A Taste for It by Monica McInerney

Author:Monica McInerney
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742283623
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
Published: 2013-12-13T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

The next day the girls were full of the news of Selina and Carlos’s attempted midnight flit.

“It’s so romantic,” Siobhan breathed, as she helped Maura prepare a potato dish which they would enjoy later with their farewell lunch of barbequed steaks and chicken breasts. “Imagine Carlos hitchhiking all the way from Madrid to rescue Selina.”

Emer scoffed. “Rescue her? From what? This is a cooking school, not a home for delinquents.”

Maura and Bernadette exchanged a glance. Last night they hadn’t been so sure. Both Selina and Carlos had landed awkwardly, resulting in sprains and bruises. They were now, not so romantically, lying in bed in adjoining rooms waiting for their parents to come and fetch them. It wasn’t quite the ending Carlos had planned.

“Well, back to the real world, girls,” Bernadette broke up their gossiping session. “It’s time to enjoy a true blue Aussie barbie!” She was making a very bad attempt at an Australian accent. “And if you’re all really good you can have some lamb tin for dessert.”

Maura laughed aloud. “Lamb tin? Bernadette, that sounds disgusting. She means lamington, everyone, one of Australia’s many gifts to the world of cuisine.”

As she spoke, Maura brought out a tray of her surprise final dessert – squares of plain cake, dipped in rich chocolate icing and then covered in coconut. Maura had many memories of them from her childhood – lamingtons were a staple food at town fetes, country shows and in school lunches. “You won’t find recipes for these in any classy Australian cookbook,” she joked, as the girls looked down in surprise, “but there’s nothing like them to finish a proper Aussie barbie.”

Later that afternoon Maura and Bernadette sat in the now quiet kitchen, enjoying a glass of Lorikeet Hill wine. The barbeque lunch and the casual dessert had made a relaxing, informal end to the first week of classes. Maura had been buoyed by the warm comments she received from the students as they departed, each clutching a souvenir bottle of Lorikeet Hill wine and a folder filled with copies of all the recipes they had learnt during the week.

“Well done, Maura,” Bernadette raised her glass.

Maura clinked hers against it. “Well done and thanks, Bernadette. I really enjoyed it – we make a great team, don’t we?”

“We sure do,” Bernadette smiled across. “We could rival those two BBC cooks. We could call ourselves ‘One Not So Much Fat as a Stone or Two Overweight Irish Lady and One Gorgeous Shapely Australian Lady’,” she added with a laugh.

Maura laughed too. “Well, that’s catchy. Do you know, I can’t believe we spent all those months planning this, and it’s a third of the way over already.”

“We’ll have to make sure you get to see some more of the country as well, before your month here is suddenly up,” Bernadette said, as she leaned across to refill Maura’s glass. “Is there anything you particularly want to do?”

Maura started to answer, to talk about the tourist sights in the West of Ireland she wanted to visit.

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