The Plumberry School of Comfort Food Page 6

  Tom’s eyes widened as he watched her sashay back to the kitchen.

  ‘So the main teaching kitchen will be ready only a few days before we open,’ said Gloria, taking a large gulp of the wine Tom had poured her.

  ‘Which is when?’ I asked.

  Surely she wasn’t still hoping to be ready in a fortnight? The place had potential, but Gloria had been spot on yesterday on the phone when she’d referred to it as a bomb site.

  ‘May fifteenth,’ said Gloria with impressive confidence.

  ‘Two weeks on Friday?’ I said, doing a rapid calculation.

  Eek. I looked across at Tom; his eyebrows flickered but he didn’t give anything away.

  ‘I think we should aim to run a test course before then,’ he said evenly, leaning forward to take a piece of crusty bread from the basket. ‘I need to know all the ovens are calibrated correctly, that the demo kitchen really works properly and that everyone can see.’

  Gloria tapped a finger on her lips pensively. ‘I’ll do my best, Tom. The downstairs Aga kitchen is already working, so if you want to test recipes out, and so on . . .?’

  ‘Ta-dah!’ Mags swept into the room bearing a large casserole dish. She lowered it down to the centre of the table, removed the lid and flipped the oven gloves over her shoulder. ‘Wait till you taste this, Tom. You’ll be begging me for more.’

  He grinned and rubbed his neck awkwardly as Mags began ladling stew into bowls. She set a huge bowl in front of me.

  ‘This’ll put hairs on your chest, Verity.’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, fanning the steam from my face.

  ‘A pan of scouse. My mother’s old recipe.’ Mags beamed. ‘Don’t be shy with the red wine, Tom, top me up, there’s a good lad.’

  ‘Mags grew up in Liverpool, didn’t you, Mags?’ Gloria took a spoonful and blew on it.

  ‘The posh end, mind.’ Mags sat down and immediately got up again and left the room. ‘I forgot the pickles.’

  I caught Tom’s eye and we shared the tiniest of bemused smiles.

  ‘Everyone had a pan of scouse on the go when I was growing up.’ Mags plonked a jar of pickled onions and one of red cabbage on the table, scooped up some of the stew on her bread and closed her eyes. ‘Mmmm. Takes me straight back. Nothing but good, honest ingredients; you can’t beat the taste of home.’

  ‘I agree, my mum’s stew and dumplings does it for me,’ said Tom.

  ‘Me too. You can forget your fiddly foams and poncy purees.’ I shuddered. ‘I like to see food served plainly, not in fancy dress. What’s your signature dish, Tom?’

  ‘Er.’ He didn’t meet my eye and helped himself to more bread. ‘That would probably be pan-fried scallops with a lime foam and minted pea purée.’

  Bugger.

  I swallowed. ‘Well, no wonder you won a Michelin star,’ I said, focusing on my bowl.

  ‘Tom was the head chef at Salinger’s in Manchester.’ Gloria raised her eyebrows as high as they could go to indicate how impressive that was.

  He cleared his throat. ‘But my partner and I have gone our separate ways. New horizons beckon.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’ Mags chuckled, taking a gulp of her wine.

  ‘Thanks.’ Tom gave her a tight smile. ‘What about you, Verity? What sort of cook are you?’

  I waved my fork in the air dismissively. ‘My housemate Rosie calls me Princess Prick and Ping.’

  ‘Good grief,’ Gloria murmured.

  Mags snorted and elbowed Tom in the ribs. ‘Sounds like a Thai stripper.’

  Tom choked on his wine and banged his chest. A few drops of wine escaped from his glass and splattered on to his shirt. ‘Sorry, wasn’t expecting that.’

  He looked down at his white shirt in dismay. ‘Damn.’

  ‘Whip it off, love, and I’ll wash it for you.’ Mags tipped him a lascivious wink. ‘You’re amongst friends.’

  ‘Really?’ He grinned. ‘Will you whip yours off in front of me?’

  She leaned forward until her ample bosom was almost in his dinner. ‘Are you asking?’ she drawled in a low voice, fluttering her eyelashes.

  ‘Heavens, Mags, put them away,’ chuckled Gloria, ‘and stop harassing my staff.’

  ‘You spoil all my fun,’ Mags tutted.

  Poor Tom was still holding his shirt away from him with his fingertips. I popped into the kitchen and returned with a damp cloth.

  ‘Here, dab it with this.’ I held it out and he took it with a grateful smile. ‘And no, not a stripper. Let’s just say I’m a convenience-food junkie. Pop it in the microwave and ping – done in no time.’

  Tom looked at me with disdain. ‘Like ready-meals?’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ I felt uncomfortable all of a sudden.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t understand why people make excuses not to cook and put up with eating bad food.’

  ‘Not everyone has the time,’ I retorted.

  ‘You can still take advantage of the freshest, seasonal produce without taking an age to cook it,’ he argued. ‘Where’s the respect for quality and taste?’

  ‘It’s about priorities, I guess,’ I snapped back.

  Gloria laid a hand across mine as a gentle warning. I pressed my lips together and took a deep breath. As much as it pained me to admit it, Tom had touched a nerve.

  ‘Mind you, you did admit earlier that you had no taste,’ he continued blithely. ‘This is very tasty, Mags, although the pickles aren’t for me.’

  I felt like I’d been smacked in the face; I wish I hadn’t fetched him a cloth now. Even Mags looked taken aback.

  ‘For your information, Tom, I can cook,’ I said. ‘I just choose not to. But when I do, my food is comforting and cooked with love and—’ My words caught in my throat as a sudden rush of emotion sprang up from nowhere.

  For Mimi and me, our cooking sessions had always been mostly about having fun and much less about how the food ended up. Nothing like Tom’s school of thought at all. He could stuff his pea purée up his—

  ‘I’m sorry, that was rude. I’ve got no right to criticize.’ He rubbed a hand through his hair.

  Mags patted his arm. ‘You’re passionate and who can complain about a man with passion, eh, ladies?’

  He gave me a tight-lipped smile. ‘Forgiven?’

  I nodded. ‘Sure.’ Not really.

  Mags picked up the ladle and scooped up more scouse. ‘Now, who’s for more?’

  She dolloped some in Tom’s bowl without waiting for a response.

  ‘Anyway,’ Gloria said, looking anxiously from Tom to me, ‘Verity’s role will be to promote the cookery school, to come up with lots of ideas to make sure we get people through the doors. Especially on our open day.’

  ‘Gloria,’ I piped up, clearing my throat and feeling very glad we’d changed the subject, ‘what is the name of the cookery school?’

  Gloria squirmed in her seat. ‘I’ve just been calling it The Cookery School.’

  ‘No, that’s too generic. You should have your name in it,’ said Tom blackly, ‘then no one can take it from you.’

  ‘How about Food, Gloria’s Food?’ suggested Mags.

  ‘Oh, I like that.’ Gloria squeezed her friend’s hand across the table. ‘What fun!’

  Personally, I thought that sounded too much like a café and not at all like a cookery school.

  Tom shook his head. ‘I meant your last name. What is it again?’

  ‘Ramsbottom!’ we all chorused.

  Tom’s lips twitched. ‘OK, then, maybe not. You need it to sound professional.’

  ‘And not like a sheep’s bum,’ Mags added.

  Gloria exhaled thoughtfully. ‘I take your point about professional, Tom. But I want my cookery school to deliver food that’s like a hug on a plate. A love of food is more important to me than being cheffy.’

  ‘What about the Plumberry School of Food?’ I said suddenly. ‘The village is a food lover’s paradise, that would make sense.’

  The other two no
dded their approval until Gloria’s face lit up.

  ‘The Plumberry School of Comfort Food,’ she cried.

  ‘That, Gloria Ramsbottom, is perfect,’ I declared, raising my glass. ‘A toast. To the Plumberry School of Comfort Food.’

  Chapter 7

  For the next few days I threw myself into my new life in Plumberry. In Gloria’s cottage I had the dearest little room at the top of the house with views across the Yorkshire Dales and my own en suite shower room. Comfrey and Sage, in spite of only having the shortest of legs, had taken it upon themselves to wake me every morning by scampering up the stairs and barking at my door until I let them in and up on to the bed for a cuddle. It was a lovely way to greet the day.

  Mags and Gloria were inseparable and watching them together reminded me so much of the pleasure Mimi and I used to derive from each other’s company. I didn’t really know why they kept separate houses as they took it in turns to cook each night, and they didn’t mind a bit that so far I hadn’t returned the favour.

  However, I did help Gloria make beef wellington on my first Friday night. In true Gloria style, it was not only delicious, but it was a feast for the eyes and I’d been quite emotional as the three of us sat down to eat. The fact that the first proper dinner I’d cooked in two years was a team effort with Mimi’s mum made the meal all the more delicious. I’d missed cooking, I realized, and eating proper food. Spending time with Gloria in her kitchen did make me remember Mimi, and the two of us had shed a tear together after the others had gone on that first night after Mags’s scouse, but it also made me feel as if I was regaining a part of me that had been missing since she died.

  My old job at Solomon Insurance, Ruthless Rod and even my relationship with Liam seemed like memories best forgotten, although I did miss my little house in Nottingham. I’d spoken to Rosie a few times and apparently Liam had turned up on our doorstep after I’d ignored all his messages. Rosie had taken great delight in telling him I wasn’t there.

  ‘Told him if he showed his two-faced face again, he’d be swimming with the fishes,’ she’d informed me briskly.

  In fact, the only person who was sad about my break-up with Liam was Mum.

  ‘Oh love,’ she’d groaned down the phone when I’d rung to update her on my whereabouts. ‘I just want to see you settled.’

  ‘I know, Mum,’ I’d replied, ‘but I don’t think I should settle for anything less than I deserve, do you?’

  And right now a month in the delightful village of Plumberry with no man troubles was exactly what I deserved.

  I started work on Wednesday and spent two days with a web designer building a website and a day at the printers, where a very nice man drew us a logo for the cookery school. Between us we concocted a leaflet for the open day, some advertising for the newspaper that Gloria had booked and had the beginnings of a brochure worked up. All we needed to add to it were some glossy photographs and a calendar showing the courses. The former would have to wait until I had something other than a building site to photograph and the latter depended on Gloria and Tom coming to an agreement on which courses the school should run.

  The following Monday was a bank holiday. The builders, true to their word, were on track for Gloria’s planned opening day and as paint started to appear on walls and kitchen equipment began to arrive by the pallet load, I noticed the worry lines disappearing from her face. The pacing I’d heard in the middle of the night when I’d first arrived had lessened too.

  Today, however, with no workmen on site, the cookery school was mercifully quiet, so Tom had suggested that we gather to hammer out the finer details of the calendar. Mags, Gloria, Tom and I, plus our newly recruited kitchen assistant Pixie, sat out in the sunshine on the deck on the new wooden picnic tables. Pixie had a uniform that consisted of burgundy Doc Martens boots, leggings and T-shirts, which she continuously tugged over her hips. She wore her black hair in a pony tail with a long fringe that covered her sturdy eyebrows and had black glasses that reminded me of Velma, the clever one from Scooby-Doo.

  Mags made tea and Tom brought out a plate of delicate petits-fours, which he’d made in the Aga. And with the dogs stretched out across Gloria’s feet in the May sunshine, it almost felt like a little family get-together.

  ‘We need to open the cookery school with a bang,’ said Gloria. ‘Exciting courses at enticing prices. Perhaps some introductory offers?’

  ‘I’ve had a brilliant idea: BOGOF,’ I threw in, taking one of Tom’s tiny cakes from the plate. It was covered in thick dark chocolate and topped with a piece of walnut and a coffee bean and smelled heavenly. ‘Buy one get one free. It’ll boost numbers and it’s always nicer to cook with a friend, isn’t it?’

  In my book, cooking with a friend was the only way to do it.

  Gloria met my eye and smiled. ‘It is.’

  ‘But tacky,’ Tom said with a frown. ‘No offence, Verity, but that sort of promotion cheapens the offering more than any other marketing strategy. We need to be seen as experts. Gimmicks aren’t the way forward, believe me.’

  ‘None taken,’ I said, quashing the urge to pick the coffee bean off my petit-four and lob it at him. I sank my teeth into the cake instead. It was the most exquisitely intense hit of chocolate I’d ever tasted and it took all of my willpower not to groan with pleasure. ‘Although I completely disagree.’

  There was nothing wrong with being passionate. Nothing at all. But he took everything to do with food so seriously. I much preferred him when he was rescuing the dogs from certain death or giving me flowers.

  We locked eyes and his mouth twitched with the merest hint of a smile. I looked away; he was so annoying.

  ‘Let’s talk about the schedule,’ Gloria intervened smoothly. ‘The courses we’ll run in the first week should give a true flavour of what the Plumberry School of Comfort Food is about.’

  ‘Comfort food, then,’ I said, wiping the chocolate from my mouth with a napkin.

  Tom sat up tall. ‘Something spectacular that you wouldn’t cook at home. A five-bird roast, boned, stuffed and—’

  ‘Hugely expensive,’ said Gloria, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘And posh,’ said Pixie, wrinkling up her nose.

  ‘And probably takes all day to cook,’ added Mags.

  ‘What about Sumptuous Stews?’ Gloria said. ‘Comforting, achievable and—’

  ‘A bit boring?’ said Tom, rubbing a hand through his hair. ‘People come to a cookery school to learn, to be inspired. We need to show them how to do the things they shy away from at home, like boning fish or, I don’t know . . . making confit of duck.’

  ‘Confit? What’s that when it’s at home?’ Pixie rolled her eyes.

  I suppressed a giggle as a look of irritation flashed across Tom’s face.

  Pixie had turned up last week looking for a job. She was twenty-five and had a Yorkshire accent so strong that Mags sometimes had to translate for Tom. She already worked at the weekends in the Plumberry cheesemonger’s and evenings in the pub in Pudston but was saving up for her own place so she could leave the home she shared with her big family.

  ‘I need more hours and the cheese shop hasn’t got any to give me. I’ll do anything,’ she’d pleaded to Gloria. ‘Wash up, chop onions, even empty the bins.’

  And as Gloria wasn’t a fan of doing any of those things, she’d given Pixie a job. ‘She’s a mucker-inner,’ she’d told me. ‘And not afraid to get her hands dirty.’

  She was also not afraid to voice her opinion, even if it rubbed Tom up the wrong way. I liked her a lot.

  ‘How about taking cheaper stuff that a family can actually afford and doing something special with it? You know, making the most of their budget?’ Pixie continued. She picked up a teaspoon and began to push her cuticles back with it.

  ‘Everyone’s right,’ I said diplomatically. ‘We need courses that teach people skills they can use, with ingredients they can afford or perhaps at least splash out on now and again. But no one comes to a cookery school to m
ake cottage pie, we need to inspire people. I agree with Tom.’

  ‘You do?’ He raised a cynical eyebrow and I willed my cheeks not to redden.

  We all stared at the large sheet of paper on which Tom had written ‘May Calendar’. It was still blank apart from the heading.

  ‘Why don’t we do a bit of market research?’ Mags suggested. ‘I can go out into Plumberry tomorrow and ask.’

  ‘Good plan,’ said Gloria. ‘I’d come too but we’re having a health and safety inspection.’

  ‘And not me and Pixie either,’ Tom said. ‘We’ll be busy unpacking twenty sets of kitchen equipment for upstairs.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, Mags; marketing’s my job, after all,’ I offered. ‘Tom, do you think you could rustle us up some little tasters to hand out to people?’

  ‘Sure.’ He grinned, fixing me with his dark eyes. ‘I usually find blue cheese has them eating out of my hand.’

  ‘Ooh, yes.’ Gloria beamed as the blush I’d been holding back burst forth. ‘And make sure you invite people to our open day too.’

  ‘I will,’ I said, looking Tom in the eye. ‘I’ll invite everyone who looks like they have good taste.’

  The next morning, Gloria dropped us off on Plumberry high street armed with clipboards, questionnaires and plenty of freebies. Tom had used the Aga to make blue cheese soufflé croutons and miniature lavender shortbread bites and we planned to entice people to answer our questionnaire with them. He was never going to let me forget the blue cheese thing, I could tell. It was delicious, though, as was the shortbread, so I wasn’t complaining.

  ‘We should have matching aprons,’ said Mags, taking a tray of food from me.

  ‘We will have next week.’ I stuck the clipboard under my arm and tucked a couple of spare pens in my pocket. ‘I’ve ordered some black ones with the logo on. All students will get one to keep and we can sell them in reception too.’

  ‘Gloria was right, you’re full of bright ideas.’ Mags eyed me appraisingly. ‘I’m so glad you came to Plumberry.’

  We positioned ourselves near the war memorial in front of the church and put on our most welcoming smiles.