Free Recipe for Disaster by Miriam Morrison

cook for himself at home, and after a while he had to
stop going into bookshops because the assistants at
Waterstone's were starting to give him nasty looks for
riffling through the cooking section and then wearing out
the cushions on the sofas, but never buying anything. He
couldn't even become a busker on the London Underground
because he couldn't sing.
    He spent so much time hanging around places, people
watching, he half thought of setting up his own food stall,
which would also offer culinary counselling. For twenty
quid he could tell people what a terrible diet they had and
then offer them some decent grub instead. It was astonishing
how much crap people bought: garishly coloured
sweets; chocolate-flavoured things; health bars full of sugar
and sandwiches containing what the manufacturer called
cheese, but Jake reckoned was possibly only one molecule
away from plastic.
    There were far too many people in this world shoving
food into their mouths without thinking. None of it seemed
to make them any happier, even for a minute. They rushed
from one place to another, barely even aware that they were
eating. Jake knew that when he was allowed to be a chef he
was often too busy to sit down for a proper meal, but when
he did put food in his mouth he was always intensely aware
of its flavour and texture. He couldn't imagine living
without such sublime experiences.
    Maybe he should become a food bandit, a culinary pirate.
He would kidnap people, force them to give him money so
he could cook for them and show them what they were
missing. He would rob those starved of real food and make
them rich in eating experiences. They would start to insist,
like the French, that they had a decent breakfast in the
morning and a two-hour lunch break so they could enjoy a
proper meal served on a plate, not in a piece of cardboard.
The country would grind to a halt but he would be a national
hero. Oh crap, if he didn't get a job soon, he would go
completely bonkers. He seemed to be halfway there already.
    Eventually, when he was beginning to think he would
have to give up and apply his new-found shelf-stacking
experience at Sainsbury's, where at least they paid in
money, he found work at a seedy hotel near Waterloo. After
a couple of days it was quite obvious some people used it,
not as an eating place, but to close mysterious and deeply
illegal deals. The only reason he didn't get mugged on the
way home was that he was cooking the muggers' dinners.
    One day Jill came to see him. She wasn't wearing a habit,
but he was shamefully pleased to see she was looking pale
and unhappy.
    'This is so unfair and it's all Harry's fault. You can't let
him get away with it!' she cried.
    'Right. I'll take him to a tribunal then. No problem,
except that I've got no money, and it could take years and
there's no guarantee the truth will come out anyway.'
    'Well, what are you going to do?'
    Jake shrugged. 'Nothing. Keep trying to find decent
work, I suppose.'
    She hung around for a while, looking like she was waiting
for him to ask her out for a drink, but he didn't. She had
screwed him over and he was as stubborn as hell. You only
got one chance with him and she had blown it.
    And so it continued for about two years.
    Jake's family had been through more ups and downs
than a yo-yo. When you were down, you picked yourself up,
and started again. So that's what he did, but in a more wary,
less innocent way. But there was no denying he seemed to
camp out permanently at Rock Bottom.
    He went on to do some really terrible jobs, which made
the hotel at Waterloo look like the Ritz. But he had to: if
there wasn't cooking, there was nothing. When things got
really bad he would clench his teeth, until he remembered
he didn't have enough money to go to the dentist. Still,
looking back, he might not have made it in the end if Louis
hadn't come to his rescue.
    Louis Challon had learned his trade in the bistros of Paris
that are now just a distant memory in the minds of those
lucky