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I think about my ex precisely twice a year: in the winter, when I make his annoyingly good sausage casserole, and in the summer, when I make his annoyingly good chicken salad. By all accounts, he turned out to be a bad apple, but I’ll give him one thing: he gifted me a love of cooking that far outlasted the relationship.
When he first referred to the “holy trinity” in our shared kitchen, I thought he was perhaps revealing his religious side. In fact, he was sweating celery, onion and carrot – the basis of many a good meal, he said – in a pan glazed with the fat from the sausages he’d just browned. For the extra flavour, you see? I did not see – because prior to meeting him, I could’ve burned boiling water.
Our culinary experiences were worlds apart. Where he reached for fresh garlic, deftly dicing it with a knife, I would have tipped in dried granules. In his arsenal of spices he had the paprika, sage and cayenne needed for the dish, whereas I had contributed a single pot of Asda mixed herbs to our cupboard. He had the confidence to replace the cider in the sauce with apple juice because it was cheaper but arguably just as tasty, and the knowledge to simmer and reduce it by half for maximum punch. A can of tomatoes, the container swilled out with stock, and an hour later we’d have a warm, comforting meal to counteract the freezing Manchester night.
That meal was the foundation on which I’ve since built a robust knowledge of one-pot cooking. It might sound simple to more sophisticated palates but lest we forget that a 20-something boy who can cook is a rare beast. I suspect he’d learned out of necessity, whereas I’d arrived at university having only graced the kitchen to eat the food presented to me by my mum. As a result, I’d had to ring home during freshers’ week to ask how to brown chicken.
Imagine, then, the revelation of learning to poach chicken in stock, garlic and thyme so that it was plump and juicy, and not a pile of charred nuggets in packet fajita mix. That instead of reaching for a shop-bought dressing, my ex whisked together mustard, oil and vinegar and drizzled it on warmed mixed beans and a side of rocket. If the way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach, it’s via a salad leaf better than iceberg lettuce.
That I still cook both dishes almost 15 years after our relationship broke up, however, is not due to residual nostalgia. That has long since evaporated; it’s simply because they’re delicious. Do I think about him when I make them now? Only in the occasional abstract: oh, he taught me this one. In truth, I’ve now made these recipes more times solo than we ever did together. They’re mine now. If you’re asking me how it feels to eat my feelings, I’d say they were pretty tasty.