Food and Cooking — Unit 7, Pre-intermediate to Intermediate English

Every Saturday, I take an early bus to my grandmother's flat because she teaches me how to cook. Last week we made **pasta** with tomato sauce. She opened the old cupboard where she keeps her favorite **saucepan**, and she asked me to wash all the **ingredients** first. While the water was heating, she explained that a good **recipe** is useful, but a cook should also taste the food while it is cooking.

We chopped onions, garlic, and **fresh** basil, which grew on her balcony. I was nervous because I usually buy ready meals from the **supermarket**, but she said I would improve if I practiced. When the sauce became thick, we mixed it with pasta and added a little cheese. The meal smelled so **delicious** that even our neighbor knocked on the door. By lunchtime, I understood why my grandmother says cooking is a language that families share, especially when they are tired or busy. She told me that if I keep practicing each weekend, I will soon create my own dishes with confidence.

Since then I have been every Saturday, and we have worked our way through most of her kitchen. We **grill** fish in the summer and **roast** a **chicken** in the winter. We **bake** bread about once a month, which takes all morning and is the only thing she will not let me do alone.

She has strong opinions. She does not own a **microwave** and refuses to buy one. She keeps almost nothing in the **freezer** except peas. She says a **frying pan** should be heavy, and that the reason my food used to stick was that mine was not.

Her rules are short and she repeats them every week. Read the whole recipe before you start. **Peel** and **chop** everything first, then cook — never both at once. **Stir** less than you think you should. Taste before you **add** salt, not after.

The biggest change is not really the cooking. It is the shopping. I used to walk round the **supermarket** filling a **trolley** with whatever looked good. Now I write a **shopping list** on Friday night, and on Saturday morning we go to the **market** first for **vegetables** and then to the shop for everything else. I spend less than I did.

Last month I cooked dinner for six friends without her. Everything worked except the rice, which was **salty**.

When I told her, she laughed and said that at my age hers was worse.