Category: Uncategorized

Instant potato lesson to teach about convenience food.

How I persuaded them to use UPF!

Read about the lesson from 1974 it on this link

Another story from Cream horns and vol au vents coming soon.

This is a story from ‘I taught them to cook’.

It’s the weekend. I’m back in Kettering and visiting my grandmother to get some free rhubarb from her garden for my lessons. The pink, tender stems that she forces under metal buckets are saved for the family but she’s happy for me to pick the huge clumps thriving on her compost heap. I cut armfuls – leaves and all – but Grandma’s bothered.

‘Those rhubarb leaves can poison people.’ She’s heard a story of someone who ate the leaves, had severe stomach pains and ended up in hospital. Grandma boils the leaves with water to make her aluminium pans shiny clean and she reckons that if the leaves strip your stomach in the same way as they remove stuck bits from her pans, then that could be painful.

‘Don’t give those children the leaves. You could get into trouble.’

‘Don’t worry – I’ll warn them.’

Grandma knows about London children. Evacuees from east London were billeted in her house during the Second World War. They attended Park Road Infants School, thrived on her cooking and helped with her garden. She’s very proud of her certificate from Queen Elizabeth II thanking her for this service, which she keeps in a faded envelope with its official stamp in her treasured front room cabinet.

‘Just a word. Have you got another boyfriend yet? Time’s passing Jenny. This job is not everything you know. Make time to watch the flowers grow.’

Bah. I’m twenty four, everyone is getting married, I live alone in a dismal Hampstead bedsit and drive an old Mini Traveller with green moss, which matches the colour of the car’s paintwork, growing on its window edges. And I have a job where most of the time I’m dressed in a nylon overall and matching pink rubber gloves, and I rarely leave the room.
Back in the classroom, I plonk the pile of rhubarb on the demonstration table.

‘Class – to warn you – these leaves are poisonous, so don’t eat them. They can give you a stomach ache and some people have died after eating them.’

Who knows if the death story is true? I have their attention.

‘How did they die?’ It’s early but Bert is alert.

‘The leaves contain toxic oxalic acid and that means they are poisonous.’

‘Why does the poison just go into the leaf? What about the rest?’

Bert has a clever point. I’ll have to ask the biology teacher.

‘Miss, can I have those leaves?’

Ah ha. I can see where this diversion is leading. Bert’s after my rhubarb leaf mountain. We’ve just had the school acid attack in the Chemistry lab when a boy was pushed onto a stool covered in nitric acid. It burnt the backside off his school trousers and he was whipped off to Whipps Cross Hospital to have the skin on his bottom soothed. Whispers said Gavin was involved. He was supposed to be going to another school, but it turns out no one will have him, so he could be back in my lessons. Next to enter the school gossip calendar could be the rhubarb poisoning scandal. And it’ll be my fault.

‘Bert, I’m taking these leaves home, so just watch my demonstration on Rhubarb fool that we’re making today and stop plotting. Remove the leaves, wash and chop the stems, put them in a saucepan and cook in a little water with the lid on until they are soft.’

I’m learning to give my classes very clear cooking instructions after several disasters ended in the bin. I once told Robert to boil his potatoes until they were soft so he stuffed them, unpeeled, into my electric kettle, filled it with water and clicked it on. It took ages to poke out the mushy, mashed up bits. For today’s lesson I’ve got a ‘Here’s-one-I-made-earlier’ bowl of Grandma’s pink, cooked rhubarb just like a Blue Peter presenter. It gets passed round the group with little approval.

‘Now to make custard.’

My grandmother and I used to make Bird’s custard together to go with her apple crumbles, gooseberry pies and strawberry jam sponges. There is a magic moment when you stir pale peach custard powder with gritty granulated sugar and mix with a little milk. Suddenly the mixture turns into a bright yellow liquid – a chemical mystery that probably holds its truth in tartrazine.

‘To make the custard, pour hot milk into this mixture and stir quickly until it thickens.’

A golden, glossy custard glimmers in the bowl.

‘Mix together your cooked rhubarb, the custard and some

drops of red colouring.’

The red colouring is made from crushed cochineal beetles but I’m not sharing that secret. Imagine the screams.

‘We ain’t eating beetles.’

‘Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold in. Spoon into a glass

dish and top with a glacé cherry.’

They chop, cook and stir, beat and mix. Soon my table is covered with glass dishes in various shades of pink. Each served on a saucer with a frilly d’oyley. Always a bloody d’oyley. There are hundreds to use in the storeroom. The lesson is over and we have made a potion of rhubarb with enhanced colours and flavours which richly deserves the name fool. I must ask Cynthia what happened to the rhubarb leaves.

Rhubarb Fool Recipe