Food Glorious Food

 I spent  this morning at the Jamie Oliver cooking school, attending a Mexican Street Food cooking class. The class kitchen was a lovely space to cook in with good knives and pans.  I was paired up with a young French girl, Jean, who was gentle, positive and very easy to work with, although not experienced at all with cooking. I winced inwardly a few times but win a private prize for making no helpful suggestions to improve her rudimentary cooking skills. 

We made smoky chipotle chicken, pico de gallo, guacamole, roasted corn salsa and handmade tortillas. Mexican wouldn’t be my first cuisine choice for a class but that was today’s course schedule and what we made was delicious. The course guide promised a glass of bubbles that never appeared, but I didn’t realise till I was finished eating. Damn. 

I handed back my apron and took a meandering path the West End for a theatre production of Oliver. On the way I walked past the strangely named “Haunch of Venison yard”. Apparently the street (more of a lane) is named after the pub that used to be there in the seventeen hundreds. I also walked past a street full of pastry shops, most of them sporting Wimbledon themed cakes (see what I did there). A tummy full of tacos didn’t stop me having a little snack before the show.

Oliver was fantastic - great sets, good voices and a chorus of kids with loads of energy. When you know all the songs it’s hard not to sing along, but I held myself back. I’m wondering what part of your brain decides to hold on to the words to showtunes - it has to be 40 years since I saw the movie. I held on to my handbag very tightly walking home through dusk in Soho because you’ve got to pick a pocket or twoooo. 

Returning the favour of a “meal at my club”, I invited my new aquaintance Lily to dinner at the Oriental. We ordered a range of curries, which were delicious but probably gets me to my quota of Indian meals this week. More about last night in the next post. 

It’s been a day of eating, fortunately countered by all the walking. The blog title above was the winner, but the very close second was “Spice Girls”. So tempting , but it didn’t link Oliver with the other activities and I didn’t have a photo of either of the girls , so Food Glorious Food won the day.