The chapter that began with washing up

Text: an original contemporary cookbook-review-style practice extract.

The cookbook’s photograph showed a golden tart on an otherwise empty table. Its method began somewhere less photogenic: clear the draining board and find a container for the peelings. I laughed, then looked at my own kitchen. The board held yesterday’s saucepan, and I had put the mixing bowl in the only clear corner.

Following the first instruction created a place for the hot tray later. Keeping the peelings together prevented me from searching for a clean patch while pastry dried on my fingers. None of this made the tart more beautiful than the picture. It made the sequence of making it less confused. The book still supplied precise ingredients and an attractive result; it also admitted that a reader would be working among things rather than inside a photograph.

I would not ask every recipe to describe every possible kitchen. This chapter had chosen two common obstructions and dealt with them at the point when dealing with them helped. The finished tart was good. So was the uncelebrated interval in which I knew where to put the tray.

In this extract, the writer tries to show the value of practical details often left out of an attractive presentation.

Evaluate how successfully this is achieved. Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.