Zapp! English Listening 3.26 - Cooking & recipes

Asked whether she's a good cook, Molly answers with one word — "No." — and then adds, "End of story for that one." A minute later she notices what she's doing: "That's twice I've said end of story." That's what happens when you ask a group of people about food and let them keep talking. Jameson compares rolling sushi to rolling a cigarette. Emma's key lime pie needs eight egg yolks. Katie's curry gets butter, then more butter, and then "a whole load of cream".

What you'll hear in this episode

We asked everyone the same three questions: are you a good cook, what's your speciality, and how do you make it? The answers go in very different directions.

In the first conversation Katie talks about Indian and Middle Eastern cooking, and walks through Dal Makhani: lentils soaked overnight, onions and spices fried in butter, then tomato, more butter and cream. She calls the result "a really unhealthy, spicy, creamy curry", and admits the recipe came from the internet and several cookbooks after she first ate the dish in India.

Then three more speakers. Jameson likes making sauces from scratch and picks sushi as his one strength — vegetarian, so tofu and vegetables instead of fish, and the rolling is "It's kind of like rolling a cigarette." Emma's desserts are what her friends request; her Key lime pie recipe comes from a book from the Hummingbird Bakery, "a posh, swanky bakery" in London. Molly just makes salads with whatever is available, as long as it's colourful.

The third group goes into more detail. Laney describes vegetarian food, quinoa bowls and "Just trial and error." Tom explains his Thai curry: imported curry paste, fry the meat and onions, coconut milk, twenty minutes' boiling, and rice served as "a little sort of rice mountain beside the bowl". Mark talks about sirloin with reduced merlot sauce and shallots, reduced down to "a thick gloopy sauce", plus a homemade attempt at patatas bravas: "it wasn't really bravas, but it was a similar idea".

Quick facts

What you'll learn

This unit trains three related listening skills: following lists, following descriptions, and following instructions — often all in the same breath, because a recipe told out loud is all three at once.

Notice how vague spoken recipes are. Only Emma gives real quantities (eight egg yolks, eight limes). Everyone else relies on approximations and filler: "a load of butter", "one or two tins of coconut milk", "any salad ingredient", "things like that". If you're waiting for numbers, you'll miss the instruction. What you should listen for instead is the sequence markers — first, and then, separately, at the end, by the end of the process — which is how these speakers organise a set of steps without planning them in advance.

There's also a nice pattern in how people answer "are you a good cook?" Almost nobody says yes flatly. They hedge: "I think I'm a pretty good cook", "I like to think I am", "I think I could say I'm a good cook". That soft, cautious self-assessment is very typical of natural English, and worth copying.

The workbook tasks build up in difficulty: true/false statements first, then specific-detail questions where one wrong word changes the answer — for example, whether Laney got her speciality from her mother, or only learned to cook from her.

Vocabulary from this unit

The workbook glossary covers words that come straight out of these conversations:

• soak (verb) – put into water (usually for a long time) so the water can go in to the object(s) — as the lentils do overnight
• roll (verb) – to make a round thing move over and over itself — the sushi and nori
• raw (adjective) – not cooked — the raw food restaurant
• nutritious (adjective) – healthy and containing things that are good for your body — "the most perfect nutritious meal"
• scoop (verb) – use a spoon to get an amount of something — serving curry over rice
• complimentary (adjective) – giving positive comments and praise — what Mark's dinner guests are
• improvised (past participle) – made up / not planned — adding mushrooms that weren't on the menu

Inside the workbook

The workbook takes you through the three listening tasks step by step, with the questions set out before each conversation and the answers explained afterwards — including why a statement is false, not just that it is. There's a full transcript of everything said, so you can check anything you couldn't catch.

After the main tasks come extra listening questions on all three conversations: the ingredients in Katie's curry, what Jameson uses instead of fish, what Molly says about the way food looks, what you do first to make Tom's curry. Answers are at the back.

Then a getting the meaning from context exercise, where you match five expressions taken from the conversations — "a whole load of", "from scratch", "swanky", "turned out", "end of story" — with their definitions, followed by the glossary above.

The workbook for this episode is part of the Zapp! English all-in-one pack, which covers every episode for €39.

Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39

What level is this episode?

Level 3, from the Listening 3 pack. It runs 16 minutes 15 seconds.

Is the audio scripted?

The conversations are unscripted — real answers, hesitations and all. The teaching sections that set up each task and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.

Can I use this without the workbook?

Yes. The audio is free and the tasks and answers are read out. The workbook adds the transcript, the extra questions and the vocabulary exercises.

What if I can't follow a recipe at speed?

That's the point of the unit. Listen for the sequence words rather than the quantities, then check yourself against the transcript.

Where do I get the workbook?

It comes with the all-in-one pack at €39, along with the workbooks for every other episode.

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