‘GREGG Daddy Cool:WALLACE WOULD WANT TO DIVE IN IT’

I

t was an anniversary of sorts last Saturday – 21 years to the day that I first met my wife. Working on local newspapers, we were in Cardiff for a three-month journalism course, and it was love in the lecture hall pretty much from the off. We are both agreed on this. After that, it gets hazy. Our first date proper, as opposed to going to the pub with everyone from the course, was to see Ghost, the film that did for the word ‘ditto’. It was a Friday, probably, but how long after we met neither of us are sure.

Fast forward 21 years and our cinema plan (oh the symmetry, the lack of imagination) was scuppered by an unpleasant accident involving my wife and a trench. I wish there was a gag to follow but there isn’t. So Saturday is limping along with Doctor Who, X Factor, chase off to bed – the children that is – dinner, a glass of wine or two, finished up by The Killing and a few murderous thoughts about those who left an uncovered trench in the way of a runner.

I was doing my galloping gourmet bit – a phrase that dates you as precisely as saying Bjorn Borg is your favourite Wimbledon champion – with a rack of lamb. Our eldest then kindly offered to make our pudding. She’s very keen and pretty proficient in the kitchen and set about making a chocolate tart, which involved blind-baking pastry and industrial quantities of chocolate and double cream. She cooked with the laptop on the kitchen table so she too could watch Doctor Who as she rolled the pastry. So far, so 21st-century Waltons.

When said tart came out of the oven it looked spectacular. It tasted pretty spectacular too, except it was a touch overdone. If it had been MasterChef, Gregg Wallace would still want to dive in it, but John Torode would peer at the topping and suggest a few minutes fewer in the oven.

Do you say heartfelt thanks and eat the pudding, grateful that the mess created in making it has been cleared up? Or do you say heartfelt thanks, eat the pudding and gently mention how it could be made even better?

So what of my dish? John and Gregg might have approved of the timbales of couscous, but did the tomato and spring onion salad have too much balsamic? Where too, was the herb crust on the lamb?

I knew the food I’d made was good, but it could’ve been better. Would I really want someone to point out my failings when I’d gone to such effort? Well, I did, though very nicely and with lots of thanks.

My wife, had she not been slumped on the sofa in agony, would have said ditto, if we still used that word. n