WWC

World’s Worst Cook.

My cook book which nobody, absolutely nobody would want to publish will be called “My strangely successful foul cooking” and in it you will find it my very famous “Poulet A La Rien” (in English it’s equally audaciously translated as Chicken A La Nothing or I love the Italian Pollo Al Nulla).

Yesterday I made the Gourmet trilingual version “Poulet leg à la rien avec de zucchini avanzat, tres vieux tomate, tres tres vieux peperon et sbobbette de hier”, which in basic kitchen table language is chicken leg aka nothing with leftover courgettes, old tomato, very old pepper and yesterday’s lentil soup.

Ah. My lentil soups and potions. They shall have a chapter each. We call them “sbobba” - an onomatopoeic name which means something in between a large dollop of goo, something akin to animal food and mush, because that it what it looks like, even though it tastes delicious. I mean sometimes I make it with homemade chicken broth. I like to serve it piping hot all year round August included.

Because the thing is that, more often than not, the horrible things I cook actually taste very nice - ok not every time, sometimes they are plain nice enough - but they are always edible and almost always actually very healthy.

What seems adorable to me is that I have been nearly cancelled several times by my own children on account of my foul cooking, but my grandchildren - bless them, already rebelling against their parents even if some of them are merely toddlers! - they all absolutely love it, which is why I have confidently added the heady and brave addition ‘my strangely successful’ bit to the title of a book that was going to be called simply ‘my foul cooking’.

Interestingly, my kids are into feeding their own kids healthy food these days and so they finally realise the merits of my endeavours, even if the poor ingredients, pretty and wholesome as they had originally looked, inevitably end up appearing rather dull and battered after running into my inpatients hands, eager to return to any activity which isn’t cooking asap

Looks aren’t everything, I keep repeating

Clearly, obviously, my recipes are all secret and I will share them only with my paying subs.