Some fool sent me an email about Heston Blumenthal's new cookbook, and I remembered this:
When I was growing up, we’d go to the local Berni Inn – just on special occasions, you understand - and in our local Berni, if you fancied yourself as something of a connoisseur of char-grilled flesh and fried spuds, you would head upstairs to The Duck Bar. Which, in hindsight, didn’t offer anything in variation to the downstairs menu, but we obviously felt we belonged there, because, on our birthdays, we always dined on the first floor. I remember they were pretty free and easy about serving spirit-laced coffee to children. Who’s for a Calypso Coffee, kids? With a big shot of rum, and on a school night too. Wasn’t there one called a Mexicana too?
Later, we graduated to finer establishments where the menus were in French or Italian and the only one with prices on was given to the old man and he’d ask us kids, “Which of you buggers knows any French?” None of us knew Italian, but it didn’t matter because it was all part of the dance, and once the old man had quizzed the waiter about belonging to the Mafia, all bets were off. Whatever happened, and wherever we were, Fred, my granddad, would stick with grim resolution to his standard order – Steak, chips and peas. In fairness, he used to tell the tale about being served Alsatian dog in a prisoner of war camp in Germany – he was one of those who didn’t make it back from Dunkirk and spent most of the war in captivity. On one rare occasion, meat was served to the prisoners with great ceremony and they were glad of it. When the meal was done, 2 guards proceeded to nail the skins of 2 dogs to the doors of the prison hut, thus revealing the contents of the stew. Maybe it’s not surprising that Fred’s tastes were on the conservative side. You know that stuff the adults used to tell you? That your elders and betters sacrificed a lot for you, that you don’t know you’re born, or how lucky you are? It’s all true.
Simple food. Fred would have appreciated Delia Smith, who, in one of her TV series, banged the drum for good, wholesome, unfussy dishes. Her point being that there’s too much cheffy stuff going on. Things that are too hard-to-follow, complex, or ball-achingly time-consuming, or to put it simply, an embuggerance.
I speak from a house which, were it to collapse about our ears tomorrow, could be rebuilt with copies of discarded cookery books which lurk in loft, garage, and kitchen cupboard, with plenty left over for a warming bonfire at the finish.
Gary Rhodes had a book out in which every dish looked like it had been spat on. It might well be parsnip foam, or a pea scatter, but if it looks like someone’s blown their nose all over it, then surely it lacks that all important visual appeal? I’m still trying to get my head round his instruction to wrap fish in cling film and fry it. With the cling film still on. I never tried, because the inevitable prospect of picking bits of burnt, carcinogenic plastic out of my dinner seemed devoid of appeal, visual and otherwise.
Spaghetti Bolognese. Can’t be improved on surely? Heston Blumenthal thinks so, and Mrs Bryer believed him. Chopping things for an hour or so, sweating them for maybe 4 hours more, and that was just the beginning. Adding milk. Milk? In a spag bol? It’s against the law, isn’t it? Star anise? A lot of star anise. I’ve had a star anise phobia ever since.
“What do you think?” asked Sandra, some 8 or 9 hours after slicing the first onion.
I pushed the insipid slop around on my plate for a bit, searching for something to say.
“It’s, um…” I gave up.
“It’s like sick,” she said.
It was in the black sack that the fox had ripped open overnight. A huge messy pile of Heston’s marathon spag bol had leaked over the gravel. Even the fox didn’t like it.
