If you asked me to chose between a starter and a dessert, I would choose a starter. I have just always preferred savoury things over sweet. Don't get me wrong I wouldn't say no to a dessert. And I would almost always enjoy it, it always made my day when the delightful assistant chef at the hotel saved me one of the left over guest desserts. But it would always been a starter I would chose.
I have one terrible weakness however, and that is Lemon Tart.
Now during my management training several fairly innocent things happened. The first one was that we got the afternoon off and decided to use this time off to walk into town. The way into town led us past the staff smoking area, standing at this smoking area was one lone smoker. A male smoker. V was the first to hone in on the fact that there was a rather lost looking man headed in the same direction as us and she gave him no choice but to walk with us and then accompany us to the pub.
The second was that we soon discovered that the lone smoker was in fact one of the Head Chefs training at the hotel. We also discovered that his speciality was desserts, 'I'm not that interested in desserts', I said to myself. I then discovered that the beautiful piece of lamb I had eaten the night before was cooked by him, 'well now', I thought to myself, 'that gentleman has suddenly got a lot more interesting'. I looked at him a lot more closely at that point. I very rarely look closely at men, the chances of me being attracted to any of them are slim and the chances of them being attracted to me are even slimmer, so I don't tend to bother.
Suddenly I found myself thinking that the lone smoker was rather attractive. Now I don't want you to think that I was attracted to him just because he cooked a really great bit of lamb. That's not the case. I do not chose men purely on their ability to feed me. Indeed I once went out with a vegetarian (though I will never make that mistake again). And he was attractive. And polite (the chef not the vegetarian).
A couple of days later the chef had a birthday party in his room (he lived permanently at the hotel so had his own room rather than sharing like the rest of us). Most of the hotel piled in there after rather too much free chalet wine. On said chef's bedside table was the company's cook book. I have a bit of a habit when drunk of looking through people's books and I felt no guilt in flicking through this one (he was talking to someone else and I could hear V outside the room doing something). What should I come across in the book but the instructions to cook a lemon tart. Connections in my drink sozzled brain lit up - chef - lemon tart - genius! And I preceded to try and distract him from the girl who had rather rudely sat between us, by talking about my love of the Lemon Tart.
My conversation was abruptly halted when V dragged a huge, dead plant she had 'found' in the corridor into the room promptly spilling soil all over the floor. V and I then dragged the plant back into the corridor after it was made quite clear he didn't really want a horrible dead plant in his room. V and I decided it was time for bed.
The next day V felt rather guilt about the soil so on our lunch break the two of us went off to find a vacuum cleaner and knocked on his door, to no reply. One of us said 'should we just go in and clean up a bit' so we did. Now while she was hoovering I felt the sudden urge to open his curtains and make his bed (which I did) and fold all his clothes (which I thankfully restrained myself from doing). When V got bored of hoovering and she began to throw the used tissues she had found at the side of his bed at my head, I decided it was time to go before someone found us in there.
Terrified that he would think we were really weird for cleaning his room I did, almost immediately go and confess, and thankfully he quite liked it.
Needless to say fancying a man I know can cook the dessert of my dreams leads to me being much more flirty and forward that I would otherwise ever be. And this tends to only ever lead to one place.
As great as it was, as nice as he was,the terror of being the subject of gossip hit me and I do not blame him for drawing away quickly either, for there are much more attractive people out there to get to know.
He did once get drunk and tell me he liked my hair because it was longer one side than the other but he never did bake me that lemon tart.
After reading this post the man in question would like to clarify that he does not specialise in desserts. He is in fact talented in every area of the kitchen and can turn his hand to any dish you ask of him
ReplyDelete