in the bathroom and toilet departments to set me for the day and headed on another assignment for the "Man !!!"
Ok in this case the Man was a woman. The woman who was like a James Bond villain rang me and I imagined she was sat in in her chair stroking her white pus…actually stop there Kev that's not sounding good…. the Agency job that came in after a busy Summer working in various Restaurants and Hotels interrupted a bit of a Holiday break that I was going to have in September.
"Hello Kevin…how are you my love..I wouldn't ask but I'm desperate lovey for a chef for a nice job near you….O do say you will help me….O and Ill pay you a better rate than I give everyone else…..O and did I tell you they loved you the day you did for them back in 2010….O go on go on go on !…Its a quiet little Nursery and you will be home by 4 each day….and its only Monday to Friday."
Caught up in self adulation and the promise of easy Chef hours I said Yes !!!
Now on the morning I was due to start my heart was beating with nerves, my brain was shouting you should have never said yes. And my nose was even in on the act trying to tell me I was starting to get a cold !!!
Still I got in the car and headed to the mission I mean Job !
I parked up in the Nursery Car park and went to reception. The good thing was that the pretty girl on reception was still there and was prettier than ever ! Better than that she remembered me from before and said the most romantic words ever !
"Hi Kevin, nice to see you. Take a seat and the kitchen manger will be with you in a minute."
Julie the kitchen manager (another thing of beauty) arrived and took me to the kitchen and left quickly as if the kitchen was haunted !
Today's job was really easy, cook a bit of food, flirt with the Nursery female workers until my age was released causing the usual 'cold shoulder' to the face from most of them (well all of them to be fair !!! Ha ha!) and then it just left me and Jose to listen to my iPod Playlist collection for the rest of the day.
Who's Jose I hear you all shout !
Well Jose was the kitchen assistant that was sent from the agency to do basically all of the kitchens dishes and some cleaning too.
As you may have guessed Jose was not from the Geordie cultural capital of the world Wallsend. No Jose was from Barcelona in Spain ! No that's not true. I so hoped he was in a Fawlty Towers way or should that be 'Watery Fowls' but alas he was from Murcia which is about 300 miles from Madrid and a 100 miles from Valencia !???!
Luckily as a Photographer in a previous life I knew Spain like the back of my hand and spoke Spanish like a local !
Ok I can say "Si" "Dos Beerous pour for voray" and I could count up to 3 in Spanish until Jose informed me that my 3 in Spanish (Tres) was in fact French !!!
Jose was not a professional pot washer, no he was a teacher in his own Country but as you may have read in the Newspapers Spain is not doing so well and this meant work for him was very difficult to find in his profession so he came to England to find work as a Teacher. So far, unfortunately for him, he had been unable to find anything in his chosen profession so he was just working for the agency to help make ends meet until he found a Teaching Job.
It was very frustrating in the beginning with the language being a problem trying to get Jose to understand what I meant but eventually I resorted to speaking English instead of the normal Geordie twang ! ha ha.
We spent 10 weeks in the end in the kitchen together. It was a bit like being trapped on an Island with very little contact with the outside world. All the food was placed in Hot trolleys and one of the Nursery staff would come 4 times a day and take it into the Nursery to serve the children. Having said that I must say I really enjoyed working with Jose and enjoyed our kitchen conversations. We covered everything us blokes normally do like Football…Jose supports Real Madrid…..Music his favourite band was Led Zeppelin…..who's the prettiest woman in the world ? that caused a bit of an argument when he said "Claudia Moro Fernandez" and I stuck up for Jordan !! ha ha !
Politics were covered from me telling him on behalf on Her Majesty's Government to "Get his hands of Malta !" to which he looked at me and shook his head and said "Don't you mean Gibraltar ?" he may just have added "You English pig dog !!!" "Ai and that an all"! was all I could manage to save face.
One particularly quiet afternoon while I killed time waiting to knock up 30 portions of Eggy Bread and Beans for the Nursery Tea Jose just out of the blue took off his bright yellow washing up gloves and said to me.
"So, I like cricket very much but I no understand the rules "
So I started to try and explain the rules of one of England's finest games to Jose only for at the end of it deciding that I knew less about Cricket then when I started the lecture to him !
However probably the most talked about subject in the kitchen was Food ! You could tell how much Jose enjoyed Food when he talked almost poetically about what his mother used to cook for him in Spain or he would talk about that when I visit Murcia I must go to this little cafe on the corner and try this little dish for lunch or this particular Sweet Pastry that I must have while drinking coffee in the market place while watching the world go by !
I found it quite embarrassing at the start as he would talk about the markets full of the most magnificent fresh produce from amazing Lemons to the humble Potato. Everything seemed to be cooked or grown with such love and passion and the day would revolve around what was going to be eaten in the evening for the family dinner or tasted at the local bar where simple and unpretentious dishes were to be served.
I say Embarrassed as most of my memories would not be as clear or seem as wonderful as his. Even though my culinary experiences have been fast tracked over the last ten years I still didn't think sharing my tea time cooking of Beans and chips would be able to compete with his Green Bean and Anchovies salad. Having said that as in the little meat pie dish below when I heard some of his dishes I could compare some of them to what we eat in Britain its just that he would not call it a Meat Pie he would tell me all the ingredients that went into the dish first then he would tell me where they had come from for example the lemon juice might come from the sun kissed lemons growing in his fathers garden or the potatoes would be from such and such a place 2 miles from his home in Murcia and then he would tell me the name of the dish and it would sound almost like the first line of a beautiful poem.
Again we have great ingredients in this country, but most of us are far more at home just getting a takeaway or a microwave meal for our daily feed.
Admittedly we are stuck with seasons and poor weather plays its part making some food stuff very limited sometimes but you know I quite like that. The changing seasons can give us such variety and when things go wrong its being able to adapt and come up with something else to feed us.
So of all the recipes Jose talked about this one seemed to be his favourite dish to sum up his hometown of Murcia. Its called Pastel de Carne, in Britain we would probably call it….Cornish Pasty.
One last thing about Jose…..his jokes ! He was like the Spanish Jimmy Tarbuck ! I am sorry to say I ended up laughing at them to be polite but I am afraid I thought they were awful. Having said that he told them to some of the girls at the Nursery and they laughed loudly.
This is his favourite joke.
'How many Californians does it take to change a light bulb ?'
'7'
'1 to change it the other 6 to relate to it ! is that funny ?'
I prefer my Spanish Joke,
What do you call 2 Spanish firemen ?
JOSE A and JOSE B ! ha ha ha ha !
Pastel De Carne.
When I searched for this recipe I got a few variations on it. From pictures of Meatloaf (not the singer) to little pots of stew. Anyhow this is the best I can remember from Jose's recipe. Its not difficult as you can see and if I had added some diced Swede and Carrot it could have been a Cornish Pasty.
You need to buy some Puff Pastry, roll it out and cut some circles out with something about the size of a small soup bowl. Now cut a slightly bigger circle out of the pastry to act as your lid.
Meanwhile in a frying pan cook half a diced onion and about 200gs of beef mince until cooked !
Next add about 100gms of diced chorizo allowing all of its flavoursome oils to combine with the beef and onion. Next pour in 2 whisked eggs. Take off the heat and now distribute enough of the meat mix to make a tasty full pie !
Now put your lids on and seal with egg wash. Next get a knife and score the lid trying to make neat circles all the way around as you go. I am a cook and not a bad Photographer but I anti no plasterer ! I will leave that to my Cousin in law Paul !
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| Kind of looks like Freddie Krueger has made them ! Sorry Spain ! |
Now place on a greased baking tray and pop into a oven set at about 180 degrees C for about 15 minutes or until a lovely golden colour.
I did think these little babies would be a bit dry but the egg and chorizo oil kept them lovely and moist. I must apologise to Jose if I have in anyway got your recipe wrong and my intention was not to insult the great people of Murcia. Thanks for a canny ten weeks Amigo. The trouble now is when anyone asks me to do something in the kitchen I cannot get out of the habit of saying "Si !"….enjoy !
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