At cookery class, Mabel kept correcting the recipe instead of stirring her rice.
The chef asked her to watch the pan. She said she was nearly finished with the commas.
Then a burning smell reached their table.
He lifted her pan and asked her to describe what had happened in one sentence….
Mabel retired from teaching English on a Friday. On Monday, she joined a cookery class.
Her daughter said it would be nice to try something where nobody needed their spelling corrected.
Mabel said that depended on the recipe.
The chef, Paolo, gave each student a wooden spoon and a sheet of instructions. Mabel put the spoon down and took a red pen from her handbag.
Is there a problem? he asked.
Only a small one. You tell us to chop the onions finely. That could be clearer.
Paolo showed her the chopped onions on his board.
Like that.
Yes, but you won’t always be here to point.
She added a note.
They began cooking. Mabel softened her onions, added rice and followed Paolo’s demonstration. For a few minutes, her pan looked much like everyone else’s.
Then she read the next instruction.
Stir it until it is ready.
She circled the second it.
The rice, the pan or the whole dish?
The rice, Paolo said. Keep stirring.
She gave it two turns and improved the sentence.
At the next table, a man asked for more stock. Mabel corrected his use of less when he meant fewer. By the time she’d finished, he’d borrowed some from his neighbour.
Paolo came round again.
How is your rice?
The instructions are much better.
And the rice?
Mabel looked down and stirred quickly.
He turned her heat lower and asked her to stay with the pan.
She agreed. There was only one paragraph left on the sheet.
A moment later, he heard her call his name.
This final sentence says we have a lovely dish of rice. Surely you can’t promise that before we’ve made it?
Paolo said he was beginning to see her point.
A burning smell rose from her table.
He switched off the heat. The rice at the bottom had stuck into a dark, solid layer. Mabel tried to move it with her spoon. The whole pan moved instead.
She put down the red pen.
Paolo held up her recipe.
You wanted to correct that last sentence. How would you write it now?
We had rice.
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