RECIPE FOR LAZY COOKS

I came to certain crossroads in my life, my cooking life, when I peered into the cookie jar and found only a couple of crumbs from the almond biscuits from Marks and Spenser’s. I couldn’t run out and get more because the store was in the middle of town and I didn’t feel like doing a quick trot downtown to Chania. It was one of those terrible days in March when the cold winds screeched to a halt, did a volte face and started whistling and blowing gusts from the south. They were hot blasts from Africa, bringing swirling sands from the deserts. The air was hazy and the wind puffed its hot breath on our orange and lemon trees, shaking their blossoms to the ground.

Me: No way I’m going out in this wind.

Lena (our cleaning lady) : Don’t go! The sand got into my eyes when I went out.

Me: But we need some biscuits.

Lena: Make some. Remember those ginger ones you made?

Yes I did. I made them some years ago when I knew some recipe I had composed from various others and snipped off all the bits that included ingredients I didn’t have. But now I couldn’t remember it as I usually commit everything to memory, to a memory that is full of holes. So I dived into the internet and rummaged through recipes, easy ones that I could execute without a weighing scale and without having to nip out to the grocer’s. There was this South African recipe that said 8 cups of flour. Wonder of wonders, no weighing scale needed! There were a couple of hitches…500 ml of golden syrup. I didn’t have any and who needs syrup anyway, it would be too sweet. I could just use more light brown sugar. All the rest were ml of ginger and spices and so on and so forth that I could just shake out from their little jars and just estimate and approximate. Finally there was the butter, 550 gms of it. Easy peasy. Each tub was 250 gms. I opened the fridge and reached out for it and…argh…I only had half a tub.

I ran out to the grocer’s and…hey…it was a lot cooler. I started making a grab for the butter and other items that I needed whilst talking to the grocer’s daughter about the weather and how it was going to do us in, with its hot and cold blasts shaking our bodies into remembering buried pains of forgotten injuries. She told me about a pain in an old fracture and I told her about my gardening back. Then her husband, Giorgos, in his 50’s, round and stout with a hearty laugh, who looked just like the Laughing Buddha, walked in, stretched his arms and yawned, saying that he needed to limber up, do some sort of sport and shift those muscles. His wife rolled her eyes up and humphed.

Giorgos: I’ll do something to work those muscles ( looking at us and grinning).

The wife humphed again and looked away.

Me: I suppose you could go… jogging.

Giorgos: Nooo. I need something more…engaging.

He made a show of lifting his arms and shaking them, like some gorilla on a rampage. I waited and so did the other customers, a bunch of unyoung people like me, who had time to just hang around and engage in trivial chatter. Everyone was curious but no answer was forthcoming and the wife gave us a look to suggest…`don’t bother with him.’ But I couldn’t resist and was about to prod him on when someone else was itching to know and spluttered out.

Customer: So what are you going to do? Carry weights?

Giorgos: No… I’m going to… play billiards …and… build up those arm muscles.

One elderly lady, more unyoung than us, resting on a walking stick, screeched with laughter and the rest of us joined in with guffaws, splutters and snorts. Then I remembered that my biscuits were waiting for me. I rushed out and…whoa…the wind had turned around and was blowing from some northerly direction, cool and getting cold, a tailwind that bullied and shoved me to our gate. When I stepped in, panting, the cleaning lady seemed concerned.

` I thought the wind had blown you off! ‘

Then we started our ginger munchies, estimating and approximating with her looking over my shoulder and giving me instructions with…a little more of this and a little more of that and not so much etc etc. The recipe said to pluck out pieces of dough the size of walnuts and shape out the biscuits. I plucked and shaped and they rose and turned a lovely golden brown and…spread out like…smooth little pancakes, so unlike the ginger biscuit look, with cracks on the surface. I must have plucked out lumps of dough the size of plums…`Never mind, they’re nice big mouthfuls!’ said she. We couldn’t wait and sank our teeth into them when they were still soft and warm. They were absolutely delicious but perhaps a little too sweet. With no syrup, we over compensated with the sugar.

So cheers and Happy Easter everyone!