Last night Miriam and I were making pasta for dinner: fusilli with red pesto. As Oliver is in Germany visiting Maria for a week, it was just us two. In the mood for culinary experimentation with chickpeas and black olives, Mim took her turn to wear the chef de cuisne hat with her usual teary-eyed onion chopping.

Over the past months, I have subtly been trying to get Mim to broaden her vegetarian recipe book. The one page of exceptional Macaroni cheese is not enough to satisfy the most intense enthusiast. I have also been trying to wean her of the feeling that she has to measure everything by instilling a sense and dependence on the more useful epicurean intuition that I know is hidden deep down somewhere within her green and pink polka-dotted self.

At this point, I’m not sure if it’s a confidence thing or a lack of knowledge about the gastronomic possibilities that prevents Mim from filling her recipe book in such an informal manner. It’s typical manifestation occurs with the questions, “how much of {insert your vegetable of choice here} should we put in?” or “which {insert your cooking instrument of choice} should I use?” As much as I love the sous-chef position, I avoid these questions as best I can in order to make Mim bloody well decide for herself.

Also, I have noticed that Mim has not had enough chance to practice keeping all aspects of the dinner preparation in her awareness at once – consequently, multitasking while she stirs the onions loses out sometimes. But like most things real, Epicurean Intuition only comes with the time to make mistakes.

In any case, as the vegetables simmered away, happily oblivious to anything but their impeding consumption I’m sure, Mim had progressed no closer to putting the water on to boil in order to cook the pasta.

And here is where the line between manipulation and helpfulness liquifies.

I asked in my straight-up casually inquisitive and innocent voice without really thinking about it, “How long does the pasta take to cook?” To which Mim responded in the expected and desired way: “Oops, I need to get the water on.”

This was what I really wanted of course. With simple ease, I had quite quickly accomplished my two goals:

1. Mim puts the water on to boil
2. I don’t tell Mim what to do

Now with this contextualization, perhaps my actions appear well-intentioned and helpful. However if you consider that I knew several things before I asked this question, you might consider otherwise. I knew

1. full well how long the pasta would take to cook
2. that the pasta should have been on 5 minutes ago
3. the logical thought progression that naturally ensues from my question
4. that Mim would follow the logical breadcrumb trail

But Mim is more intelligent than my treatment of her implies. She took the breadcrumb right back to the wicked little Hansel and Gretel that cunningly dropped them and pretended not to. She quickly pointed out that in truth, I was telling her what to do. Masking my command in the form of a question only gave it the appearance of innocence which in many ways is worse than open manipulation. She did not hesitate to point out that it would have been more truthful simply to inform her that I thought she should put the water on.

Or even better put the water on myself.

Tags: London