Masterchef

I enjoy cooking. I'm no masterchef, but I don't find it too hard to throw a few things together in a pan. Cooking is really a matter of confidence. The confidence to get a load of ingredients, put them together and just see how it turns out. But quite frankly I was just intimidated when I saw this book. It sent cold shudders of impotence down my spine. It seemed to sit on the shelf of the bookshop goading me, as if to say that you or I, despite not having a Saturday morning cooking special on TV, could aspire to create such wonders in the kitchen. The amateur world of cooking just raised it's game.

On it's extravagant cover it says rather dramatically, like the tagline to some dissident novel, "Meals from the Grill". It's like the collated diaries of some pariah from the underground world of cooking. It also dubs itself "The best thing since sliced bread". Now call me pedantic, but it IS sliced bread, isn't it? Anyway I thought what the hell, and in an over-ambitious and rather optimistic whimsical turn, threw caution to the wind and bought it. Unfortunately after getting home I floundered pathetically at the first page.

I know when I'm cooking above my station. And sadly now that's my confidence in the kitchen broken. I'll never attempt TOAST again!