Somewhere Delia Smith is breathing a sigh of relief

Well, it’s back to work for me today; it’s nippy in New York at the moment, it was snowing when I got off the subway to work. I love the snow and I’m so used to the coldness of New York now that I find it fairly easy to deal with. It’s a dry cold, so I find that as long as you wear enough layers you’re fine, unlike the damp cold in England that seeps through all your layers and chills you to the bone. Brrrrrr!!!!

Surprisingly, it was lovely and quiet on the trains this morning. Well, relatively quiet. It wasn't 'find-a-seat' quiet, I still had to stand, but it wasn't so sardine like that my nose was lodged in someone's armpit either, which is always a good thing. I imagine a lot of people must be taking the rest of the week off and returning to work on Monday the 8th. Personally I like returning to work after the festivities when it’s a partial week, I find it less pressurized. No-one expects too much of you on the first day the office is open in the New Year. My boss once told me that he didn’t consider these days as part of the proper working week, which is more than okay by me. In fact everyone seems a bit shell-shocked to be back in the office, so it’s ends up being a fairly easy day of checking emails, shuffling a few papers, drinking coffee and catching up with colleagues to find out if they had a good Hanukkah/Christmas/Kwanzaa/New Year, by which time 5pm has rolled around and it’s time to go home. Very few people work late on the first day back if the 5pm crush in the lifts is anything to go by.

The rest of the partial week generally continues at much the same pace, gradually building momentum, so that by the time the weekend passes and the first full week begins things are pretty much back to normal. The people who take the partial week off and return to work for the first full week miss out on the opportunity to ease themselves back into work, it’s in at the deep end for them, and as a result they always seem to have that rabbit caught in the headlights look for their first few days back.

Potentially big changes afoot in the office, the dreaded ‘restructuring’ word has been bandied about more often than I care for. These are covering your arse times and I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my so called career recently. I’m still not entirely sure I know what I want to do when I grow up, but there’s a question mark over whether I want to continue working in marketing. I’ll have to ponder it a bit longer.

I certainly won’t be giving up my day job to become a chef that’s for sure. I made the New Covent Garden carrot and coriander (cilantro in the US) soup sans coriander yesterday as planned and I have to say it was delicious and a very easy recipe too. I was quite surprised by how good it was, because I’m not what you’d call naturally gifted in the kitchen and as a rule I don’t tend to cook, not that I order in all the time either as many people assume is the case if you live in New York. It’s too expensive to do that on a regular basis and I’d much rather put my disposable income towards footwear, no, what I tend to do is assemble meals from ready prepared ingredients purchased from the likes of Wholefoods or Trader Joes. I’d give my eye teeth for an M&S food hall, although since that’s unlikely I’m quite excited by the fact that Tesco has branched out to L.A., hopefully a New York store is on the cards. I’d be happy with a Tesco, I love their ‘Finest’ range, but then UK supermarkets seem to be so much more accomplished at ready meals than the ones I’ve come across in the US. Hmmm. Clearly that doesn’t say a lot for the state of home cooking in Britain.

Funnily enough despite the fact that I don’t cook, I LOVE cookbooks, I have a whole pile of them at my apartment, purchased with the best intentions of actually using them. I never do, but I do enjoy looking at the photos, I don’t see the logic behind a cookbook without photos. I need to be able to drool over glossy photos of perfectly prepared food. Cookbooks are my porn.

“That’s cooking” exclaimed Megan, pastry chef extraordinaire, when I told her of my assembly approach to meals. Bless her heart. I appreciate the support, but I beg to differ that it could be classified as cooking. My method of food preparation is as akin to actual cookery as Ikea is to fine furniture, not the most beautiful or well made, but it gets the job done.

However the carrot sans coriander soup went well and I was actually quite impressed by my efforts. The recipe was actually quite straightforward and I was patting myself on the back at not making too much of a mess in my tiny Manhattan kitchen. Usually when I cook it looks like a food parcel has exploded. I blame it on my limited counter space, and when I say limited I am not exaggerating. My counter is exactly 18 by 24inches. It’s titchy!!! Forget all those movies you see where the characters always have ginormous kitchens in their humungous loft apartments, they’re as close to reality as sugar plum fairies. My entire kitchen is exactly 7ft by 9ft, which actually doesn’t sound THAT tiny, but believe me, there isn’t any room for cat swinging, especially when you factor in the size of American appliances. You should see the size of my fridge and cooker, they’re suitable for feeding a family of 20. Erm…hello New York apartment developers, pay attention, European sized appliances would be so much more appropriate in our tiny apartments!! Sigh!! Oh and God forbid there should be room for a washing machine among my giant appliances – seriously they’re all so big I feel as if I’m in Jack and The Beanstalk sometimes. Actually it’s probably best not to let me get started on the fact that there’s no washer and I have to pigging heft my stuff to the laundrette of a weekend. Pht!!

Anyway, back to the soup. It was all going marvellously; I should have realised things would take a disastrous turn given my history in the kitchen, but I was too busy patting myself on the back for a job well done, pride, fall and all that. I’d gently cooked the finely sliced onion and crushed garlic clove – ready chopped from a jar, life is too short, my knife skills limited and my fingers too precious, for me to be finely slicing garlic – in butter, taking care not to let them brown. I’d added vegetable broth - from a carton of course, the recipe suggested I make my own ha ha ha!! - and chucked in the roughly chopped carrots and a pinch of nutmeg, that was something else I forgot to buy at Agata & Valentina, but I checked the back of the top cupboard and lo and behold I found a sealed jar of them tucked that must have been there at least 2years – the last time I decided to cook. The ones in the middle had a fluffy covering of mould on them that caused me some hesitation, but I thoroughly checked the top one for spores and it looked okay, so I took a risk (hey, it’s penicillin) and grated a bit to add to the mix. It was the piece de resistance in my opinion; a little nutmeg goes a long way

So, all was well until I arrived at the point where the carrots were cooked and I needed to puree the soup prior to returning it to a clean saucepan, adding a touch of seasoning, heavy cream and a handful of grated carrot for ‘texture’ and voila, nutritious homemade soup for one.

I took the soup off the heat, plugged in the hand blender, stuck it into a pan and switched it on.

Big mistake!!

You’d really think they’d mention the high splatter risk on the instructions of the Braun Multiquick hand blender!! Droplets of piping hot soup went EVERYWHERE, including the bare flesh of my arms!!

Aaaaiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

Not fun.

So what did I get in return for my culinary efforts??? Burns!!! Oh and a few stubborn bits of carrot that are still stuck to my kitchen tiles having resisted my attempts at removal with fresh scented Clorox disinfected wipes. Clearly I need something a bit stronger for removing errant root vegetables.

Nevertheless the soup was delicious (who needs coriander), but I won’t be risking life and limb to make it again. I’m off to Wholefoods tonight.