Hobby English: Cooking

Everyone looks rich in a rented cooking studio. Infinitely rich people have a mysterious glaze in their eyes. Maybe it comes from too much massage. The illusion entered them and they were nine queens in aprons plus one fretful king without. Their cook ordered the potatoes julienned and cooperation ensued. They sat down along the sides of a table for twelve with me at the head. I raised my champagne glass and toasted their culinary fantasies, all their dreams of liquid English, of success abroad, and with foreign lovers. The salmon was encrusted with hazelnuts. I was being paid to eat it and teach them how to talk about it. Did life get better than that? It didn't seem possible.