MY BAD COOKING POISONED MY FRIENDS

MY BAD COOKING POISONED MY FRIENDS

When Stacey Dawson’s mates came around for dinner, and were terribly ill afterwards, she knew it was time to take drastic action…….

Stacey, 27, works part-time for a PR company and a dance teacher. She is married to Kieron, a rugby player. They live in Middlesex and have just their first baby.

In one of my first domestic science classes at secondary school, we had to make pineapple upside-down cake. I followed the recipe to the letter. When it was time to take them out of the oven, all my classmates produced a light fluffy golden sponge with a glistening pineapple ring on top. Mine just slid out of the baking tray like dog food. Everyone howled with laughter.

My mum is a fantastic cook, who runs her own sandwich and patisserie shop. Maybe subconsciously I just thought I could never be as good as her, so I didn’t really try.

After leaving school, I worked as a professional dancer doing trade shows and pop videos. I shared a flat with another girl and we lived on water, fruit, ready meals or something out of a can. It was a standing joke between our friends that the only things in our food cupboard were baked beans and tuna! Around this time, I met Kieron. Early in our relationship, I cooked him a roast dinner and burnt the potatoes so badly they were like missiles. Luckily, he laughed and suggested we ate out. After that, he did all the cooking. He’s brilliant at it, so I didn’t have much incentive to learn.

The crunch point finally came last summer, when I invited six girlfriends over for dinner. We all take it in turns to have the others round and they all make really fantastic, ambitious dishes. I kept it simple – roasted chicken – but sadly, I hadn’t heated the oven properly. When I was carving the chicken, I thought to myself; this doesn’t look quite right, it’s very pink. Even I was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to eat chicken rare. Most of the just toyed with theirs and politely washed it down with wine. The next day, all the girls complained of terrible stomach pains and one of them was violently sick and had to call the doctor out. He diagnosed food poisoning. They laughed about it but I was absolutely mortified.

Not long afterwards, I saw an advert in the Daily Mail, which said something like ‘Gordon Ramsay is launching a campaign to get women back in the kitchen – if your culinary skills are not up to scratch and you would like Gordon to teach you some tricks of the trade….’ Would i? I thought I had to, in the interests of public health and safety I emailed and a few weeks later they rang me back to say I’d been selected to appear on channel 4’s The F Word.

The irony is, I’m very interested in nutrition – I dance and work out and Kieron is a sportsman, so we have to eat well, I was glued to Jamie Oliver’s School Dinner programs – as Kieron and I were trying for a family. I was hooked on how feeding a child affects their behavior. Jamie and Jools Oliver’s daughters seemed so healthy and well behaved – a real aspiration.

I can’t say I wasn’t nervous about Gordon Ramsays coming to my house to ridicule my cooking! His reputation on Hell’s Kitchen and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares precedes him – he’s not one to mince his words. But aside from a quip about my perfectly manicured hands, which he said didn’t look like I spent much time in the kitchen, he couldn’t have been more charming.

The first dish he taught me to make was fish pie – how to strip the fish, make a stock and pastry. He advised me on the benefits of using local seasonal vegetables (more nutritious). To be honest, I hadn’t realized how simple and quick it would be to make something good. Or maybe it was a confidence issue. When you try something and keep making hash of it, you tend to give up. Gordon gave me my confidence back. Now I make pies, roast, dinners, stir-fries, soups…. There’s no stopping me, if I can do it, anyone can. Now you have to drag me out of the kitchen!

When I found out I was pregnant just after filming The F Word, I became even more food conscious. I’ll never give our baby pre-packaged food. Everything is freshly blended.

I didn’t actually realize how simple or rewarding cooking could be. When ready meals are so easily available and you’re tired, I know how easy it is to chuck one in the microwave. But strangely, I don’t even like doing things like that anymore.

Gordon Ramsay’s Campaign to get women back in the kitchen was taken out of context. I think everyone thought he was saying that women should be tied to the kitchen sink, when what he was saying ( and was absolutely right about) was that young women and men are no longer taught to cook. But it’s such a wonderful skill and one I want to pass on to my kids. After all, I don’t want them going round poisoning their friends.     

 

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