Roger Moroney: Venturing into the culinary world

Roger Moroney says he can boil, grill, fry and roast most things but he's caught short with baking. Photo / NZME

One afternoon during my intermediate school years, before what was to have been a sort of history lesson, we boys were informed that we were invited to attend a cooking class …which was something only the girlies attended then.

At that point in my culinary life the only thing I had mastered was toasting bread, with my kitchen accomplice being the toaster.

I think the school folks were looking to spread the cooking word to one and all, even if the lads weren't in the slightest bit interested.

But we rolled along to the special room where benches were lined with bowls and packets and bags of stuff and implements to create stuff from that … stuff.

Roger Moroney

We were told to put aprons on and the snide remarks followed very quickly.

Let's put it this way, things only went from bad to worse because when you gather about 15 or 16 young boys together and line up bowls of flour and milk, and a few eggs, the potential for hijinks increases tenfold.

One kid said he was a ghost and smeared flour all over his face and was sent from the room, to the wash basin, and told not to bother coming back.

Another kid covered his hand in flour and patted his neighbouring flour-vandal on the bottom while pretending to lose his balance and stumbling awkwardly into him.

That kid had no idea there was a white handprint on the backside of his shorts … and had no idea why other kids, all day, turned and sniggered as he walked by.

It was the last cooking class we attended … they canned the idea for boys unless they applied to go.

Times change of course, and a few years back I visited a high school and part of the tour was a stop at the cooking class … for boys.

And crikey, they were very sharp at it and not a flour-smeared backside to be seen.

I gradually took to cooking, having had to during stays in England in my young years where you either staggered out and bought fish and chips or a curry or bought a tin of sweetcorn, some flour, a few eggs and salt and stuff and made fritters.

I think at this stage in my life my sweetcorn fritters would give Gordon Ramsey's efforts a tough nudge.

As kids we all watched mum cooking, and occasionally dad would peel the spuds and drop them into the pot of boiling water … and later he would happily mash them.

"Better eat your spuds," my brother would whisper.

"Dad made them."

I also recall a few years back catching up with a couple of jovial celebrity chefs out at a local winery.

Great British lads who were here to record an episode of their cooking travels series.

I watched in wonderment as they jovially chatted whilst whipping up some remarkable (and aromatic) frittata type things.

They did it effortlessly yet stunningly skilfully, and during a filming break we chatted and I couldn't help but ask how they made it all look so easy?

"Because it's our job … we've been doing it for years … it's what we do to pay the bills," one of the lads said with a smile.

Ditto for all top chefs of any gender.

They have the spark to make it look so easy, and it is also a spark which I'm pleased to hear rubs off on folk who, after watching one of their telly shows, decides to "have a crack at that".

I can boil, grill, fry and roast most things but I'm caught short with baking.

I made scones once and left the baking powder out.

Enough said.

So I'd never try custard squares … that delicious slab of deliciousness that tends to spill down the old shirt front upon biting into.

Oh yeah, and my dear old mum used to make fruit squares filled with raisins and sultanas and bits of dates and when they had cooled would call us into the kitchen.

"The fly cemeteries are ready," she would announce with a wide smile.

Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist and observer of the slightly off-centre.