step by step 3lesson 112

Lesson 112 Part I

Lesson 112

Part Ⅰ Warming-up Exercises

Instruction-following: How to Make Yorkshire Pudding

Training Focus:

Following instructions in cooking

Directions: You are going to hear a short radio talk on a cooking recipe. Listen carefully. Write down the important points in each step.

Key:

Every day in the papers and on the TV and radio, there's a cooking recipe. How people can think up so many new or different ways of preparing food is a mistery. Anyway, here is what Maria heard on the radio recently.

“Good morning, housewives. Today's recipe is for that traditional English dish----Yorkshire pudding.

First, the ingredients. Take four ounces of flour, one egg, half a pint of milk and a quarter of a teaspoonful of salt.

Next, the preparation. Put the flour and salt into a bowl, and make a space in the middle. Break in the egg, pour in half of the milk, and slowly mix in the flour until a smooth, creamy mixture is obtained. Then beat or mix thoroughly until it's full of bubbles. Stir in the rest of the milk.

Finally, the actual cooking. Grease a shallow rectangular dish. Pour in the mixture and place in a very hot oven for five minutes or until the mixture has risen and is a nice golden brown.”

Lesson 112 Part Ⅱ English Cooking

Lesson 112

Part Ⅱ English Cooking

Ex.

Directions: Supply the missing information in the table according to what you hear on the tape.

Key: (a) Excellent

(b) Fresh

(c) Tender

(d) Fish and Chips

(e) Good when properly cooked at home

(f) Vegetables

(g) Steak and Kidney Pudding

(h) Apple Pies

(i) Marvellous

Tapescript:

English Cooking (1'40")

Cooking varies from country to country even though the basic ingredients may be very much the same. Every country has its own national dishes some of which may be world famous. Traditional English dishes, like roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and fishand chips, are quite well known abroad. Here Anne Woodrow and her au pair girl from Italy, Renata, are talking about food generally and English food in particular.

Anne: D'you miss your home cooking a lot or are you getting used to our English food, Renata?

Renata: Oh, there are quite a lot of dishes I miss very much indeed. You see, our food is much more spicy than yours. But I must say English food is much better than I thought it was going to be.

Anne: Really? What are your favourite English dishes?

Renata: Well, first of all I think the quality of your food is excellent. Your dairy products are so fresh and your meat is usually so tender. And there's so much to choose from in the shops.

Anne: Yes, but what English dishes d'you particularly like? Or don't you like any of them?

Renata: Well, I'm a little tired of your fish and chips, and roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is only good when properly cooked at home. I don't like the way you cook your vegetables either, and …

Anne: So you don't really like any of our food, do you?

Renata: Oh no, I didn't say that.

Anne: Well?

Renata: I'm very fond of the steak and kidney pudding you make, and I like your apple pies … and …

Anne: It's very nice of you to say so!

Renata: And I think your cooked breakfasts are simply marvellous. Nothing like them where I come from.

Lesson 112 Part Ⅲ English Food

Lesson 112

Part Ⅲ English Food

Ex.

Directions: Complete the statements according to what you hear on the tape.

Key: (see tapescript)

Tapescript:

English Food (2'42")

The two features of life in England that possibly give visitors their worst impressions are the English weather and English cooking. The former is something that nobody can do anything about but cooking is something that can be learned. English food has often been described as tasteless. Although this criticism has been more than justified in the past, and in many instances still is, the situation is changing somewhat. One of the reasons that English cooking is improving is that so many people have been spending their holidays abroad and have learned to appreciate unfamiliar dishes. However, there are still many British people who are so unadventurous when they visit other countries that they will condemn everywhere that does not provide them with teaand either fish and chips or sausage, baked beans and chips or overdone steak and chips.

One of the traditional grouses about English food is the way that vegetables are cooked. Firstly the only way that many British housewives know to cook green vegetables is to boil them for far too long in too much salt water and then to throw the water away so that all the vitamins are lost. To make matters worse, they do not strain the vegetables sufficiently so that they appear as a soggy wet mass on the plate.

It would be unfair to say that all English food is bad. Indeed the raw ingredients are usually of very high quality especially the meat and fish. Moreover, many traditional British dishes are as good as anything you can get anywhere. Nearly everybody knows about roast beef and Yorkshire pudding but this is by no means the only dish that is cooked well. A visitor if invited to an English home might well enjoy steak and kidney pudding or pie, saddle of mutton with redcurrant jelly, all sorts of smokedfish, especially kippers, boiled salt beef and carrots, to mention but a few.

A strange thing about England that the visitor may notice is that most of the good restaurants in England are run and staffed by foreigners----for example there is a large number of Chinese, Indian and Italian restaurants and to a lesser extent Frenchand Spanish ones.