Listening test: Gourmet Ireland

Listen to this report on Irish cuisine and choose the option A, B or C which best answers the question or completes the sentence.

Source: Speak up Italy

1 The introduction to the report suggests that Irish cuisine
A. has only ever had one real ingredient.
B. was based on very basic and simple foods.
C. was traditionally very bad for your health.

2) Ciaran Fitzgerald's restaurant at the Blue Haven Hotel
A. has the finest imported products.
B. is famous for its locally caught fish and seafood.
C. is well known for its elaborate dishes of meat.

3) The teams of chefs at the hotel are
A. all from Kinsale and south-west Ireland. 
B. come from abroad but were trained in Ireland.
C. nearly three quarters Irish in origin.

4) How does Ciaran Fitzgerald describe the food found at his restaurant?
A. A mixture of traditional Irish and international dishes.
B. International dishes with local Irish touches.
C. Traditional Irish food with international accompaniments.

5) Which statement best describes the population of south-west Ireland?
A. Both Irish and foreign people have lived there for some time.
B. The area's scenery has recently attracted foreign visitors.
C. There are mainly only Irish people living there.

6) How would you best summarise Jeffa Gill’s experiments with cheese-making?
A. Her success has been totally unexpected.
B. She always wanted to be a professional cheese-maker.
C. She makes enough money from it now to survive.

7) She concludes that cheese-making has enabled her to
A. have time to enjoy her hobbies.
B. live in a place where there is very little other work.
C. start a family in an area which she loves.

Many people still associate Irish cuisine with the potato, which has been a major part of the Irish diet for centuries. Generations of Irish people grew up eating potatoes, Irish stews and cottage pies — carbohydrates ruled. Over the past 10 years, all this has changed, however. At the centre of the fine food revolution is the fishing town of Kinsale, Ireland's `Gourmet Capital'. One of the most famous hotels in town is the Blue Haven. It is managed and co-owned by Ciaran Fitzgerald, the youngest in a Kinsale family of six. Ciaran was only 25, and working as an accountant, when he took over the running of the hotel last year. The hotel's outer wall is the oldest wall in town: 200 years ago, there was a fish market here. Kinsale's fishing heritage, says Ciaran Fitzgerald, is very much reflected in the Blue Haven's restaurant menu.
We have very much focused on seafood. Seafood is emphasised. You've got fresh lobster from the tank, you've got John Dory, you've got red snapper, a lot of just nice seafood dishes. I suppose, Kinsale, fishing... traditionally a fishing town, great access to some fantastic local suppliers of seafood. So we... I suppose that's what we represent here, and that's what I would see as modern Irish cuisine. I've a team of chefs in there who, who have pretty much, I'd say 70 per cent of them are Irish, but they've trained abroad.
So they take those dishes and they put some little twist on them, with the different accompaniments and different things like that. So, I suppose the basic dish itself, the roots of it are traditional Irish type of food, and then you just garnish and accompany it with more kind of international flavours.
Places like Kinsale have benefited from Ireland's new wealth. People now have more money to go to restaurants. But the beautiful scenery of the southwest has attracted both Irish and foreign residents since the 1960s.
Many started small farm businesses here, often growing organic produce. Today, more and more people want to buy high-quality food that is produced locally. Driving west from Kinsale, you pass the town of Clonakilty. This is the home of Ireland's famous black pudding, made from ox blood, oatmeal, onions, beef and six spices.
Further north along the coast, lonely Sheep's Head Peninsula sees few tourists. And yet on this rugged finger of land Jeffa Gill produces rind washed Durrus cheese. The cheese has won prizes and is even sold as far afield as Tokyo. Jeffa Gil didn't expect this to happen when she began making cheese back in 1979. At that time cheese-making was virtually a lost art in Ireland:
I didn't really intend to become a cheesemaker. I was young and enthusiastic and we had a small farm, and we had a small herd of cows. And I started to make cheese from the left-over milk from taking the milk to the diary, to the creamery. So it started very much as a hobby. It wasn’t something I intended to do. I did not intend to build a cheese factory! But it was just in the 70s, and we needed to make a living off a small farm. So I made cheese. And the cheese developed and the market developed . Because it just went from selling to friends to selling to restaurants, to sell¬ing to the local shop and selling to a local distributor. You know, going from a pan on the stove" to a vat in the comer, and then the house grew up around the cheese, and the dairy grew up. I just de¬veloped an interest in it, verging on an obsession, I suppose, but also an obses¬sion to make a living. It was a way to make a living, and live in West Cork. I always wanted to live in West Cork. Un¬less you were a writer, or you had a private income, you couldn't live here.

Key:
1B 2B 3C 4C 5A 6A 7B

In the kitchen with Barbara Lynch

Barbara Lynch is a gritty Boston restaurateur whose home kitchen is the height of industrial chic.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.



1 What does Barbara hate?
2 How old is she?
3 Who taught her how to cook?
4 What was she like as a child?
5 When does she cry now?
6 How many children does she have?
7 What effect does cooking at home have for her?


You may also be interested in Barbary Lynch's TED Talk in Boston Back to the Basics.




I think my approach to cooking is somewhat different from other chefs. You know, it's chaos usually here. It's fun.
Most of my life is in the kitchen, so why wouldn't I want to have a professional kitchen at home? And I wanted it to sort of look professional, but yet home, like it's been here. I like to have clean minds and clean space. I hate clutter. I hate it.
Believe it or not, I was a really shy person, a really shy kid, up until 40, so that's 10 years ago. It's so nice not to have to talk. It's so nice just to cook and just to focus on what you're doing.
My one obsession, just because I'm self-taught, is cookbooks. I mean, I don't follow recipes.  It's the food porn.  It's the beautiful photos.  I got Suzanne Goin.  I got Julia Child.  I got it all.
I'm still self-conscious, you know? Do I really cook good?  Can I… am I really doing this?  I always feel like, jeez, what the hell? How'd I get here?
So I grew up in South Boston. We were crafty as kids.  We weren't bad.  We were just creative. I was selling drugs off of like a moped, which we stole, so I kind of had that like tough attitude, but honestly, I'm really like a softy. I cry at commercials. You know, I'm a softy.  I am.
For some reason, I always felt like I'm was Italian. Here I am, I named my daughter Marchesa Fiorella Petri. I thought my mother was going to kill me. She's like, why couldn't you name a Katherine, or Denise, or Margaret?  I'm like, I don't know, mom.  I just didn't want to.
I think people have a different perception of me. I think they always think of me of Barbara the chef, but not Barbara the mother. You know, I'm a different person at home.
Hi!
Hi.
I have an 11-year-old girl, and she has a million friends, and my God, they're picky.  One has been a vegetarian since she's seven. One will just eat pasta with butter. But I don't hold that against them. I was a vegan once, maybe for a week.
Cooking to me is like, I don't know, if you were a runner, you get into a zone.  Your breathing is right.  You feel good. There could be chaos all around me, and if I'm working on a particular dish, I don't even look up.  When I'm home, I'm cooking, and it's therapeutic.

Key:
1 clutter
2 fifty
3 nobody, she taught herself
4 (shy), crafty, creative, not bad
5 when watching commercials
6 an eleven-year-old daughter
7 it's therapeutic

Singer Kelis opens pop-up restaurant in London

Singer Kelis has opened up her own restaurant with the founders of Le Bun in London.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.



1 Where does Kelis get inspiration for her cooking?
2 What does 'Friday' refer to?
3 What does 'Monday' refer to?
4 What's the name of the music festival in Austin?
5 What's the title of her cook book?
6 What will Kellis be doing this summer?

We are chefs and we are cooking.
Yeah.
Her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard… as does the rest of her culinary skills apparently. Singer Kelis has opened her very own restaurant - a collaborative pop-up in London. She’s teamed up with street food sensation Le Bun and his co-founders, having met them at Standon Festival. You'd be forgiven for thinking she created an establishment that just sells dairy-based treats, but after studying at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu culinary school she is serving up a wide range of foods inspired by her travels around the world.  Kelis explains how she decided to hone her skills.
I was working on getting out of a label deal that I was on for a very long time and finally when I got the call that said that I was released I… it was the first time in my life that I had my own time, really, and that I was able to make my own schedule. I was sitting in my kitchen and I called Le Cordon Bleu and they were… it was a Friday, and they were like our next session starts Monday morning and I was like, I’m in! I signed up and I started literally that Monday like full time in school.
Wondering whether she has gotten herself in too deep?  It's not her first time getting bossy around the kitchen. Her first attempt with street food resulted in her own food truck at SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas in 2014. She has since gone on to release her own Bounty & Full sauce range and hugely successful cook book 'My Life on a Plate'.
For now, Kelis says she is happy to make both music and food. The singer has not given up on her day job and will be playing at a number of UK festivals this summer. If you want to taste her culinary creations there is a small window. The pop up will be open July 6th, 7th, 13th and 14th. She won’t teach you, but she´ll have to charge.
You know what, you’ll just have to wait and see.
Key:
1 travels around the world 
2 the day when she called Le Bon
3 the day when the course started
4 SXSW 
5 My name on a plate
6 playing at a number of UK festivals

Chef April Bloomfield What Made Me

The renowned chef April Bloomfield recounts how she worked her way to the top of her field.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.



1 Chef April Bloomfield is British.
2 She had always wanted to work in the cooking business.
3 She discovered nature and animals on a school trip.
4 At one stage, she was doing two jobs at the same time.
5 She's an upper-class girl.
6 A Girl and her Beef is the title of her book.
7 The roast dinner at The Spotted Pig was a disaster.

When I grew up in Birmingham, we lived on the suburbs so right by the kind of green belt, so it was very lush green, lots of parks. I didn’t get into my chosen profession which I wanted to do which is, you know, I wanted to join the police force, I wanted to, you know, walk the beat, help people, you know, chase down criminals so unfortunately I didn’t get to do that, but instead to fall back on I went to cooking school.
When I was about ten or eleven I had an opportunity to go to a farm through a project for inner-city children. It was a farm in Devon, it was amazing. I got to see cows and sheep and I got, you know, I basically got to learn how to respect the countryside. It was something that kind of, you know, resonated and I, I kind of had that all the way through.
I had a job in London at the Bruckenbery and I was a sub-chef help and I really had this amazing dream to work in The River Café in London, so I applied for a job and I did two weeks’ trial there where basically, you know, end up working for free. So I would go and do one job, then go into The River Café, and I just remember the feeling of coming home and just being thoroughly exhausted and just feeling like I’d accomplished something, you know, working class, I’m a working girl, not that kind of working girl, but I’m a working girl.
If you forget where you come from I think your foundations become very shaky, and I’ve always made a point to never deny my, my past and that’s the reason why I kind of wrote A Girl and Her Pig. I did try a roast dinner at The Spotted Pig my first year. I think it was on New Year’s Day, you know, it was disaster, nobody ordered it, so I never did it again, but I do it in a different way, you know. I do it with whole suckling pigs at The Bresslin and, you know, lots of big ribs of beef and roasted duck. Yes, like a snowboard, isn’t it, just keep the momentum going. You keep learning and absorbing and just working hard, I think.

KEY:
1T 2F 3T 4T 5F 6F 7T

10 questions with Rachael Ray

Time Magazine interviews Rachel Ray, the popular daytime TV host, cook, and best-selling author, for their 10 Questions with feature.

Self-study activity:
Watch the interview and say whether the statements below are true or false.



1 Rachel's grandfather looked after her when she was a kid.
2 Rachel wasn't a popular girl at school.
3 Rachel and her husband have always ignored what tabloids published about them.
4 Most of the information the press publish about her is false.
5 She agrees with Anthony Bourdain's comments on her.
6 Rachel has been criticized for working for Dunkin Donuts. 
7 Rachel used to eat Dunkin Donuts as a child.
8 Rachel loves everything which has to do with fashion.
 
We are here today for Time.com’s 10 Questions, and bravely submitting herself to the readers questions today is Rachel Ray. Thank you for doing this.
Thank you, I think, in advance.
What were your favorite foods as a child?
My grandfather lived with us and was my caretaker when I was itty-bitty, so I liked everything that old Italian men liked. I liked sardines and squid and calamari, eating calamari with your fingers and anything with anchovies, anything with garlic and oil and I still eat much the same way today. I was not a very popular girl when I opened my lunch sack at the lunchroom, I just cleared out the whole left side of the lunchroom. You could smell my food at 20 paces.
You see, you have lots of negative comments thrown at you in the past concerning both your professional and personal life. How do you not let it get you down?
You know, people gossip about you no matter what you do. If you’re a waitress, you know, there’ll be a couple of waitresses that gossip about you. I mean, that’s just human nature, you know, you have to learn how to deal with that when you’re a little kid on the playground. You can’t let, you know, people calling you names, putting you down or you wouldn’t get very far in life. And, you know, with regards to tabloid press, especially my husband and I, I mean, we've been through the whole gamut of emotions. First we were angry, and then sad and then back to angry, and then frustrated, and then, you know, you wanna hire lawyers and armies to, you know, you get all self-righteous about it, and then at the day, you’re like ‘Really? I don’t have anything better to do with my time or my money?’ And, you know, there's nothing that people write about me when it comes to that, they're just criticizing my cooking skills or something or the fact that I'm, you know, a newbie at it, the whole talk show. Again, there's very little right that isn't true. I'm not a chef. I don't bake. I am loud. I do giggle. I am goofy. After a while my voice is annoying. Yeah. I mean what am I gonna say to that? Call them up and say, ‘Yeah, you know me  and you’re so right. I just can’t go on’. I mean, no, of course not. You get up and go to work.
Anthony Bourdain likes to rip you on your show. Actually, this is a combination of two questions. One person asked that, another person asked, would you like to punch him?
No. I actually love and appreciate Anthony Bourdain’s work and I think I… I don’t know if he bashes me. I think everybody has a right to their own opinion and I think, usually when he criticizes me, he’s got a point to make, you know, and, you know, you can’t be all things to all people. It doesn’t keep me from appreciating his work or his books.
How do you choose, more or less, what you endorse? Are there products that you would not endorse?
Well, there are very different, and this goes back to sort of the Tony Bourdain thing. One of the criticisms Tony made of me once, I thought it was quite legitimate and I’ve had a good answer for it but, you know, whatever. He said, you know, you worked with Yum-O! and you’re trying to reduce the child obesity rate working with President Clinton, you're always talking about family's cooking with healthier products. Why would you work with a company like Dunkin Donuts? and Dunkin Donuts came to me and said, listen, you know, we really love who you are and how you work and we want to get healthier. We want to offer our people everything in the building trans fat-free which at the time was a very big deal. I mean, I didn't think he could make a doughnut trans fat-free. And everyone goes ‘wow’. Once in a while I would just soak up and have a Dunkin Donut. Dunkin was my favourite. Do you remember the Dunkid Donit? You ... on it. It was round and it had a little handle. That was fabulous, full of nutmeg and superhot. It was delicious. Anyway, they said, look, you know, we’re making some big changes. We’re going trans fat-free. We’re bringing in a line of healthier foods and we know how much you love coffee, and you know, do you like ours? And I said, Do I like yours? I grew up with it. And, you know, I thought, all right. I do drink gallons of their coffee and they’re wanting to get involved with, and did, our Yum-O! organisation. So I was proud to work with them. You know, in a short term and see where we could go with that.
Now, I did say they were feisty. John wrote in Salt Lake City, Therer’s an old axiom, never trust a skinny chef. Do you have any comment?
What is he trying to say?
I have no idea.
If he’s trying to say I'm too skinny, thank you. I'd kiss you in a really inappropriate way if you were here. I don’t know what he’s trying to say there, I mean, you can trust me because I ain’t skiny. Everything I have has a stretch in it and lots of it, yeah. I've never, I've never loved, you know… the funny thing about being in television is some of these people would expect you to start dressing a little better, you know. You know, when I worked in restaurants and markets my whole life I had three pairs of work boots to my name, thanks to my name, ripped jeans, you know. I never wore makeup. And now this whole world of, you know, long dresses and fancy shoes and stuff, you know, I still trip from time to time, I’m still wobbly on them. I'm not good at it, but I've never loved clothes because I just didn’t grow up that kinda girls girl. I’ve never loved clothes enough to give up food, and I never will, so I’ll remain a proud six.

Key:
1T 2F 3F 4F 5F 6T 7T 8F

10 Questions for Nigella Lawson

A couple of years ago Nigella Lawson talked to Time about her new cookbook, being the only female judge on The Taste, and when it's okay to lick the spoon.



Hi, I'm Belinda Luscombe. I'm an editor at large at Time. Nigella Lawson is a journalist, a cook, a cookbook writer, and the star of several cooking shows on TV. She’s here to talk about her ninth cookbook, Nigelissima. Am I saying that right?
Any way works for me, yes.
Thanks for coming, Nigella. So this book Nigelissima is easy Italian-inspired recipes. If you happen to come across a, the opposite of a domestic goddess like a domestic moron, I'm not sure that would be, what would be the first recipe you would start with?
Well, let me, before you start I have to say, when I wrote a book called How to be a domestic goddess it was meant ironically and also it was written from the perspective of someone who wasn't.
Right.
Otherwise, why, why they need to write such a book. I feel all my recipes have to work for people who've never cooked before, even a cake recipe. There's a chocolate olive oil cake which is pretty easy for anyone simply because you don't need machinery to make it. It's pouring and stirring. You pour and you stir, and then you pour and bake, and that's it. One of the advantages of not having any training myself is that when I write a recipe I go through the same possible panic areas anyone else will do, so I will notice, say, don't worry if the sauce looks like it's thinning, it will thicken later, whereas someone who actually had some technique wouldn't be worrying about the filling sauce…
Right.
…because they'd know it would thicken later
Well, you, you, this is your ninth cookbook and you do still, I believe, insist on calling yourself a cook.
Yes.
You’ve been on TV now. You've got cooking shows, you’re like when do you graduate to chef?
Never and most people who call themselves chefs are not chefs. Classically, a chef is in charge of other chefs and is, you know, he's he's he or she is in command. I am not in command and I have no one to command. And I'm, I cook in my kitchen.
Now in the book, in your books, you write a lot about the, you know, the character of foods, what they mean to you. What, is there a food that's, that is most emotional for you? Most emotionally resonant?
I supposed it goes, it goes back to chicken, really, because I feel that is… this again… I feel like so much what we said is really appalling for vegetarians and I did once say it to a vegetarian host, but whether we like it or not, animal sacrifice has been part of human culture since the Bible and the, the thaw before, and I think maybe why people often feel a sense that it's an important family meal when there’s chicken there, it’s because you do have a sense of it being the animal. I don't know, of course, most people would be horrified to think like that, and I don't think it’s conscious, because consciously is shocking, but I think beneath that, there is something so fundamental to being human. I mean, I have emotional connections to all sorts of food but it's more to do with what I've eaten when…
Right.
…than, than the actual food stuff, and I suppose I associate the fact that we often had chicken as fast food for lunch as a child.
Your signature actually is to be quite relaxed, about cooking and entertaining, we've discussed this…
I don't do entertaining with a capital E.
Right, I see. So what do you do when something doesn't work out?
One of the things
…
It depends. I mean, if it's over-salted, that's the only thing you can’t rectify. Anything else works. One of the… one of the things I always tell other people less good about XXX doing myself that I do try is not to apologize. That’s something very unrelaxing about interrupting people saying yes, it hasn't quite worked out, when I did it last time it was better. It’s like people who have garden. They always say, you should have seen it last month. So don't be that person. In savory things, if it doesn't look right, there's very little that can't be saved without lots of, you know, freshly chopped parsley, and sweet things, there is nothing like, you know, powdered sugar put through a tea strainer. Most things are made alright by either.
Now you are on show in, on American TV called The Taste and you are the only female judge on The Taste.
Yes.
 Now women, now women have traditionally been for many years the cooks. Why, why is it that it seems like it's such a man's profession?
Well, it's very difficult. Without making generalizations, which is dangerous, I would say that there are many, very, many conflict-driven women, but the particular aggressive conflict-driven mania that you need to have to be a good chef suits men often better. But most of all, it's really about, it's not really about what type of person you are. I chose domesticity, and if you don't, you can be a chef. But if you do, it is very difficult to have a working life if you have a family, if you have children. That means you’re are up at the crack of dawn to go to market and you don't get back about till four in the morning. I would find it very difficult. I would find it monotonous, because the difficulty is if you, if you’re a chef, yes you, there is this one creative spirit there who comes up with new ideas. But for everyone else, you may as well work in a factory because you're just reproducing the same recipe every time, whereas the liberation of home cooking is that you use whatever herbs you have in your fridge at that time or whatever vegetables or what you've got.
What is your, what do you consider your sort of guilty worst cooking habit, like licking the spoon and putting it back in.
I'm afraid to say I'm not big on, on guilt. I do… funny enough when I taste things, I do something my mother used to. So if I'm stirring with a wooden spoon, she always, it’s funny I suppose these things, she would then, to taste, dip in the other end, and then lick that, lick that, to taste.
Right.
Mostly though I feed my children so, for example, I feel I grew up… People often say to me, you look with your hair up, you haven’t got a net. And in a restaurant you have to think of other people. I cook for my children. I grew up eating my mother’s hair, and I don’t see why they can’t grow eating mine. And if they have to have some of my spit in their food, you know, clammy Johns.
So be it. Do you observe the five second rule in your household?
I will eat something myself if it's been on the floor but I would some I would be nervous about making someone else do it.
Someone else, right.
Because it would be just embarrassing to, you know, to give someone food poisoning. No good for business.
Nigella, thanks so much.
Thank you.

Madrid Teacher: Andy talks about food

In this week's Madrid Teacher video, Andy talks about food, which gives us a great opportunity to focus on some of the features of spoken English he uses.

First of all, watch the video through to get the gist of what the conversation is about.

Now watch the video more carefully and pay attention to the following:

• Conversation fillers to gain thinking time: Erm; U; okay; you know; Ah, well
• Use of so as a linking word
• Use of adverbs to emphasize adjectives, adverbs and verbs: quite good; quite well; quite nice; very nice; quite hard; really, really soft; just incompatible; I quite like
• Use of actually and really to introduce a bit of surprising information
• Reacting to what you have just heard: Oh, that’s not a bad idea!; Oh, yeah?
• Showing agreement: Oh, no, I’m with you, I like ‘al dente’.; Absolutely
• Use of definitely to emphasize the information

Now it's over to you. Get together with a friend or relative and talk about how good a cook you are and whether your family enjoys the dishes you make. Like Andy, you can tell each other how to prepare your favourite dish. Do not forget to use some of the features of spoken English we have revised in this post.

Andy, let me ask you a question.
Okay, go ahead.
Can you cook?
Yeah, I think I'm a pretty good cook.
Yeah, what do you like to cook?
Erm, I once lived with this guy, this Italian guy, he showed me a few Italian dishes so I think I’m quite good at a couple of Italian dishes, I don’t know how authentic they are, but this one I make with mushrooms, just basically cutting up mushrooms, frying them and then with a bit of onion, a bit of garlic and cooking the pasta at the same time, and then you add some cream to the onions and the mushrooms, and you just leave it cooking for half an hour and it comes out, it comes out quite well, Michael (like um), it’s quite nice, you mix it with the pasta, what I do,  I tend to do more than actually need and then I keep… I freeze some and then I can eat it later.
Oh, that’s not a bad idea!
Yeah, …save, a good way of saving money and… yeah, and if you are unfreeze pasta it doesn’t taste too bad. Some food, that you freeze, it’s pretty… like potatoes, have you ever frozen potatoes, then unfrozen them, they’re not very nice, but pasta comes out okay.
Alright, so do you do most of the cooking in your house?
Um at the weekend I cook. What happens is my, my wife doesn't actually like the food I cook, okay,
I like spicy hot food, I like curry, for example the pasta I, I like it ‘al dente’, what I say ‘al dente’…
Oh, yes.
… and it’s quite hard and she likes it really, really soft like soggy and I can’t, I can’t eat that.
Oh, no, I’m with you, I like ‘al dente’.
I can’t eat that, so the whole range of things like that, we are just incompatible, but I like her food though, I eat anything really. They used to call me the dustbin at school ‘cause… when people, you know, we were sitting down for lunch and people had finished, and they hadn’t finished all their food, I would always eat it for them.
Oh, yeah?
So I was constantly battling against my weight ‘cause I’ve got this desire to eat lots of food.
Alright! So… if you’ll eat anything, do you have a favorite, a favorite kinda food?
Ah, well Indian food, definitely I just love curry and… but when I eat Indian food I quite like to eat in a restaurant…
Okay.
And there’s quite a few cheap Indian restaurants here so it’s good.
Absolutely.

Hong Kong series: My favourite food

Martin, Vikki and James, three teachers at The British Council in Hong Kong tell us about their culinary preferences by answering the questions below.

Watch the video several times until you are able to understand the information comfortably. Then answer the same questions about yourself.



What food do you like?
What food don’t you like?
Do you cook at home?
What’s the worst meal you have ever had?
What is your favourite restaurant in Hong Kong?

Student recipes

StudentRecipes.Com, the largest collection of recipes for students written by students, was created by James Bailey in 2004, when he was a first year student at the University of East Anglia. Since then the website has grown and now is visited by 150,000 unique users every month.

As a student himself at that time, he struggled to find recipes that were quick, easy to cook and cheap.

Apart from the practical value of StudentRecipes.Com for the people who are interested in cooking, English learners will find hundreds of recipes where they will be able to develop their reading skills in an authentic material context and, most importantly, enhance their English vocabulary.

At a Mexican restaurant

Tom and Alex, from the The Big Picture Richmond team, go on another mission in London.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below. The activity is suitable for Básico 2 and Intermedio 1 students.



1 Play the video and freeze it at 00.32. What's Tom and Alex's mission today?
2 What time of the day is it? Freeze the clip at 00.35 to answer this question.
3 Watch the video through to the end. What dishes did Tom and Alex order?
4 Watch the video again. Note down the adjectives Tom and Alex use to describe the dishes they are eating.
5 Watch the video one more time. Note down the different foods that are mentioned on the clip.

You can download the menu at Wahaca chain of restaurants from here.

Key:
1 They have to do some research about food in a Mexican restaurant (Wahaca) where they are going to try lots of different dishes, both typical and unusual.
2 It's lunchtime.
3 black bean tostada; guacamole; ceviche tostada; chicken quesadia; steak taco with cheese
4 spicy, hot, fantastic, nice, delicious, colourful, fresh, beautiful, creamier (because of the cheese), messy (I made a big mess).
5 prawns, scallops, lime, avocado, cream, cucumber, salad, cheese.

Food in every country

Food in every country is a website that shows us the most typical dishes of all the countries in the world.

We can get to know what the cuisine culture of each country is like while we develop our reading skills and cooking vocabulary. On top of that, we can read a short introduction about the geography and history of the country.

Making Perfect Popcorn

Jamie Oliver is a well-known chef the world over. You can visit his site and get acquainted with all his ideas and tricks to improve your cooking.

Our English can also benefit from Jamie Oliver's cooking lessons, although, I must admit, this is not easy at all, and I think that even advanced students will have to fight hard to get a full understanding of what Jamie says. He talks so fast, he says so many things in such a short time, he uses so much specific vocabulary that it is really hard to think of him as the perfect native speaker to improve our English.

Anyway, for the sake of variety, let's give it try.

Self-study activity:
Watch this short video in which Jamie Oliver shows how to make popcorn, perfect popcorn. Just note down the ingredients and kitchen utensils he mentions, simply that.

You can read an approximate transcript of what Jamie says here, and judge for yourself.