MY passion for cooking is a relatively new one and it is entirely due to the lockdown caused by coronavirus.
Suddenly, instead of being incredibly busy taking my string of 120 horses to the races, I found I had a lot more time on my hands.
Initially, I did a large jigsaw but then, on the spur of the moment, I thought I would try my hand at cooking.
In the past, I had never really shown any interest in cooking, with the exception of doing the barbecue. My wife, Philippa, has always been the cook in our family – we have two sons, James, aged 11, and Eddie, aged 9.
But I thought to myself one evening – why don’t I spend the hours between 5pm and 7pm trying to cook a really nice dinner?
Like most households, we have a few recipe books lying around the kitchen and the first meal I cooked back in March was a chicken and leak pie using a Mary Berry recipe.
The rest of my family said it tasted really good so that encouraged me to carry on and experiment with other dishes.
I would never have described myself as a real “foodie” – much more of a “meat and two veg” sort of man. In fact, I had never heard of some of the ingredients and spices that I now use to cook.
Soon I became more ambitious with the meals that I was making – and sometimes I would cook lunch and an evening meal, spending several hours a day in the kitchen.
I made various River Cafe-style Italian dishes, some spicy curries and some Japanese food. I also tried making various deserts, including raspberry and chocolate mousse. I will have a go at most things really.
My family seem to enjoy my cooking though for the boys I have to tone down the spices so that the food is not too hot. I am pretty good at clearing up too – I don’t leave lots of dirty saucepans lying around.
I like Mary Berry’s recipes and also the Hairy Bikers too: I love Si King and Dave Myers’ enthusiasm for food.
Now that we are back racing, it’s harder to find time to cook. But I still cook some meals in the evening. I think Philippa enjoys having a break from the kitchen and she is supportive towards my cooking even though to start with she didn’t think it would last.
Cooking is not something I am going to give up: it’s a good way to switch off from racing: I like to put some music on in the background and go into my own little bubble.
Since the lockdown was lifted, I have invited some racing friends around for a meal and they seem to have enjoyed my cooking too.
So far, so good – I imagine I won’t be the only person who has taken up a new hobby during lockdown so, hopefully, some good has come out of this difficult and challenging situation that we all had to face.
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Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.sportingexcitement.com/horse-racing/impressive-dream-of-dreams-delivers-on-the-big-stage-with-poignant-victory-in-hungerford-stakes
