Esther Walker - Bad Cook

The editor had finally met her match.

Connie was my best – and, sometimes, only – friend at the Standard . I would often poke my head into the editor’s office, where she sat drinking pot after pot of fresh ginger tea that was so strong that when you drank it, it felt like your whole face was on fire. She would shriek, quietly: ‘ESTHER!! Oh my God I’ve just eaten an entire Bounty and TWO packets of Maltesers!!!’

I have been thinking about Connie recently because I came across a mention of a mango salsa, which she used to make for me in the weeny galley kitchen of her top floor flat in Notting Hill. Roasting hot in summer and freezing cold in winter (‘I think another bad January might finish me off’), Connie’s flat was a miracle of survival, like those plants you get in the desert, or 100,000 miles under the sea.

Anyway she almost always has the ingredients in her kitchen for this spicy mango salsa, and it’s quite, quite delicious. I realize the above whimsy makes it sound like Connie is now dead, but she isn’t. She’s still there, in that same deathtrap flat, training to be a shrink.

My husband and I had this with a very rich jerk pork belly, which didn’t work at all; it was too rich and gacky and yuk. It would be very good instead with some plain steak, or a tuna steak (although these days one cannot really eat such things) or a plain white fish like turbot or pollock.

1 mango – diced

juice of 1 lime

small handful fresh coriander

a sprinkling of fresh mint

1 chilli – chopped finely, seeds removed

1 avocado, diced

salt

1 Put everything in a bowl and mix.

The best thing about working at the Evening Standard , where I was from 2005 to 2007 (although for fuck’s sake don’t tell the Student Loans Company that – as far as they’re concerned I was missing presumed dead in western Namibia and therefore do NOT owe them any money for that tax year), was my boss.

He was so great because he’d always say ‘well done’. It didn’t really matter what you’d done; he’d always just say ‘well done’. I mean, not if you’d done something bad. If you’d done something bad he’d say ‘oh dear’. And then when you put it right, he’d say ‘well done’.

This worked on me. Although I’d had nice bosses in the past, none of them had said ‘well done’ with the frequency and fervour of Sebastian.

‘Seb I got you a sandwich,’ I’d say.

‘Oh well done,’ he’d say.

‘Seb I rang Antonia Fraser about that thing,’ I’d say.

‘Oh, well done. What did she say?’ he’d say.

[She almost always said ‘fuck off’, or something like that, by the way.]

‘Seb I forgot to put through all those payments,’ I’d say.

‘Oh dear,’ he’d say. ‘Can you do it now?’

‘Yes I’ll do it now,’ I’d say.

‘Oh, well done,’ he’d say.

You get the picture. On Friday lunchtimes, I used to get us both chicken shawarmas from Ranoush Juice, just opposite the Evening Standard ’s offices in Kensington. Ranoush Juice is one of a chain of Lebanese places that will be familiar to Londoners, and not to anyone else. We’d eat the sandwiches at our desks, stinking the place out. On Fridays at the Standard there was nothing to do after about 1pm because there was no paper until Monday. So at about 3pm Seb would say ‘Okay, well done, you can go home now.’ And off I’d go. You see? I literally hadn’t done anything , and he'd say ‘well done’. Awesome. It did wonders for my productivity. I would write 100 or maybe even 200 words a week in that place. Phew!

A note: our Friday lunches only lasted until Ariel Sharon had that heart attack; it turned out that his favourite food was chicken shawarmas and Sebastian didn’t want any after that. He briefly accused me of trying to kill him with greasy sandwiches, but I think he was only joking.

Needless to say, I cried tears of genuine sadness when I left the Evening Standard to go and work at the Independent . And in the 12 months that I worked at the Indy I don't think anyone ever said ‘well done’ to me. Not once. Ever.

As you can imagine there were no tears of sadness when I got the hell out of there .

But I had been infected with the habit of saying ‘well done’ to everyone, about everything. It’s a great motivator. I do it to my husband all the time.

‘I put a wash on,’ he’ll say.

‘Oh WELL DONE,’ I’ll say.

I often find that even though my husband is a good and enthusiastic cook, I find it important to issue a strongly motivational yawp, in the manner of ‘WELL DONE THIS IS DELICIOUS WOW WOW WOW’ when we sit down to eat dinner. It really works.

When my husband is really feeling particularly uxorious, he will make Osso Buco for us, which is one of those things that has a mystifying name but is actually quite simple. It’s basically veal shin stew and it incorporates bone marrow, which makes it very glossy and sticky. Osso buco means ‘bone with a hole’, which is a pretty unromantic description – but that’s the Italians for you.

When you go to a butcher to get your meat for this, you can ask for either some veal shin (you want rose veal, obviously) or, if you like, ‘osso buco’, which is the name of the cut. I know it sounds a bit like going in and asking for some ‘spaghetti bolognese’, but it isn’t.

This recipe is a mash-up of Hugh FW’s and Claudia Roden’s in that Hugh’s does not include tomatoes and Claudia Roden’s does.

It’s a pretty rich dish so you really only need one slice of veal shin per person and traditionally it is eaten with a risotto and gremolata, a finely chopped salad of parsley, lemon zest and garlic. I like to go pretty easy on the garlic as if you’re not careful it can really keep you up at night.

some veg oil for cooking, plus a large knob of butter

2 slices veal shin

1 large handful, or about 50g, plain flour, seasoned with salt and pepper

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

2 medium onions (i.e. not massive white onions), chopped

2 celery sticks, chopped

1 carrot, chopped (do not be tempted to be clever and use more than one carrot here because too much carrot makes everything very sickly sweet)

1 large glass white wine, doesn’t matter what

250ml-ish light stock – pork or chicken (if you’ve got a bit less than that you can top up with hot water, do not fret)

3 tomatoes (if you want, don’t if not – I think they’re nice though), skinned and chopped. You skin them by making a cross in the bottom of the tomato with a knife and then putting them in boiling water for 2 mins and then the skins come off. The riper the tomato the easier this is.

salt and pepper

1 In a large pan or casserole dish that goes on the hob, heat together a long sloop of veg oil and the knob of butter. Dust the veal shin in the seasoned flour and brown all over then set aside.

2 To the pan add the garlic, onions, celery and carrot and cook gently until soft. I find the best way to do this without burning everything is to cook it on the lowest possible setting for at least 15 minutes. You may have a better way of doing it, in which case don’t let me stop you.

3 Put the veal pieces back in the pan – flat side down so that the marrow doesn’t all fall out, then pour in the glass of wine, turn up the heat and sizzle until it’s reduced by about half. Add your stock and chopped tomatoes, topped up with water from the kettle if you need to, and some salt and pepper, bring it all to a very gentle simmer, put a lid on it and cook for 2 hours.