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| NORTH YORKSHIRE |  | | | CLEVELAND | | | | COUNTY DURHAM | |
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How to mix creative cooking with a hectic family life schedule
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| CULINARY TIPS: Ruth Campbell mixes with the best at Swinton Park |
RUTH CAMPBELL, fed up with churning out the same old
meals for her five boys, went in search of some inspiration
I MAY dream I am Nigella, effortlessly
turning out fabulous-
looking, mouth-watering
dishes for my delightful,
charming children while we all
laugh together around the kitchen
table.
But, in reality, I am in a domestic
rut, sweating over a hot cooker,
churning out the same old boring
meals every day of the week for
five boys whose usual comment is
"Yuck" or "Oh no, not this again".
I shop and cook on auto pilot. It's
lasagne one night. Jacket potatoes
the next. A quick chicken curry
another. Then sausage and mash.
At the end of the week it might be
fish pie, leek and potato soup or
toasted sandwiches. And so it goes
on, over and over again.
When I reach crisis point, it's fish
fingers. And I might even try to
convince myself that tomato
ketchup really is a vegetable - isn't
it?
Indecent amounts of food are
scraped straight into the bin after
tea. And I am even starting to find
pieces of meat and vegetables
squirreled away under the table or
hidden under the children's place
mats so they can avoid eating
them.
Clearly, I need help.
By the time I arrived at Gilly
Robinson's family food cookery
course, in the serene setting of
Swinton Park country house hotel
in Masham, I was desperate for
inspiration.
Some readers may know Gilly - a
Cordon Bleu-trained chef who
worked in professional kitchens
all over the world before settling in
North Yorkshire - from the popular
daytime TV cookery programme,
The Rosemary Shrager
School For Cooks, on ITV.
She has been celebrity chef Rosemary's
assistant for five years and
is now fast gaining a reputation
for her own innovative cookery
classes at Swinton Park. As a busy,
working mother-of-three, she understands
the reality of cooking
for a family in between work,
school run, cubs and swimming
lessons.
Producing imaginative, appetising,
nutritious food that all the
family want to eat and getting it
on the table quickly with the minimum
of fuss is her speciality.
There are eight of us on this
course, including two dads who
want to do more cooking for their
families and another mother, like
myself, who needs a bit of creative
encouragement.
We start with bread, which I find
difficult, because I don't understand
yeast. It's all too time-consuming
and complicated for me.
But Gilly's delicious yeast-free
corn and soda breads are simple
to produce, taking just ten minutes
to make and 20 minutes to
bake. We even put chilli in the
corn bread, which I worry may be
too adventurous for my boys: "Just
put the chilli in half the loaf to try
it, but it's not hot at all." She's
right, it isn't. I decide they're having
the chilli.
Gilly also shows us how to roll our
bread mix into long, thin strips in
a pasta machine (the children can
help with this, she suggests) and
sprinkle it with poppy seeds before
baking to make jagged wafers,
which look like huge crisps.
We move on to a home-made
ratatouille. Gilly advises cutting
the vegetables into thick chunks,
so that those children who don't
like aubergine or onion can simply
lift out the offending article
and eat the rest.
The beauty of this dish is that it's
made in a roasting pan, so you
just bung it in the oven and forget
about it while you get on with
something else. This is my kind of
cooking.
As with all of Gilly's dishes, we
make large portions so some can
be frozen. And Gilly gets us working
on a number of recipes, from
fish ratatouille tray bake to ratatouille
and mozzarella pasta,
where we can use the ratatouille
over and over again, while appearing
to produce something different
each time.
Her tasty pilaf dish is also cooked
in a big roasting pan, with the rice
cooking in the stock in the oven,
so there's no time-consuming stirring
or watching.
We all want to know how we can
get fussy children to try new
things. I have one child who is a
vegetarian, two who can't eat various
fish and one who won't touch
eggs. Gilly has seen it all before
and is full of clever ideas about
how to adapt recipes for different
tastes.
I love her surprise parcels, which
look like giant silver Cornish
pasties, made from tin foil. Inside,
we put fish - or you could used
thin fillets of chicken or pork -
with tomato and pesto. They only
take ten minutes to cook and children
love opening them and eating
straight out of the foil.
We also make fresh pasta, which is
so quick and easy I don't know
why I buy it dried, along with
roast squash, with broccoli and
goats' cheese, grilled chicken with
thyme and garlic butter, and
Swedish pancakes.
As an added bonus, Gilly shows us
how we can even cook in our
sleep. Our meringues with chocolate
chips are put in the oven after
we'd finished cooking and turned
it off for the day: "Leave the door
closed and when you wake up in
the morning, they'll be cooked,
ready to eat."
If you're not cooking meringues,
and providing you don't have
young children running about,
she suggests leaving your oven
door open: "Why waste all that
heat?" "Why didn't I think of that?"
said one of the men.
Among other culinary gems, we
learn not to put salt in when boiling
vegetables. "It extracts all the
goodness," says Gilly. And I now
know how to cut an onion properly
- chopping the knobbly bit on
the end off at the last minute, after
slicing the rest, to avoid stingy
eyes and strong odours.
After all our cooking, we are sent
off to enjoy a stroll in the Swinton
Park grounds while Gilly and her
staff transform the kitchen.
We return to a table beautifully
laid with white linen, bottles of
wine and our morning's work, a
huge, luscious, colourful feast. The
number of dishes we have managed
to produce between 10am
and 12.30pm is nothing short of
amazing.
It tastes as good as it looks and
we're all pretty pleased with ourselves.
Sadly, I am ashamed to admit,
after rushing from school run to
swimming lessons and an afterschool
rugby match, that night my
children had fish fingers and
beans for tea.
"This is the last time. Just wait
until I get to the supermarket," I
promised them, waving the shopping
list Gilly had helpfully provided
us with under their noses.
Since then, I have cooked all of
her recipes - even the fussy eaters
have wolfed them down - and the
boys have had fresh cooked bread
every day.
Of everything I have made, the
bread is the most popular. And
when I pull that warm, delicioussmelling
loaf out of the oven, boy
do I feel smug.
Eat your heart out, Nigella.
● Gilly's family food courses cost
£100. She also runs children's
cookery courses, cost £80. These
courses include a morning's
demonstration and hands-on
cooking followed by lunch in the
demonstration kitchen. Participants
also receive a voucher for a
20 per cent discount off a spa
treatment.
Other cookery courses at Swinton
Park are run by Rosemary Shrager
and Simon Crannage. For further
details, contact Swinton Park.
● Swinton Park: tel 01765-680900,
enquiries@swintonpark.com,
www.swintonpark.com.
12:40pm Friday 21st March 2008
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