COCK O' LEEKIE ON JAPANESE TELEVISION

One evening about seven years ago when we were still living in Japan, I got a phone call from a breathless female wanting to know whether I could make a British stew. She sounded pressed for time, and was going a mile a minute. I had no idea what she was talking about. Finally, after I’d asked the woman to repeat herself twice, I was satisfied that I hadn’t misunderstood her, as I was sure I must have done; she really did want to know if I could make a British stew. Yes, I told her, thinking on my feet, I could. Cock o’ leekie. ‘Ah. And how do you make that?’ she wanted to know.  ‘Chicken,’ I told her, thinking that this was a pretty surreal conversation, ‘and leeks and rice. And fruit, I think – apricots or something, I’m not sure.’  ‘Splendid,’ said the lady. ‘Can you make it on television?’ For one minute, my mouth hung open. What the hell? ‘Maybe,’ I said, wondering what the joke was. Then she dropped the real clencher. ‘Do you think your daughter can make it on television?’  

It turned out that the lady was calling on behalf of a television station.  She had been given our name and number by a children’s acting agency. The television station, she said, were desperately trying to find a replacement for a children’s cooking show. Someone had dropped out at the last minute and they needed a child, preferably accompanied by a Japanese-speaking parent, to cook on television in one week’s time.

Months earlier, I had registered my eight-year-old daughter Hannah with this agency. She was going through a bad patch at school and I thought that it might boost her self esteem to be asked to do a commercial or two. No one had called us, however, and I’d forgotten all about it. Hannah had gotten through her bad patch and, happily, she was now too busy to consider appearing in cat food commercials.

‘What about an American stew?’ I asked the agency lady. ‘Chile sin carne, maybe, or Jambalaya?  I can do both of those better than I can cock o’ leekie.’  No, they told me, they’d done American the month before. It had to be British.

To my amazement, when I asked Hannah if she wanted to make cock o’ leekie on television, she said yes. We are different in many ways, my eldest and I. But in one way we are similar: both of us are latent show-offs. Cooking on television obviously captured Hannah’s fancy.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a proper recipe for cock o’ leekie. ‘Just make one up,’ my husband suggested. Instead, I e-mailed a friend who works for BBC Wales. I was certain that she would know how to make cock o’ leekie, and stupidly enough, I assumed cock o’ leekie was Welsh. She e-mailed a recipe right back to me and gently informed me that cock o’ leekie was, in fact, a Scottish dish.

The next thing we had to do was practice making cock o’ leekie. I had assured the lady from the television station that Hannah liked to help in the kitchen, and this was true. What I did not tell her was that we didn’t allow Hannah to do much cooking because her clean-up skills were somewhat lacking. Hannah was thrilled to be given carte blanche to cook, even if she was only allowed to make one particular dish. Our youngest daughter, who loves chicken, was equally pleased with the arrangement. My husband and I were less happy: for the next week, the whole family lived on cock o’ leekie and Hannah used every pot and pan in the house. The clean-up, needless to say, took ages and my husband and I got stuck with it. I went to bed every night exhausted and wondering what I’d gotten myself into.

In Japan, short-grained glutinous rice is just about the only kind you can find. This presented a problem. When we used Japanese rice, we ended up with gummy, cloudy cock o’ leekie that bore little resemblance to the real McCoy. Then I found a small packet of wild rice that someone had sent us from the States, but when we added that we found that it turned the broth, leeks and chicken a deep, startling purple. This would have been fine for coq au vin, but was obviously not ideal for cock o’ leekie. Next, we managed to get hold of some Thai rice, but again, this obviously wasn’t what was called for. Finally, someone gave us a small package of long-grain rice, and soon the freezer was full of left-over cock o’ leekie of different shades and textures.  Even my youngest was pretty tired of it by this time. And we ran out of friends who wanted doggie bags of the stuff.

On the big day, we got up early. I had been instructed by the television people to bring a fully cooked chicken and a raw chicken, plus all the other ingredients we would need, to the studio.  This was so that Hannah could be filmed popping a raw chicken into the pot, then some ten minutes later, be filmed pulling out a fully cooked bird. I had always wondered how they managed that on television cooking shows, and now I knew the answer. For every one of those shows that goes through the entire cooking process step by step, some poor fool has to bring double the ingredients, both raw and cooked, to the television studio.

We boarded a train for Tokyo toting two chickens – one cooked and one raw – a pack of rice, a bunch of leeks, parsley, thyme and marjoram from our matchbox garden, and a bag of prunes. (I had discovered that prunes, and not apricots, were used in cock o’ leekie.) My husband gave me strict instructions not to bring back any cock o’ leekie that we made on television, no matter what.

When we got to Tokyo, we met the other participants. There was a man from Ghana and his half-Japanese son, Hiroshi, and a woman from Vietnam and her half- Japanese daughter, Ai, both roughly Hannah’s age. Hannah and these two children gradually began to get to know each other. It was funny to watch, as all three children assumed that the others could not speak Japanese. Then Hannah said something to me in Japanese, and Hiroshi and Ai immediately looked up:  You speak Japanese? Japanese was, in fact, the one language that the three children had in common. Soon, the three of them were happily trading insults and doing kid things like showing each other the best way to make spit-balls. Later, they were joined by a shy Japanese 12-year-old who felt out of place due to her advanced age. But in due time, she too was accepted into the group.

The children were asked to prepare their own stews by themselves, only consulting us parents in the event of an emergency. They worked side by side, each with their own sink, gas burner, chopping block, cooking utensils, and counter space. Thank God I made Hannah practice! Watching my eight-year-old clumsily slicing her leeks filled me with a mixture of pride and terror.

Ai’s mother had brought a tape of Vietnamese music, but the man from Ghana and I had neglected to bring music from our respective countries (in my case, Scotland, even though I had come clean with the presenters and told them that I was, in fact, American). So when they filmed Hiroshi and Hannah cooking their respective stews, they used rap music for Hiroshi’s back up, and the Beatles’ Love, Love Me Do for Hannah’s. Rap music is not, of course, African, nor is Love, Love Me Do Scottish, but I suppose they were doing the best that they could. Each kid was introduced and asked a simple question. Hannah was asked where her father was from: I had cued the interviewer to do this so that she could truthfully answer ‘Britain.’  Then the interviewer asked her which she liked best, Britain or Japan. I cringed at this – I hate that question – but Hannah didn’t bat an eye. ‘Japan.’ ‘Why?’ the interviewer wanted to know, obviously curious, and again, Hannah was perfectly cool. ‘Because I’ve got loads of friends in Japan, but in Britain I know hardly anyone.’  Everybody liked that answer a lot, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

While the kids got on with their cooking, I managed to hear the life stories of Hiroshi’s father, whose last name was Adamson, and Ai’s mother, whose last name was Burns. I thought that was splendid. Here I was, the cock o’ leekie lady, representing Scotland, and I was from America, with a German last name. And here were a man from Ghana and a woman from Vietnam, both with Scottish surnames. If I’d gotten to know the two just a little bit better, I would have worked up the courage to ask them how they got those names and bored them with my own Scottish heritage. But one short day’s acquaintance, I felt, was not enough.

Hiroshi’s father was obviously well educated, with impeccable English. I had just read an article about the national elections in Ghana, which had been conducted with admirable efficiency and transparency, and because that was still fresh on my memory and virtually the only thing I knew about Ghana other than where it was located, I mentioned this. Mr Adamson smiled. ‘Thank you. Where Ghana goes, Africa follows.’ He eyed me rather furtively. ‘Are you American?’ I had to say that I was. He nodded. ‘I followed your national elections too. And I am sorry that I cannot return the compliment.’

All of us watched our children cook with a mixture of pride and trepidation. Would the kids remember not to pick their noses on camera? we wondered. Would they manage not to cut themselves? Could we trust them not to do something stupid like dumping oil on their gas burners or dropping full pots on the floor? Watching Hannah fish a cooked chicken out of a pan of boiling water was about as hair-raising an experience as I ever want to have, but to her everlasting credit, she managed this very well indeed.

After our children had made their respective dishes, we parents joined them and were filmed sampling their achievements. By this time, I was as sick of cock o’ leekie as I have ever been of anything in my life, and watching the video after the fact, I clearly do not appear eager or hungry, as I am filmed tasting my spoonful of steaming soup. Nodding sagely and looking remarkably foolish, I smile at the camera and say ‘Well, that’s certainly cock o’ leekie!’ Hannah, sitting next to me, beams proudly. At some point in this little session, I am asked if it is true that Scotland is a cold country. ‘Yes,’ I say knowledgably, never having set foot in Scotland in my life, ‘Scotland is a very cold country.’  On the rare occasions the family trots out what we call the ‘Cock O’ Leekie video,’ I close my eyes and cringe when it comes to this part.

Mr Adamson’s boy, Hiroshi, made ostrich stew with tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs. The Vietnamese girl did something that looked delicious: thinly sliced fish and vegetables dipped in a simmering pot of coconut milk. The 12-year-old Japanese girl prepared the most complicated and time-consuming dish:  a stew with meatballs wrapped in cabbage and a vast selection of vegetables that all had to be elaborately cut into beautiful shapes.  At the end of the show, the kids got to sample each other’s stews. Hannah was almost inordinately fond of the ostrich stew and had several bowlfuls of this.

Something that Hannah ate, however, was not quite so fond of her:  that very night, as we all lay sleeping,  Hannah woke up sick to her stomach and regrettably did not make it to the bathroom in time. Needless to say, my husband and I got stuck with the clean-up, and it went on forever.

To this day, neither of us can bear to look at a bowl of cock o’leekie.