Finding the right structure for our lessons – striking a balance between teaching the skills or knowledge I hope to impart and having a fun session that Maxine is excited about – continues to be hard. When Maxine didn’t rush to taste the Mac & Cheese we made, I assumed it was because she had realized her mistake and was postponing the moment she’d have to own up to it. But after our bread making lesson I think there’s more to it.
I didn’t write my usual weekly report on the session. Mainly because Maxine had asked to prepare a surprise for her mother’s birthday in week 7, and I wasn’t sure how to write about this until the surprise had been delivered. But also because I needed a little time to figure out what the issue with the lesson structure is and, frankly, I needed a week off from writing this blog.
Time is Relative
There is a theory that a task will take as long to complete as the time that is granted for it. Of course, there are limitations to this theory, but I see it at work every day. We have recently completed a full update of all our Standard Operating Procedures – the corporate equivalent of making a time plan before entering the kitchen. Tasks that would previously take days or weeks to complete have been streamlined to now take hours or days instead.
It’s not that the team is any busier or less busy as a result, nor does it imply that they previously procrastinated or dawdled. They work hard, meet deadlines, always aim to stretch themselves. And, when I set them the challenge to document every tiny step as they carried out their workload – effectively doubling the workload by adding a significant amount of admin – not a single deadline was missed. There was no argument when I suggested this was clear evidence that we are able to complete our work in half the time (if not less!). Having twice the amount of time only creates more opportunity for self-doubt, decision paralysis, or needless team meetings to slip in. Sometimes it’s better to be forced to be fast, efficient and decisive.
Bread Day
Lesson 6 was an introduction to breadmaking. To make bread in two hours is a push, because of the time it needs to rise and proof. I had planned to fill that time with home-made butter and jam making, a little bit of knife skills, and a blind taste test. It wasn’t going to be a high-intensity cooking session, but we would be active throughout. When her mum asked me if Maxine could stay at mine a little later than normal, at first I was pleased. We wouldn’t run out of time.
However, having all the time in the world to complete the session stretched it out over 4 instead of 2 hours. We were active throughout, just highly inefficient. We didn’t even get round to making the butter or the tomato bruschetta topping.
No Surprise
Maxine is obsessed with surprises. As I learned on Audition Day, she doesn’t like to share what she is preparing – she wants it to be a surprise. Of our sessions since then, she most enjoyed Ready, Steady, Cook Day – due to the surprise factor of the Mystery Bag. This creates an inherent problem for the lesson structure I have been working on. Maxine did read the lesson plan and recipes beforehand. She had watched the breadmaking video from Leith’s that I shared. She knew what was coming, and that is the total opposite of a surprise.
“Yes, I read it. And I watched the video. I know what we are doing,” Maxine cuts me off when I ask her if she’s read the lesson plan. “When are we doing the blind taste test?” she continues. “While the bread is proving or baking,” I say, realizing that she is most excited about this part of the lesson. Exactly because it is a surprise. If I want Maxine to learn how to make bread and jam, I will need to save the blind taste test for as late as possible.
“Get weighing, Chef,” I push Maxine into gear. “That bread isn’t going to bake itself.” While she has read and watched the information about the lesson, she hasn’t prepared a time plan. The chef in me wants to keep pushing her for this. She will have to learn this skill at some point. But, given the dawning realization that Maxine needs a different structure to fully engage, I accept that now is not the time to be pushy. I’m worried enough that she will find 15 minutes of kneading a boring job. Or that she will approach it with the same mindlessness with which she stirs.
Meet Bob
“I could do this for hours!” she exclaims, unknowingly putting to rest my concerns. “Phew,” I think to myself. Kneading bread might be an uneventful task, but, in contrast with stirring a sauce, it benefits from the high energy Maxine likes to employ. Enjoying the kneading doesn’t stop her from messing around. “Meet Bob!” she giggles as she steps aside to show me her handywork.
“Hi Bob!” I answer, “you don’t look quite ready yet.” “How do you know?” Maxine asks. I remind Maxine of the reason she’s kneading bread for as long as she is: she needs to stretch the gluten into long strands to get that bready texture or the bread will end up cake-like. “Bob’s face is very bobbly, and you can tell from his smile that the gluten strands are still very short. Keep kneading until Bob’s face is nice and smooth.”
Maxine continues to knead for another ten minutes before rolling the dough into a ball. “It’s all warm,” she says, stroking the dough with a finger. “And it feels all soft, it feels just like skin.” “Excellent, sounds like Bob is ready for his first rising,” I respond. “Stick him in the blue bowl you lightly oiled before kneading and cover it with clingfilm. We’ll get on with making some jam while Bob is rising.”
Redcurrants & Serial Stirrers
“Clear your workstation and get your jam ingredients weighed out,” I direct Maxine as I take the tub of mixed frozen berries out of the freezer. “What are those?” Maxine asks, pointing at the redcurrants in the tub. “Oh, I don’t know what they’re called in English. Have you never seen these before?” I ask in turn. “Try one, tell me what you think,” I continue, popping a berry into my mouth. “Sour!” Maxine pulls a face and proceeds to pick out every other berry in the tub and place them, one by one, into the bowl on the scales.
Weighing out the berries takes nearly 20 minutes. Maxine is in no rush and not a single redcurrant can make it into her jam. I decide to help out, but this doesn’t speed us up in anyway. Maxine just sees it as a chance to chitchat. “What jobs have you had?” she asks me. I proceed to list out a long list – I reinvented myself numerous times – when Maxine interrupts. “Maybe I will be a chef all of my life, it will be my only job!” she says. I smile, happy that whatever my concerns about the structure of the lessons, Maxine still loves the idea of being a chef.
She gets the jam ingredients on the stove and turns on the heat. “Turn the heat a little lower, crush the berries with the masher, and stir until the sugar has melted,” I direct. As soon as the word stir leaves my mouth, I remember Maxine’s stirring affliction. At Leith’s, some students, unable to leave well alone, were labelled Serial Stirrers by the teachers. Maxine’s style evokes a different kind of Serial Stirrer image: not so much the repeat offender aspect, but the brutal force element. Within minutes, the stove is covered in sugary berry juice.
Bob & Blob
No long after, Maxine loses interest in stirring altogether. “Ok, the sugar has fully melted. And look, how big Bob is!” I say. “You can turn the heat down on the jam, and let it do its thing. I will keep an eye on it while you knock back Bob.” “Knock back Bob?!” Maxine ask incredulously. “Yes, that’s what the second kneading is called, don’t you remember the video?” Maxine shrugs her shoulders, indifferent to my question. She has the answer she needs and moves to the workstation to get on with the kneading.
I explain that the first kneading of the dough is to create elasticity, allowing it to trap gases from fermentation, giving bread its airy texture. After the first rise, the dough is gently deflated — not really “kneaded” again in the traditional sense. This step redistributes yeast and gases, prevents over-proofing, and prepares it for shaping. Once shaped into a loaf or rolls, the dough rises again to develop its final volume and texture before baking.
Gently is not yet a word that Maxine has embraced. Much like her brutal stirring, Bob gets rather forcefully beaten up while I oil the bread tin. “Ok, ok, that’ll do,” I stop Maxine from fully destroying the bread dough. “Cut the dough in half, then shape one into a loaf and put it in the bread tin. You can shape the other half into a ball and put it back into the blue bowl.”
“We’re cutting Bob in half?!?” Maxine exclaims in horror, before her face cheekily lights up again. “Bob & Blob! The Bread Brothers!” she giggles.
Can we have a break yet?
We are running well behind schedule by now, Maxine stretching the available time as deftly as my team can do at times. At no stage have I been able to bring in any sense of urgency. “Can we have a break yet?” she pleads. “Let’s do the blind taste test while Bob & Blob are proofing,” I suggest, as I take the jam – that Maxine has fully forgotten – off the heat. We have been at it for 2 hours already, in a normal session we would be sitting down to taste the food around now. It’s fair enough that Maxine wants to sit down for a minute.
I bring out the first part of today’s test: how many herbs and spices can Maxine recognize when they’re not in their packaging. “I thought this would be a blind taste test!” Maxine protests as I put the plates on the table. “We’ll do that next. First, let’s see how many of these you can name.”
“Bay leaf. Pepper…Thyme.” Maxine is off to a racing start. “Ehm. Ehm. Oregano!” I praise her for getting off to a great start. “Ohhh. Ohhh. We used this in the Bechamel,” Maxine says as she picks up a clove. “I had to stick them in the onion, through the bay leaf. Clove!!!” she shouts as it finally rolls off the tip of her tongue. “Well done, Chef, how about the rest? They are a bit trickier and we haven’t cooked with those yet.” With a little bit of encouragement, she gets the star anise and cinnamon bark, but cardamom and saffron are a bridge too far.
Taste Test
Maxine does well on the fresh herbs, ticking off rosemary, basil and parsley without hesitation. Curiously enough, she doesn’t recognize the fresh thyme at all, and is even a little surprised how different it tastes from the dried variety. Coriander is also tough – she hates the taste of it. “That’s coriander, or cilantro as you Americans like to call it,” I say. She pulls a disgusted face, “Yeah, now I remember. I don’t like it. My dad doesn’t either.”
“Here, have a piece of bread to take the taste out of your mouth,” I rip a piece off the baguette that’s on the table. “Put on the eye mask and pay attention to the taste of the bread. Today’s blind taste test is condiments, and I will dip the bread in each condiment so you need to cancel out the bread taste to focus on the condiment. “This mask actually works! I can’t see!” Maxine giggles in excitement. It amazes me how much she enjoys challenges and unpredictability.
The Best Things Come In Pairs
“Olive oil!” She aces the first taste test. On to the second: “A different kind of oil?” she asks, confused. “Very good, but can you tell what different oil it is?” She thinks for a minute before giving up, “I don’t know. What’s next?” After the dry and fresh thyme, and the two types of oil, Maxine is prepared for the next pair. “Vinegar. I don’t know what the first one is, but the second one is that black, syrupy vinegar.” Well done, Max, that’s Balsamic. Mustards are also easy. “Oh, oh, that’s the mustard we used in the vinaigrette! Dijon!” she nearly jumps up. “Excellent. What about the other one?” I ask. “Mustard. That’s just mustard,” she giggles.
Last up is Worcestershire Sauce, a condiment I use surprisingly often to add depth to a sauce or marinade – or Bloody Mary 😉
I carefully dip a piece of bread and hand it to Maxine, unsure what to expect – it could be a Love It or Hate It moment, much like the coriander. “I knowwww this! My dad has this at home too,” she flops back onto the sofa. “Do you remember what it’s called?” I ask. “Worcestershire Sauce,” I continue in response to her shrug. “Take off your mask and I will show you the oil, vinegar and mustard you couldn’t name.”
We go through the difference between extra virgin olive oil and blended olive oil. I show her the apple vinegar and Heinz Yellow Mustard. Enjoying dipping the bread in the olive oil and balsamic, and even the mustards, Maxine gobbles up half the bread. “And now, we have a break?”
Picking My Battles
“Let’s get Bob into the oven first, look how much he’s risen again.” If we don’t get a loaf in the oven soon, we won’t even finish before Maxine’s mum comes to pick her up. “And after, we watch Netflix while Bob is baking!” Maxine pushes back. To hell with the butter and tomato bruschetta topping. There’s not a hope in hell for our session to end well if I push her to complete the full lesson plan. “And after we watch Netflix,” I agree.
With the bread in the oven, Maxine finds the episode of House, M.D. she is on, and I start cleaning up. I portion out the jam, scrub the syrupy mess off the stove, and clean up Maxine’s work station. We’ve had a really nice time together. Maxine is clearly happy and very much at ease. But as much as I enjoyed it too, I am concerned that our sessions will devolve into Cooking with Auntie Barb instead of the Junior Chef’s College I had in mind.
My attempts to push Maxine into visualizing our session ahead of time have all failed. She’s doing her “homework” and reading up on the lesson in advance, but this only seems to stifle her excitement. She’s keen to spend time with me, that’s not the issue. The issue appears to be that she wants to either be in charge, or to be surprised. That’s when I have seen her at her absolute best.
I Can Choose?!
“What do you want to cook next week?” I casually ask Maxine. “I can choose?!?” she whips around wide-eyed. “Yeah, you can choose. What do you want to cook next week?” I repeat. “CAKE!” is the answer, without hesitation, “I want to bake a cake for my mum’s birthday!”
“Very well, cake it is,” I agree, “but you’ll have to tell me what cake you want to make. I have to buy the ingredients, remember?” For once, Maxine doesn’t protest at having to reveal her intentions upfront – it is hard to argue with the practicality of needing ingredients. “Ok,” is all she says, before turning her attention back to the tv show.
Maybe, if I structure the learnings around a dish that Maxine has chosen herself, she will feel more ownership of it. If it becomes too repetitive – like choosing cake every week – I can move to giving her a category to chose from. A starter, main dish or dessert. An Italian Classic or American Comfort Food. Surely, for the next year or so at least, I can wrap the lessons and skills around her chosen picks, I think. There are so many topics still to cover, does it really matter what order I teach them in?
Tap For Doneness
The oven pings and the bread looks ready. Absorbed by her tv show, Maxine pays no attention. It only reinforces my idea that, if I want her to be excited about tasting the results of her work, I need to give her more ownership somehow. “Want to see what Bob looks like?” I drag Maxine from her show.
The loaf comes out of the tin with ease. “Tap it on the bottom, if it sounds hollow, it’s cooked,” I say. “Sounds hollow to me,” Maxine replies, glancing over her shoulder at some excitement on screen. “Let’s leave it to cool down on a rack a little before slicing it.” Maxine has already returned to the sofa to watch the end of her show.
Star Bob
“Let’s get Blob in the oven too,” I suggest as the credits roll over the screen. “Before you stick on the next episode.” Maxine takes the second half of the dough that was left in the bowl and proceed to knock the life out of it, like she did to Bob. “Easy, easy!” I implore. “We don’t have time for a third rising for Blob, so try to shape it without knocking too much of the trapped air out of the dough.”
My words fall on deaf ears, and Blob is punched more brutally than Bob. “I don’t know what shape to make,” Maxine complains after a little while. She wants to make a funky shape, but the elastic bread dough isn’t holding any of the shapes she attempts. “You can make a flower,” I say, picking up a knife. “Here, let me show you.” I make a round shape, and make some cuts in the dough at intervals. “That’s kinda cool,” Maxine says. “Let me try.”
Not a big fan of pink and other “girlie” things, she reshapes the dough in a ball, then a square, then a disc again. She makes some cuts and shapes these into points. “Star Bob!” I smile at her and take the oven tray from her. “Let’s get Star Bob in the oven. I don’t think he’ll be ready before your mum arrives, but I’ll send you a picture when he’s done.”
Basset Hound Cake & Building Works
And so, I ended up with a problem writing this blog. We had decided on a change in format, once again. But how would I write about that, without mentioning the dish Maxine had decided on? Or conversely, how would I write about cake, without revealing the surprise Maxine had in store for her mum? The easy option seemed to just take a week off from writing this blog. And, frankly, I enjoyed the break and had lots of other writing to complete.
Maxine lived up to her promise and, on Sunday morning, she announced she was making a Basset Hound Cake – leaving me a little unsure what exactly this, but excited she had an image in mind. Late that evening, after a little pushing, she shared her recipe too:
However, on Monday evening, the electricity in my building went off, announcing with it a week’s worth of building works on my doorstep. There are ongoing efforts in Saigon to replace overhead electrical and telecommunications cables with underground systems – this week was our turn. Though they promised minimal interruption to the electricity supply, working at nighttime only, by Tuesday lunchtime both the electricity and the water supply became intermittent. We wouldn’t be able to cook at mine, if I couldn’t rely on the oven or tap to work.
Dad To The Rescue
I informed Maxine’s parents on our shared WhatsApp group and contacted Maxine’s dad separately to ask if she would be able to prepare the Basset Hound Cake at home with him instead. In reality, this also solved a major logistical and food safety issue: how were we going to transport the cake from my house to her dad’s, keep it fresh for 4 days, then transport it again on Saturday to the Surprise Party Maxine was organizing?
Her father was no less curious to learn what a Basset Hound Cake is, precisely, and we joked and speculated over and across about what Maxine might actually have in mind. Not to worry, he would step in as Assistant Teacher and help Maxine prepare her birthday cake.
The Surprise
Last night, we had the final reveal. Between her dad and me, we arranged for the NRL crew to watch the late Saturday game together. The perfect pretense for us all to be together, when Maxine would arrive with her Surprise Party. Knowing their ETA, we sent Maxine’s mum on an errand to give Maxine time to decorate the terrace and hand us our props, while her dad raced to light the birthday candles on the cake.
I’m still unsure what the Basset Hound aspect of the cake was. In fact, I think she made a different recipe altogether. But the cake itself was mighty impressive. Three-layered chocolate sponge cake (a tiny touch oversalted, inadvertently creating a wonderful salted caramel-like flavour), tangy cream-cheese frosting separating the layers, lathered in chocolate buttercream, and decorated with piped chocolate icing, crumbled biscuits, and mini marshmallows. It looked more like a giant square hedgehog than a basset hound, but it tasted divine.
Next Week’s Plan
Before heading home, I checked in with Maxine. “What do you want to cook on Tuesday?” I ask. “I can choose?!?” she says. “She can choose?!?” her parents echo. “Yeah, she can choose,” I say. “Pick a dish, any dish. Anything you would like to eat next Tuesday,” I turn back to Maxine. “I’ll figure out what skills we are learning from there.”
“Steak,” her mother suggests. “I know how to cook a steak already,” Maxine sassily responds. “Pan, butter, steak, flop, flop, turn, turn, done,” she continues. “But do you know how to check if the steak is rare, medium, or well-done?” I ask her. “Without cutting it open.” Maxine stares up to the terrace awning, trying to figure out the answer, when I see her father holding out a hand, tapping his thumb with alternating fingers.
“That’s right, Dad,” I say, as I too start to tap my thumb with alternating fingers. “I have no idea what kind of code you two are speaking,” Maxine’s mum pipes up. “Neither does Maxine, it seems, so steak it is for next week,” I decide. “We will learn more about the Maillard reaction and how to test a steak for doneness, without cutting it open.”
Done. The new structure has been set in motion. Let’s see how we go. I’m off to write Tuesday’s lesson plan.