Cooking the Books Read Online Free PDF

pastry. Mine was all right. The secret is to keep all the ingredients cold. Pastry was invented in cold countries where you could only get things warm by sticking them in an oven. You could keep things cold by merely leaving them on the bench, or, as in the old days in Wales, making your Welshcakes with snow. This may have led to excellent scones but it also led to incurable chilblains. I preferred the Australian climate and reliable refrigeration. I checked my list, which was posted next to the working surface. Ingredients. I found flour, salt and butter, granulated and powdered sugar, milk and a row of large plastic containers marked Chicken pie , Apple puree , Beef pie and Berry pie . There were also a goodly array of tins and a commodious oven.
    So I made pastry. The list demanded ten of each pie. I made Grandma’s shortcrust for the sweet pies and my own buttery puff for the savoury and soon I had a collection of lumps of dough chilling down for rolling. Then I had time to draw breath.
    The kitchen smelt gorgeous. There seemed to be a table laid out against the far wall and I wandered over to it, hoping for a cup of coffee at least. I found that it was the Salon des Refusés of any kitchen: stuff which hadn’t quite worked which the staff were enjoined, sometimes at gunpoint, to eat. Instead of food which might be profitably sold to the starving public, of course. There were wrapped rolls and sandwiches and muffins—mine—a pot of something which smelt like minestrone and a tray of hors d’ouevres. I wasn’t really hungry, but I could certainly pick a bit after all that kneading.
    Two people were already standing at the table; a young man and a young woman. By the tattoos and piercings I guessed they weren’t actors. They both smiled at me and moved aside.
    ‘Go ahead,’ one invited. ‘It’ll only go to the poor if we don’t eat it. I haven’t seen you before. You the new pastry Nazi?’
    ‘That’s me,’ I agreed. ‘Corinna Chapman. I’m actually a baker, but don’t tell anyone.’
    ‘Promise,’ said the young woman. Her hair, I couldn’t help noticing, was tortured into a thousand dreadlocks. I wondered if they hurt. I wondered how she slept in them. ‘I’m Gordon and this is Kendall. We’re the writers. Try the little pastry boats. Poor old Em made them just before she went off on those rollerblades and fell.’
    I bit into a petit bateau . Flaky pastry, creamy asparagus filling. Poor old Em was a good pastry chef. I hoped she would be back very soon.
    ‘Writers? Isn’t the program already written?’ I asked, trying a little pie which proved to be filled with chicken and sweet corn.
    ‘TV doesn’t work like that,’ Kendall said. Tattoos, dreadlocks, piercings, to match his co-writer. He had a strange, rasping voice. Had he been yelling a lot lately? ‘TV gets written then rewritten. Especially with Madame Superbitch Molly Atkins dictating terms,’ he added, gloomily crunching up a piece of cucumber as though he personally disliked it.
    ‘And then rewritten,’ agreed Gordon. ‘Oops, here she comes. Remember, smile, and tell her it’s all low-fat.’
    They decamped. A tall woman, clad in a fluffy pink velour gown and a turban, had stalked in through the other door and now stood next to me. She loomed.
    ‘Isn’t breakfast ready yet?’ she demanded. Lovely voice. Beautiful face. Eyes like chips of sapphire, lips like rose petals. Pity about the manner. It would have been considered impolite in one of the Old Regime in Russia who was dealing with a serf.
    ‘Just coming,’ sang Tommy, appearing at my elbow. ‘Go through and we will be serving directly. And you, Corinna, aren’t those egg and bacon pies ready?’
    ‘You didn’t ask me for any,’ I responded.
    ‘Special order, little egg and bacon pies for our star, Ms Atkins.’
    ‘Low-fat,’ snarled the star, departing as requested in a flurry of baby pink. I waited until the door slammed.
    ‘Look, Tommy, you didn’t order