I Am A Cooker

I am a take-away girl. 

Kebabs, fish and chips, pizza, kebabs, Indian, Chinese... Kebabs. I'll eat anything and everything as long as it means I don't have to spend longer than it takes to make a cup of tea in the kitchen. 

For the first week or so in Spain - while I was exploring and getting used to the city - I was still, very much a takeaway girl. However, I'm into my third week now and am starting to realise that my parents have been right all along: I do have food at home. 

Would I rather go out to a little local restaurant and have a few glasses of wine with some pinchos* before ordering something suitably Spanish? Of course.

Will my bank account allow this? Of course not.

So, at the ripe old age of 19/20 years old, I am now a self-proclaimed "Cooker." Before I go any further, I do have to stress that I am a Cooker - not a Chef. 

There are a few key differences between a Cooker and a Chef:

1. A Chef takes time and care. A Cooker can't wait to start wolfing down their culinary creation before realising the chicken tastes a tiny bit off and panicking that you've condemned yourself to a slow death-by-raw-chicken before googling what cooked chicken should look like. After a few minutes, a Cooker forgets about the worries and carries on eating regardless. 
2. Due to the time and care they take, a Chef's meal looks good enough to photograph, send to all your friends and hashtag on Instagram before even picking up your fork. As much time goes into the presentation as the actual cooking. A Cooker attempts to pour the entire contents off all pans/trays onto a single plate, fails and gets far more than they would care to admit onto the floor.
3. Almost everything a Cooker cooks has a thin layer of char on it. 
4. Unlike a Chef, a Cooker has 1-3 specialities - mine are nachos and burritos. Quick and easy (in theory) is the mantra of a Cooker and that means that, as soon as they've somewhat successfully cooked something, they will keep cooking it. They would love to figure something else out, but it just doesn't seem to happen. 
5. If it's not stocked on the shelves in the supermarket, a Cooker can't cook it. Cheesy bacon sauce doesn't seem to exist in Spain and I can't have tomato-y pasta. I can fry practically anything, but ask me to make a sauce to go with it and you'll have more chance getting me to belt out a pitch perfect rendition of La Vie En Rose despite not being 100% sure what language the song is even in.
6. Stock cubes are a Cooker's best friend. 
7. You know how gourmet restaurants charge you £50 for half a meal that tastes divine? That meal has been made by a Chef. You can tell by the fact that it is cooked to perfection and not piled as high as a plane on your plate. In life, you can tell the difference between a Chef and a Cooker because Cookers weigh about 16 stone more than they would like because they don't understand that you don't have to bang everything into the pan for it to constitute a meal.    

A Cooker's best asset, in short, is to live with a Chef... Or to have unlimited funds in their bank account to allow them to stay a Take Away person for the rest of their days.

*A pincho is a little snack that is given to you for free when you buy a drink.