In the introduction to this rather unfocused series of reminiscences, recipes and ramblings I mentioned that I actively disliked pretty much all food until I was sixteen. Meals were simply a chore to be endured if they couldn't be dodged. Sometimes they were more of an ordeal than others. Certain foods made me feel physically sick: cauliflower and brussels sprouts being the worst offenders. I could smell these fearsome brassicaceae if someone was cooking them next door. My reaction to these vile veggies was - and is - so intense that I've wondered if I'm a supertaster, but apparently people of that genetic disposition also tend to dislike coffee, curry, chilli and alcohol. So I think I can safely say that theory bites the dust, in my case.
My mother, bless her, was terribly worried that my near-total lack of interest in food and the resulting weediness of my stunted frame meant that I wasn't getting sufficient basic nutrients. She may well have been right. On occasions when cauli or sprouts were on the dinner plate she would therefore play the doomed parental game of making me sit at the table until I ate it all. After a few fruitless sixty minute sulk-and-glower sessions (and one incident of distressingly copious regurgitation) she relaxed the terms to, "you can leave the table if you eat half of it", then to, "just a couple of mouthfuls, please , it's for your own good", before finally admitting defeat with, "oh, alright then, get scurvy and die; it'll serve you right". I was delighted that she finally saw sense. To this day I can't abide these particular veggies, but they're just about the only foodstuffs I won't touch. Because something changed when I was sixteen.
Actually, quite a few things changed when I was sixteen; the most interesting ones (for me, anyway) having to do with slight but definite increases in height and weight, a discernible deepening of my voice, and the much-delayed and desperately-wished-for appearance of hairs on areas of my body which had hitherto been baby's-bum-bald for far, far too long (a fact that my sensitive, caring classmates never tired of pointing out in the showers after games periods. Happy days.) A simultaneous change that occurred was the huge surge in appetite (I'm referring to the food-related one), which was doubtless triggered by my late-onset puberty. The shocking suddenness of this development was almost Damascean. On Saturday I had my usual fussy nibblings of cornflakes and toast, and was satisfied. On Sunday I came home from my cold morning shift as a newspaper barrow boy, smelled the steak and onions my mother was cooking for lunch, demolished a plateful, asked for seconds (I swear I saw my mother reel and clutch a chair for support) and demolished those too. Even the cabbage.
After this glorious day I never looked back. My mother had to buy larger plates. The family food bill went up by about fifty percent. Mum switched from working part time to full time, and I think I was largely to blame. I became insatiable. A bottomless pit. If it wasn't meal time it was raid-the-larder time, it was go-to-the-chippy time, it was invade-my-sister's-secret-(ha!)-chocolate-stash time... I ate like I was trying to make up for all those years of self-inflicted under-nourishment and yet, happily, I didn't get fat. I poured those calories in and my body behaved like it actually needed them. Muscles appeared and shoulders broadened. Better late than never.
Mum taught my sister and me some very basic cooking when we were quite young. I was boiling, frying, poaching and scrambling eggs when I was nine or ten. I could cook decent omelettes and pancakes. By the time I went to scout camp at the age of eleven I was pretty handy with the classic full English breakfast (there'll be more on that another time). My incompetent fellow-campers swiftly noted this, and I was assigned to galley duties for the duration of the event. I didn't mind this at all, because even in those days of indifference to food consumption I quite liked the business of food preparation. For the next two years, however, my expertise in that area would remain largely limited to the fish finger and fry-up level. I was still living in Grimsby after all. It was the seventies. I was working-class. There was a whole world of foreign flavours and exotic ingredients out there I was yet to discover. I would have to wait until the magic age of eighteen and the eye-opening, mind-broadening move to university before I would begin to discover the full extent of my gastronomic ignorance and, more importantly, make tentative moves to do something about it.
(Previously) Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: The Mighty Yorkshire Pud
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