Speaking Part 2 難忘的一餐 Band 7+ 範答

Describe a meal that you enjoyed cooking or eating.

You should say:

• what the meal was
• when and where you had it
• who you were with
• and explain why you enjoyed it.

¹ A meal that I particularly enjoyed cooking was the first dinner I made for my parents in my own apartment, about a year and a half after I'd moved out for my first job in Taipei. ² I'd lived on noodles and convenience-store rice balls up to that point, so cooking an actual three-dish dinner felt like a serious step up.

³ The menu was deliberately simple — three-cup chicken, a basic silken tofu and seaweed soup, and stir-fried water spinach with garlic. ⁴ Nothing showy, just food my mother had grown up making and that I'd watched her cook a thousand times without ever paying proper attention. ⁵ I went to the wet market that morning, spent about forty minutes choosing the chicken with a stall owner who clearly recognised an amateur and quietly upgraded my pieces, and got home with much more basil than I needed.

⁶ Cooking it was genuinely stressful. ⁷ The kitchen in my flat is barely large enough for one person, and the timing of three dishes is harder than it sounds — I'd never had to think about what came out of the wok in what order. ⁸ I burnt the garlic on the first attempt and had to start that dish over.

⁹ When my parents finally sat down, my dad — who's not a man given to compliments — quietly took a second helping of the chicken without saying anything, which is roughly his version of a five-star review. ¹⁰ I think what I enjoyed most wasn't the food itself; it was the small role reversal. ¹¹ For the first time in twenty-four years, my mother was a guest at the table, and I was the one in the apron.

A meal I really enjoyed eating was a quiet lunch at a tiny ramen shop in Kyoto, on the second day of a solo trip I took two years ago. The restaurant only seated about eight people at a counter, and the chef worked entirely in silence.

A meal that's stayed with me was a hotpot dinner at my best friend's grandmother's house in Tainan, the winter we both turned twenty. There were eleven of us crammed around a small round table, and I didn't speak Taiwanese well enough to follow most of the jokes.

The meal I most enjoyed cooking was actually a failure — a Christmas roast chicken I attempted for my flatmates during my exchange year in the UK. The bird came out slightly underdone in the middle, and the gravy was lumpy.