I don’t like to talk about all the charity work I do, because I don’t do any, but I did some this week, so let’s talk about it. Turning Tables is a Leeds Indie Food festival event where food writers cook in the kitchen of a high-end restaurant for paying guests, to raise money for Action Against Hunger. The problem is, I’m working at a restaurant that hates me.
I can see why – in my review of Home in Leeds, my companion compared the texture of a potato foam to a certain … gentleman’s emission. Harshly, I thought, but who would shoot the messenger? One of the owners and co-head chef Elizabeth Cottam greets me. “You’ve got a nerve showing your face within these walls.” Then she switches tack, revealing a warmer side. “Nah, we’re gonna bury the hatchet. In your head.” Co-owner and co-head chef, Michelin-recognised Mark Owen is less forthcoming. A huge man – think David Prowse stepping out of the Darth Vader suit to reveal chef’s whites – he mostly just stares at me. I start counting the knives.
The situation would be stressful enough. I’m preparing a main: salt-aged duck breast on black garlic with poached cherries, poached salsify, salsify crisps, hazelnut pesto and a confit duck ragu tartlet topped with – of course – salsify foam. It’s a beautiful, complex dish, and I’m buggered if I know how to make it. I stumble through the prep, burning my crisps, cutting salsify into batons so uneven they resemble the random box of nails and dowels my dad kept under the stairs. Once customers arrive, the intensity skyrockets. Luckily, I’m paired with another Home chef, Will Campbell. “Wonder why they put you on meat,” he laughs, as boiling fat spits up my arms and face. I dimly notice him cleaning up behind me, fixing my mistakes and omissions. He blowtorches, sifts the crisps, takes care of the ragu. If he has a free 20 seconds, he’s slicing lamb and ferrying clams for someone else. When the hell do these people sit down?
Even with Will as my own personal Jesus, I flounder. Hobs and bodies and stress make for an environment hotter than Venus. Orders pile up, chefs shout timings, pacing themselves off each other. They are a perfect unit, and I am an absolute spanner. Every extra minute I hog the grill, forget to season, or drip foam over the plates, doubles our workload and halves our time. It’s like the final 30 seconds of a game of Tetris. What’s that phrase about too many cooks? To put it another way, it’s a ducking nightmare.
I’m overcome with euphoria when the last plate goes out. This is the point the others up their energy, throwing soap around, scrubbing the place down. They work brooms in unison, deckhands on a pirate ship, while Dread Captain Owen figures out how much pearl barley to buy tomorrow. I want to lie down for ever. Cottam picks up on my workshy nature, and teases me relentlessly, as do the front-of-house staff. The special tonight is clearly roasted Samadder. She promises me dinner later, which never arrives; I guess I was asking for that.
The abstract admiration I had for chefs is now filled in with calf-burning, brain-spinning specifics. It’s undoubtedly odd, my relationship with Home. But I have to keep coming back, because it’s the best food in Leeds. At the end, Owen shakes my hand and walks off, still without a word. It feels like the gesture of respect a hitman gives you, before he kills you. “I’ve never had one of those,” says Will, admiringly. “He must really … not hate you. As much.”
Neighbours’ Felix has to Style it out in more than one direction
In other news, Neighbours actor Felix Mallard is to star in a new sitcom, based on Harry Styles’ early life in One Direction. Happy Together specifically portrays the 20 months Styles spent sleeping on a mattress in the attic of producer Ben Winston’s house, while the band was taking off. As rock’n’roll redoubts go, it’s hardly Iggy and Bowie in Berlin. Bowie lived off peppers milk and cocaine, but never had to sleep between boxes of golfing magazines, pool inflatables and tinsel. As far as we know.
I’m left wondering how Harry makes these leftfield career choices. Does he pick tickets out of a tombola? No 43: launch your solo career with a soft rock epic. No 68: be commendably anonymous in a bigscreen second world war epic. No 77: produce a network sitcom about the time you spent being luxuriously homeless. I love a sitcom, but it is the least mythic of entertainment forms, with the exception of juggling. This one already sounds so 1970s. Happy Together? Please God, let it have an Eric Idle theme tune, laugh track, and prominent swanee whistle.
Maybe this curveball is the artistic expression Harry has been yearning for all along. Styles used to work in a bakery, which is very sitcom. I read that the band hid in a bread van once, in order to visit the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, which is so Last of the Summer Wine, if you take away the bit about Christ. The X Factor also-ran “Tesco” Mary is a shoo-in for a supporting role. But who else will feature? Cara Delevingne as a rage-filled traffic warden? Simon Cowell as an oily stepdad? All we know is that to portray this jack of all Styles, Mallard will need to prove himself able to take more than one direction.
Hummus, the anxiety-inducing dip
Hummus was introduced to the UK almost exactly 30 years ago by Waitrose, which now sells a pot a second, according to reports. It has clearly been embraced by the masses, not just Guardian subscribers, but I avoid it because I do not know a more anxiety-provoking dip. How is it meant to be spelled? Houmous? Humous? I’ve seen homos. If I ever open a restaurant, it will be listed as “culturally contested chickpea mix” and people can pick their variant of how to spell it. The customer is always right.