alexist

I spotted a mistake in today's Independent cooking supplement. Italian 00 flour is NOT durum semolina--it is ordinary white flour, just very very fine! (It's low-extraction, from the centre of the wheat kernel, which is why it's so white and soft.) Durum semolina is used for commercial pasta, but the homemade kind is made with regular flour, which is easier to work by hand. Tut tut. (I'm quite sure of this because I have Marcella Hazan's cookbooks and she's from Emilia-Romagna, the home of fresh egg pasta.)

That said, I've saved the supplement anyway, Neil might find its knife skills section useful :-) I've started teaching him to cook. We're starting slowly; he's on potato peeling and cutting. Actually, he can do mashed potatoes start to finish; I showed him how to do them with the mouli a long time ago and I know he's done it when I was away. But it's awkward trying to have both of us cook at the same time so I do the rest. But he claimed he's very slow at potato peeling [he was trying to get out of it ;)) so I said "OK, then you need the practice!" Evil me! But I reckon he needs to be able to cook a basic dinner start to finish before the baby's born, just in case. He can do some things (he cooked his own steak tonight--we each do our own so we get them cooked the way we like) but he's got a way to go. I think this week I'll teach him how to bread and fry schnitzel.

Anyhoo, had a very nice steak dinner (demanded it, claimed baby needed the iron) and I shall be making chocolate pudding cakes in a bit.