I'm renting a house with a friend of mine who recently got divorced - luckily I have the house to myself most of the time as he works in London now and only comes to Cornwall every other weekend when he sees his kids.
What bothers me is his cooking, he is completely and unshakeably convinced that he is a fantastic cook. In fact I don't think it would be unfair to say he considers himself one of the best cooks in the country (possibly the world). In the past I've tried, nicely, to tell him he can't cook but it makes no impact - he gets very offended and will angrily explain that only a complete culinary philistine could fail to appreciate his superb food. I gave up years ago and just try to force down what he produces and make vaguely polite noises - this worked fine until we started renting together but now every other weekend I have to put up with three days of inedible food, I offer to cook but of course i can't cook nearly as well as he can so he insists on doing it all.
Let me tell you how it goes:
I will say something like, "let's have beans on toast for lunch, I'll cook".
"No, no, I know a really special recipe for beans on toast, it's delicious"
There will be no way to persuade him otherwise and of course the can of beans and loaf of sliced bread I have will not be nearly adequate for a truly great beans on toast - after all great chefs only use the finest ingredients.
So a trip to the shops will be required starting at a bijou little bakers he knows which makes the finest German style rye bread with pumpkin seeds and rosemary, then to the health store for the most expensive monkey picked agouti beans from the furthest reaches of the Limpopo and sun dried Italian tomatoes grown only in volcanic ash 3000ft up Mount Vesuvius.
Having assembled the finest ingredients (finest = most expensive) he will then proceed to burn the toast, undercook the beans and produce some approximation of a tomato sauce enhanced with some weird herbs like coriander and lemongrass (fresh of course).
He will then proudly present this unrecognisable mess explaining how this is a recipe he devoloped himself and ask "now isn't that better than canned beans and supermarket bread". Responding "no it tastes like a goat crapped on the plate" is not advisable and in any case will make no impression.
So, this is all par for the course but yesterday he had suggested pasta carbonara as dinner for his kids and his daughter asked if I could cook it. Of course he was outraged that she'd rather eat my cooking than his (all the same to me) but then he made some very unkind comments about my cooking saying I couldn't really cook and just used packet food (a reference particularly to my regular use of stock from the supermarket).
I'm no Escoffier it's true (unlike him) but I did work in the hotel industry for years and worked with some truly superb chefs. I'm a trained professional chef and have cooked for huge numbers of people with almost never a complaint (ok, so you can't please everybody). I use packet stock quite often because it takes too long and is too much work to make a good stock myself. Yes, naturally my mate always makes his own fresh stocks - unfortunately he doesn't know how to make a good stock and ironically would actually be better off with something from the supermarket. So fair enough I may not be the greatest chef in the world but I can cook rings around him without even trying - at least my food is tasty, properly cooked and actually edible (and I'm not the only one who knows this - vis a vis his daughter).
He's a great bloke really but I just don't understand how he can fail to realise he's such a god awful cook.
End Rant
What bothers me is his cooking, he is completely and unshakeably convinced that he is a fantastic cook. In fact I don't think it would be unfair to say he considers himself one of the best cooks in the country (possibly the world). In the past I've tried, nicely, to tell him he can't cook but it makes no impact - he gets very offended and will angrily explain that only a complete culinary philistine could fail to appreciate his superb food. I gave up years ago and just try to force down what he produces and make vaguely polite noises - this worked fine until we started renting together but now every other weekend I have to put up with three days of inedible food, I offer to cook but of course i can't cook nearly as well as he can so he insists on doing it all.
Let me tell you how it goes:
I will say something like, "let's have beans on toast for lunch, I'll cook".
"No, no, I know a really special recipe for beans on toast, it's delicious"
There will be no way to persuade him otherwise and of course the can of beans and loaf of sliced bread I have will not be nearly adequate for a truly great beans on toast - after all great chefs only use the finest ingredients.
So a trip to the shops will be required starting at a bijou little bakers he knows which makes the finest German style rye bread with pumpkin seeds and rosemary, then to the health store for the most expensive monkey picked agouti beans from the furthest reaches of the Limpopo and sun dried Italian tomatoes grown only in volcanic ash 3000ft up Mount Vesuvius.
Having assembled the finest ingredients (finest = most expensive) he will then proceed to burn the toast, undercook the beans and produce some approximation of a tomato sauce enhanced with some weird herbs like coriander and lemongrass (fresh of course).
He will then proudly present this unrecognisable mess explaining how this is a recipe he devoloped himself and ask "now isn't that better than canned beans and supermarket bread". Responding "no it tastes like a goat crapped on the plate" is not advisable and in any case will make no impression.
So, this is all par for the course but yesterday he had suggested pasta carbonara as dinner for his kids and his daughter asked if I could cook it. Of course he was outraged that she'd rather eat my cooking than his (all the same to me) but then he made some very unkind comments about my cooking saying I couldn't really cook and just used packet food (a reference particularly to my regular use of stock from the supermarket).
I'm no Escoffier it's true (unlike him) but I did work in the hotel industry for years and worked with some truly superb chefs. I'm a trained professional chef and have cooked for huge numbers of people with almost never a complaint (ok, so you can't please everybody). I use packet stock quite often because it takes too long and is too much work to make a good stock myself. Yes, naturally my mate always makes his own fresh stocks - unfortunately he doesn't know how to make a good stock and ironically would actually be better off with something from the supermarket. So fair enough I may not be the greatest chef in the world but I can cook rings around him without even trying - at least my food is tasty, properly cooked and actually edible (and I'm not the only one who knows this - vis a vis his daughter).
He's a great bloke really but I just don't understand how he can fail to realise he's such a god awful cook.
End Rant