The Turf | 17 January 2009

One of my favourite spectator sports is sitting, glass in hand, watching Mrs Oakley in the kitchen. There will be a stock reducing here, a pan with a few chopped leeks and onions there. A pinch of this, a sprinkle of that. A handful of coriander and a scrinch of lemon, a shlurp of rather better wine than should really be devoted to culinary purposes — and then probably another shlurp. It is all done with the confidence of a surgeon taking the first slice into a patient, the dexterity of a master cooper. There is no sign of the hesitation that seizes Mrs O when she is asked to choose from someone else’s menu in a restaurant.

In short she is not a book cook but an instinctive cook. And most of the best trainers are the same. Theirs is not an art which can be reduced to a syllabus or taught by correspondence course, which is why it proves so often to be a family business.