redacted recipes

Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Production Lines

I ended the previous episode with a reference to my post-graduation move to London, but that was a little premature. There are a couple more tales to tell from my student days before I go there. The first of these definitely has a food-related side to it, but in a very different way from the other posts in this series. There'll be no recipes or restaurants here. There won't even be any descriptions of dishes - lousy or otherwise. There will, however, be plenty of food. Tons and tons of it. Seemingly infinite lines of it, shifting along mechanised conduits and tumbling into vast blanching tanks and freezers; relentless rivers of produce flowing through a sinister steel and plastic landscape on an inexorable journey to seas of supermarkets and small food stores. When I die I'll go to heaven because I've done my time in hell: working in a frozen food factory at the very bottom of the labour ladder.

I had no idea what to expect, but I suspected it would be tough. It was. In 1977 – the summer before I went to university - I secured a summer job at a place called Northray Frozen Foods. We "casuals" (or "bloody spongeing student *!#*s", as the "regulars" preferred to call us) were expected to work a minimum of five eight-hour shifts per week. These shifts rotated on a weekly basis: one week on mornings (7:00 – 3:00), the next on evenings (3:00 – 11:00) and the third on nights (11:00 – 7:00). The reality was that this was the busiest time of the year; the gentle arable fields of Lincolnshire were bursting with ripe green veg, and the peas (and later, beans) needed to be harvested, processed and packed as quickly and efficiently as possible. 12-hour shifts were routine and we generally worked Saturdays and often Sundays, too. The good thing was that this was proper, union-backed labour so we were paid for every bit of overtime we did. As temporary student workers desperate for cash we were all keen to get as much of this lucrative overtime as possible, even if the work nearly killed us. During the height of the harvest this was no problem; there was more than enough for everyone. But as the season drew to a close the overtime gradually became as sparse as the denuded pea fields. It then became clear that the supervisors were far from averse to playing "favourites" in allocating overtime - one of my first experiences of worker exploitation, comrades!

The factory was situated out in the Lincolnshire countryside so I needed to take a company bus to get there and back. Night shifts were especially tough because I had to curtail socialising with my friends in the pub so that I didn't miss my 10:00 pick-up. The 45-minute ride to the factory was eased a little by having had several pints of beer to blur the edges, but this was somewhat negated by also having to contemplate the drudgery ahead, and the irksome knowledge that one's friends would still be whooping it up until time was called.

By the time the bus reached Grimsby's dismal limits it would be so full of cigarette smoke that your eyes would sting and, if you'd overdone it on the ale, you'd be feeling slightly sick. You had to cope with this for another half an hour as the bus made its way through Lincolnshire's bland landscape and then the harsh white lights of the factory would loom out of the darkness and the bus would bump down the unpaved track that led to the factory gate: a sinister iron arch with the words "Arbeit Macht Frei" engraved on its hellish, rusting facade.

Okay, I'm lying about the last bit, but it sure felt that way, sometimes. We'd stumble out of the vehicle in a cloud of cigarette smoke, then cough and grumble our way to the clock punch to make sure we got our cards stamped before the hour passed (if you missed that by even one minute you'd have your pay docked by a full quarter hour). Then we'd head to the changing room, don our battered, ill-fitting white overalls and grubby caps, and get to our posts to relieve the guys on the previous shift. It was almost exclusively guys on the line. Women – including the relatively few female student casuals - were generally found in the offices or the canteen. The seventies weren't exactly enlightened times.

What did we do, exactly? To answer that, I should probably describe the main stages of the veg-freezing line.

Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Eating Out

(Photo courtesy of pdphoto.org)

Most students are, of course, permanently short of money. In the late seventies we were lucky enough to be at university at a time when the student grant still existed and thus, if we supplemented that small but much-appreciated cash base by working during the holidays, it was possible to survive without racking up significant debt. I feel very sorry for today's British students, saddled with their huge loan debts for years after graduating, and I think that the abolition of the grant was one of the most abominable actions Blair's government perpetrated. As a working-class youth the grant was what made it possible for me to go to university at all. Without it I'd have been stuck because my parents simply could not have afforded the fees and expenses.

Some tried to survive on the grant alone which, while just about possible, condemned them to a fairly miserable existence of low-rent slum living, poor diet and virtually no socialising. Even before I arrived for my first term I could see this would be the case so, in the summer between A-levels and university (and during the three following summer breaks), I worked shifts at local frozen food factories. This was hard graft but it provided sufficient funds to enable me to actually enjoy my student life. It also gave me a first-hand understanding of the nature of factory work, and thus a direct experience of exactly the sort of drudgery I believed a college degree might help me avoid. Had I known then that drudgery comes dressed in a business suit as well as factory overalls I think I might have been too depressed to bother going to university at all. I don't really mean that. My desire to be a student actually had very little to do with possible future career enhancement; it had to do with probable future life enhancement, and on that score I have no complaints at all. My time working on various stations of the production line was valuable on many levels and it also left me with a fund of tales which may very well feature in a future episode of "Bad Teeth..."

Inevitably, we ate a lot of lousy food. Even those who, like me, could actually cook a little soon fell into a degree of standard student self-neglect. In my case this had a lot to do with placing rather more emphasis on the importance of beer than food, so I really only have myself to blame. I ate far too many meals consisting of toast topped with canned rubbish of several varieties (nowhere near as many as 57), or hastily-hurled-together omelettes of dubious composition. Stale egg and cress sandwiches would be grabbed from the cafeteria as I dashed between lectures. Lunchtime visits to the pub (God, we drank as though alcohol was oxygen in those carefree days) might include a reheated meat pie with overcooked chips and lukewarm baked beans. Cheap frozen food was also a staple, in spite of my exposure to the occasionally shocking realities of the way these products were prepared, processed and packaged. And sometimes we needed more. Something different. Something better. So we would allow ourselves to stop counting the pennies quite so carefully for an evening and splash out on an eat-out.

Before university I had almost never eaten in a restaurant. I'm not counting Grimsby's solitary Wimpy Bar or the Hell's Angel havens of the Cleethorpes seafront cafeterias. I vaguely recall a trip to London when I was about eight years old, and a cafe called The Oval Platter (briefly referenced here). I remember being enchanted by this place; by the pleasant feeling of being looked after and fed by strangers; by the unfamiliar crockery, cutlery and tableware and, most of all, by the exotically different food. Memory is such a strange, malleable phenomenon, isn't it? I'm pretty sure that The Oval Platter was little more than a slightly upscale greasy spoon but it was a wonder to me. I suppose we must have visited similar places on other holidays but the only other experience of dining out I remember with any certainty was when my parents took me to a cosy, chintzy old place for a celebration of my successful university application. I had never seen Indian restaurants, Italian restaurants, Greek restaurants, Mexican restaurants... I had never heard of sushi and would not do so for several years yet. I hadn't even heard of an "American-style Burger Bar" but such was the description of "Rock All", a little place just outside Leeds University's main campus which swiftly became the favourite location for these occasional eat-out treats.

"Rock All" served something like ten or twelve different types of burger, from a fairly standard cheeseburger, through reasonably uncontroversial creations like chilli burgers, to frankly bonkers ideas like the baked bean burger. You read that right. The baked bean burger. And I used to like it. After subsequent decades of experiencing genuinely good burgers it is now impossible for me to be sure that Rock All's patties were truly as divinely tasty as I remember them being, but compared to the aforementioned Wimpy Bar's shrivelled, leathery hockey pucks they were a revelation. They tasted of meat! Juicy meat! They yielded easily between the teeth! They didn't have gristle in them! It must be difficult - particularly for American readers - to fully imagine how utterly new and wonderful this was for me. And it wasn't just the burgers: Rock All served fries rather than chips! There were little pots of relish on the table! They had the kind of desserts I'd only read about in books or seen in American films: tall glasses overflowing with ice cream and chocolate sauce, topped with whipped cream and cherries and who knew what some of those other things were! They had something called Chocolate Fudge Cake which made all my prior experiences of chocolate cake seem embarrassing. Perhaps the most astonishing thing was that if you paid for one-and-a-half coffees, you got something called an "unlimited coffee" which meant THEY'D JUST KEEP FILLING YOUR CUP UNTIL YOUR CAFFEINE-ADDLED BRAIN EXPLODED! Such unheard of, incomprehensible largesse!

It's sad, isn't it? It gets sadder, so brace yourselves: at the age of eighteen I had never had a proper pizza. I'm not even sure I'd had one of those awful frozen ones which (I think) were beginning to become available at the time but even if I had, they would in no way have prepared me for how a real Italian-style pizza should be. That experience was given to me by Salvo's, a lovely little place in Headingley which, I am delighted to learn, is still there to this day. I didn't go there anything like as often as I would have liked to - mainly because it was a little out of the way during my first year and later because it was just a touch too expensive - but it gave me my first realisation that pizza should be a delicious, crisp-edged circle of joy decked with freshness and light, not a chewy disk of white doughy nothing topped with nameless red gloop and tinned sweetcorn.

During these slow early stretchings of my painfully limited culinary horizons I was usually accompanied by my girlfriend, Cathy, with whom I was madly in love. Because of that fact it became inevitable that I  should take her somewhere special for dinner. Somewhere smart. Classy. You know, with tablecloths, and waiters that didn't wear ketchup-stained Harley Davidson T-shirts. So I did. Hang the expense! I took her to a Berni. Brits of a certain age will probably be smiling now, and that short Wikipedia link will give others an idea of why. You see, Berni Inns were basically steak-n-chips grills with pretensions. I would guess that steak house chains like Angus are the nearest current equivalent. As the link says: Berni Inns were all about prawn cocktail, steak (well done, of course) chips and peas, and Black Forest Gateaux. I dimly recall that other items featured on the menu but I don't think anyone ever ordered them. Why would they? Everyone knew that prawn cocktail followed by steak and chips was the height of sophisticated dining!

I don't remember what the meal cost but I do remember wearing my hideous (and already deeply unfashionable) sixth form "smart" clothes, which consisted of a pair of those absurd, high-waisted baggy trousers and one of those eyeball-meltingly ugly check jackets with the single big button and lapels so wide you could take off and glide in a moderate wind. I have tried to find a free domain picture of one of these sartorial nightmares to share with you but strangely, I can't locate one. Perhaps this is a blessing. Perhaps some gentle-hearted, fashion-sensitive geek has devised a bot which tirelessly trawls the net, deleting such horrific images wherever they lurk. And perhaps even then my own grievously stunted fashion sense made a subconscious rebellion because, as I began sawing eagerly away at my overcooked lump of meat, I tipped the whole plateful off the edge of the table and into my lap. The full extent of the spillage was not immediately apparent - maybe because it blended so well with the garish migraine madness of my jacket - but I handled the situation with aplomb. I scraped the stuff back onto my plate, took a casual swig of my Mateus Rosé (suave, Jack, real suave) and carried on eating. Of course I did - how could I possibly waste even one precious morsel of such a quality meal?

So, in spite of - or rather, thanks to - my visit to the Berni I remained pretty clueless about steak, but by the time I left university with that precious degree under my belt I knew what a decent burger was and how a real Italian pizza should be. I'd also had some initial exposure to Indian and Mexican food (Tex-Mex, really) although I'd need significantly more education before I'd get anything approaching the real thing (and with regard to Mexican food Ann would say that I knew nothing until she set me straight!)  It wasn't much, but it was something. I was still deeply ignorant about food, but I was moving in the right direction. That direction was about to veer sharply to the south. The business suit and the lights (and restaurants) of London were waiting.

(Previously) Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Vivat Membrum Quodlibet

(Next) Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Production Lines

Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Vivat Membrum Quodlibet

It didn't start auspiciously. For my first year at university I stayed on campus, in a hall of residence consisting of three houses, which were segregated by sex. No, not "male", "female" and "other"; two of the houses were for men, one for women. Each “floor” of my house accommodated twelve spotty, unwashed, drunken slobs fine young men, and I was the last of the twelve to arrive so I found myself unpacking my paltry teenage possessions alone in an entirely unoccupied floor. I later discovered that the other new residents had arrived early in the day, unpacked, introduced themselves and promptly gone down the pub, clearly intending to start their student days on the right foot. So, the first day of my  much-anticipated new life was spent alone, feeling a little bit intimidated and a little bit depressed. I have a very distinct memory of that evening and of a shy, nervous young man standing alone in the "parlour" of a silent and deserted floor, preparing his dinner over one of the electric hot plates available for the purpose. And what comforting repast was he making? Heinz canned ravioli on toast, that's what. Like I said: it didn't start auspiciously.

Later (much later) that night, I was awoken by a cacophony of drunken yells, bangs, crashes and - quick workers, some of these boys - raucous female giggling. Soon, the banging was occurring directly on my door and the yelling involved strident demands that the "mystery man" make himself known to his floormates. I was in no mood for it so I pulled the single pillow over my head and tried to ignore the din until it finally subsided at around 4:00 am. I began to suspect I'd made a dreadful mistake in attempting to buck my family and class norms by going to university. I was wrong, of course. The following morning I leapt out of bed, marched into the parlour and endeared myself to my hugely hung-over fellow inmates with a loud greeting of , "GOOD MORNING, YOU NOISY B!*@#&*S! I'M THE 'MYSTERY MAN', BUT YOU CAN CALL ME JACK!" Unsurprisingly, they proceeded to call me a variety of rather more colourful names. Once the wincing and swearing had subsided we soon completed the formalities in a more civilised manner and all was well. I was welcomed into the fold and before long became one of the regular 4:00 am noisy parlour drunks, and my anxieties and fears were washed away on a sea of cheap student union beer. Thirty pence a pint! Is it any wonder I spent the next three years in a happy alcoholic haze? Besides, you need to be drunk to understand quantum mechanics. Or at least to think you do.

Now what does any of this have to do with food, you ask? Not a thing. Heinz canned ravioli certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with food. So let me get to the point of this episode: my introduction to a couple of then-unfamiliar dishes and what a revelation they proved to be to my ignorant, impoverished taste buds. These were curry (Indian style) and Spaghetti Bolognese. That's right, I said Spaghetti Bolognese. I was 18 years old and I had never had Spaghetti Bolognese in my life. I had heard of it, but to be perfectly honest I had no idea what it was. Of course, I knew what spaghetti was – it was that soft, pulpy, sauce-drenched stuff that came in cans – but I had no clue what a "Bolognese" might be. It might have been a cut of meat or a type of cheese for all I knew. Yes, I really was that much of a culinary ignoramus.

I'm going to talk solely about the Bolognese because the dizzying wonder of the Anglo-Indian curry deserves, and will receive, an entry of its own at some future date. For now, suffice to say that the first real Indian curry I tried hit me like drugs. It was like seeing colour television for the first time. It made me realise that my palate had basically been a virgin and was now, thanks to these astonishing aromatic spices and explosive flavours, in danger of becoming a total trollop. I apologise for those dubious metaphors but that plate of chicken madras was probably the first time I understood that eating could inflame the senses in a very similar way to... certain other activities.  Ahem.  As I said, that's a subject for another time, so let's get back to the Bolognese. Try not to roll your eyes: believe me, for many British people of my generation and background this tired old staple represented our first exposure to "foreign" food.

What is Bolognese sauce, anyway? Well, what I know now is that just about the only ingredients most people can agree on are meat and tomatoes. A quick scan of various web sources confirms my view that many people mistakenly believe that “authentic” Bolognese sauce is heavy on the tomatoes: it isn’t.  The Wikipedia entry for it has this to say:

The recipe issued in 1982 by the Bolognese delegation of Accademia Italiana della Cucina confines the ingredients to beef, pancetta, onions, carrots, celery, tomato paste, meat broth, white wine, and milk. However, different recipes, far from the Bolognese tradition, make use of chopped pork, chicken or goose liver along with the beef or veal for variety, or use butter with olive oil. Prosciutto, mortadella, or porcini fresh mushrooms may be added to the soffritto to enrich the sauce.

Goose liver? Blimey! I’ve certainly seen versions with carrots and celery although personally I don’t favour those ingredients because they make things seem a little too beef stewy for my taste. The “Bolognese” sauce I make to this day is based on the version I learned all those years ago back in Leeds University, and I have my first serious girlfriend Cathy to thank for it. It uses ground beef, canned tomatoes, onions, garlic and mushrooms as the primary ingredients, and features a certain secret ingredient – HP Sauce - which I used to be ashamed of until I read that Heston Blumenthal’s version features Worcester Sauce and Nam pla. Now I feel vindicated!

The only truly shameful “old school Brit” ingredient featured in the original university-era version (which I swiftly dropped) was Bisto gravy powder. That was entirely unnecessary, added nothing to the dish, and was clearly included only out of a sort of atavistic British incredulity when faced with the radical notion that a beef sauce does not have to taste at least a little bit like gravy. Honestly, what were we thinking in those days?

Enough preamble. This is how I make it now, and in spite of its lack of "authenticity" (it’s pretty heavy on the tomato) it’s tasty and satisfying and, most important of all, Ann likes it.

Spaghetti Bolognesish

Serves 2

10 oz ground beef
6-8 oz mushrooms (Crimini or Chestnut are nice), sliced
1 large onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (15oz) peeled plum tomatoes
1 tsp mixed dried herbs, Italian seasoning, whatever you call it in your neighbourhood
Salt and black pepper to taste
1-2 tsp HP Sauce, Worcester Sauce or similar brown sauce
1-2 tsp tomato paste

Heat some olive oil in a large frying pan. When it's good and hot, fry the onion until almost softened, then throw in the mushrooms and garlic. Keep it stirring until the mushrooms are looking almost done then add the beef, break it up and stir it around until it's just browned through. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, brown sauce and herbs. Turn the heat down low. Break up the tomatoes with your spoon and get everything nicely mixed. Add your salt and pepper. Let it simmer for as long as you like (within reason) or at least until your pasta's done. Serve it forth. Sprinkle parmesan. Don't tell anyone you put HP sauce in it, for God's sake; I am not Heston Blumenthal and neither are you. Unless you are, in which case, hi Heston! Any chance of a reservation at The Fat Duck in the second week of February? Go on mate, I gave you a namecheck!

(Previously) Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Sweet Treat

(Next) Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Eating Out

Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Sweet Treat

Before I move on to the next episode in this account of my journey from discouraged diner to gleeful gourmand I would like to say farewell to those early years of bad food by including a recipe of my mother's which provided relief from the heavy, rib-sticking rigours of suet puddings. Banana Cream Pie is a simple, sweet dessert of a type quite common in the seventies: easy to prepare, unsubtle, carelessly calorific and possibly designed more to appeal to a child's palate than an adult's. Having said that I saw plenty of adults go back for seconds whenever mum made this.

The recipe uses three ingredients which are easily found in any British supermarket but which are pretty elusive in the USA. Bird's Custard Powder is magical stuff which makes custard-making a breeze. Of course you don't need it: you can make custard of your own from scratch, just be sure you make it fairly thick.  Lyle's Golden Syrup is a delicious cane syrup which kids in the UK happily spread on bread and eat just like that. My grandfather even used to drizzle it over Yorkshire pudding as a dessert. It's lovely stuff and I recommend you try to find it if you can, but I suppose you could substitute some other type of syrup quite successfully. Finally, we have McVitie's Plain Chocolate Digestive biscuits. These are delicious by themselves (especially with an afternoon cup of tea) and are a staple in biscuit tins across the UK. When I first started visiting the US I would always bring about five packs with me because Ann and her kids loved them, and in those days you just couldn't get them here. Happily, you now can, although you may have to do a bit of hunting. Should you fail to locate them, try any sort of crumbly wholewheat biscuit/cookie and add a little crumbled dark chocolate. The only other ingredient my American friends may find puzzling is castor sugar, and the link should explain everything they need to know about that.

So I made this recently and it turned out just like I remembered it. Ann's daughter Sophie (whose birthday it is today - happy birthday Sophie!) had three portions, and I take that as an unarguable sign of success. Here's the recipe in my mother's own words (except for a few places where I excised some of the more potentially baffling Brit-isms. I've been out here in the States for so long I've started to forget how funny they talk back in the old country.)

Banana Cream Pie
Serves 6

PIE SHELL

6 oz plain chocolate homewheat biscuits
1.5 oz butter
3 level tablespoons golden syrup

Crush biscuits between 2 sheets of greaseproof paper, using a rolling pin.

Put the butter and syrup into a saucepan. Stir over a low heat until melted.  Remove from heat; add the crushed biscuits and mix well.  Press into base and around side of an 8 in. pie plate (lightly grease the base with butter first; it helps the slices come out cleanly). Leave in a cool place to set.

FILLING

3 level tablespoons custard powder
3/4 pint milk
2 level tablespoons castor sugar
2 - 3 ripe bananas
1 small (3 - 4 oz) carton double (whipping) cream

Put the custard powder in a saucepan and mix to a smooth paste with a little of the milk over low heat; gradually blend in remaining milk.  Bring to boil, stirring, and simmer for 2 minutes. Stir in sugar. Cover with a piece of dampened greaseproof paper and leave to cool (this takes the skin off  when cool but I usually just scrape it off with a spoon).

Peel and slice bananas; reserve 5 slices for decoration and place remainder in biscuit crumb shell.

Whisk cream until stiff and fold half into custard; pile custard over bananas.  Pile remaining cream in the centre (or get fancy with a piping bag and decorate as creatively as you like)

DECORATION

2 oz plain chocolate ( or milk if preferred)
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Break up chocolate and place in a dry basin over a saucepan of hot (but not boiling) water; stir occasionally until melted.  Dip remaining 5 slices of banana into the melted chocolate to half cover each slice; place on a piece of greaseproof paper to set. Brush uncovered half of bananas with lemon juice.

Spread remaining chocolate thinly on a marble slab or plastic work top; leave to set. Scrape off the slab with a sharp knife held at an angle of 45 deg.  to form rolls. Sprinkle these rolls over cream. (Jack note: this failed miserably for me. Fortunately the pie is just as good sprinkled with crumbled chocolate flakes. Ahem.) Arrange the chocolate banana slices on custard. Serve cold.

(Previously) Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Late Developments

(Next) Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Vivat Membrum Quodlibet

Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Late Developments

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

(Next) Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Sweet Treat

Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: The Mighty Yorkshire Pud

It wasn't all bad, you see. I've already mentioned fish and chips as an example of good grub that was available back in seventies Britain, but it wasn't necessary for me to leave the house in order to get enjoyable food. My mother was a pretty good cook. Yes, she worked within the limitations and prejudices of the time and yes, she tended to overcook vegetables just like everyone else back then, but there were certain things she cooked which I remember fondly. Some were odd little dishes she found in women's magazines (and I'll be posting about one of those soon) but most were British standards, such as Yorkshire pudding.

Yorkshire pudding is both easy to make and easy to screw up. My mother taught me that there were just a few key things you have to get absolutely right to ensure success. A successful Yorkshire pudding should be light, nicely risen, just a little moist on the base, well-browned and above all, tasty. A screwed-up Yorkshire pudding can be burnt, soggy, flat or jaundiced-looking, but it will always be completely inedible. Even a Yorkshire terrier will turn his nose up at a ruined Yorkshire.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and Ann's three kids (plus one girlfriend) came round to be fed a fairly traditional Thanksgiving meal. Of course we had a big fat turkey. We had corn, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry... but there was also a British interloper. I made six little Yorkshire puds, following mum's recipe (given below), and in spite of our temperamental and capricious oven they turned out pretty well. There they are in the picture above.

Mum's take on the perfect Yorkshire involves, frankly, witchcraft. She insists that it is vital that the batter is beaten with a wooden spoon; no other implement will give the same results. Further, it must be beaten for five wrist-cramping minutes. She swears that the final addition of a teaspoonful of warm water makes all the difference. I do not believe any of this. I'm a rationalist. Why on earth shouldn't the batter be beaten with a whisk? Such nonsense! On the other hand, I know my mother's Yorkshires are peerless. I used a wooden spoon. I beat the mixture for five minutes. I added that teaspoon of warm water. Don't mess with witchcraft.

Jack's Mum's Yorkshire Pudding

For four individual puds (You'll need a non-stick cooking tin similar to this):

1 egg
2 oz plain flour
5oz full milk
Pinch of salt
Lard, cooking fat or shortening such as Crisco

Mix the egg, sifted flour and salt thoroughly, and beat a little if you can (it will be very stiff). Gradually stir in half the milk, beating all the while. Add the remainder of the milk and beat for five minutes or as long as you can stand. Get plenty of air in there. If you do this right there will be no lumps. If you fail, get a nearby friend to chastise you and then put the mixture through a sieve. Shame on you.

Leave the mixture to stand for 1-2 hours.

Put a knob of the cooking fat into each dish of your Yorkshire tin. How much is a knob, you ask? Oh... about a rounded teaspoonful, I guess. Enough to cover the base of the dish when it melts. Put the tin into a HOT oven and leave it for around ten minutes, or until the fat is really hot. This is important. Your batter needs to sizzle when you pour it in.

Just before putting the batter in, beat that magic teaspoonful of warm water into the mix (and yes, you can probably leave this bit out, even though I lack the courage) Divide the mixture between the four pans. Each one should contain enough to comfortably cover the base and maybe a little bit over, but don't make it too deep or you'll end up with a sloppy bottom. And nobody likes a sloppy bottom, do they?

Bake for 15-20 minutes. Resist the urge to open the oven door to check on things until at least 15 minutes have passed otherwise you risk the collapsed soufflé effect. Your puds will be done when they have risen nicely and look medium-to-dark brown at the edges. Serve with any roast dinner and gravy. Nothing beats a good thick gravy over a Yorkshire.

(Previously) Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: The Perfect Chip

(Next) Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Late Developments

Bad Teeth and Lousy Food Addendum: The Perfect Chip

This is just a quick postscript to my recent piece about fish and chips. I used to cook chips at home a lot when I lived in the UK and, without wanting to flatter myself (because we Brits are far too modest for that sort of thing), my home-cooked chips were always extremely popular with friends. I cooked them with fish (of course) but also with steak, with eggs, with fondue bourguignon, with pies and with all sorts of things I probably shouldn't have.

Cooking a classic chip is very easy as long as you get a small number of details right. Firstly, you need a proper chip pan. There is no substitute: get one, and get a large one. It needs to be large because chip pans are dangerous. You must never fill them more than about a third full of oil or fat. Chip pan fires are notorious and nasty. They happen when a pan is overfilled or the fat/oil is allowed to get too hot. I have seen one first-hand and, whilst undeniably spectacular, they are extremely fierce and - as you might expect from combustion involving a significant quantity of burning oil - likely to result in the loss of your house. But don't let this put you off, just be careful!

Your chip pan is a simple round steel pan with a wire basket and lid. I use a fairly heavy vegetable or corn oil: light oils such as sunflower are too thin for the job, and to use olive oil would be sheer blithering madness. You need an oil that has a high natural cooking temperature. Fill your pan about a third full and put it over a medium-to-high heat. It will probably need about four or five minutes to reach a suitable temperature (obviously depending on size) but I shall give you a simple test for that. Never, ever leave a heating chip pan unattended. Please. Trust me on this. While it's heating up you can chip your potatoes, which should be of a large white variety such as King Edwards. Do not use waxy types or the results will be grim. Generally, if it bakes well, it will probably chip well.

Perfect Chips

Peel your spuds and cut them into slices about 1cm thick. Cut those slices  into chips of the same thickness. Test the oil by dipping the end of a chip into it. If it starts to sizzle nicely (but not too violently) as soon as you dip, all systems are go. Take the basket out of the oil and fill it (not more than half full) with chips. Carefully lower it into the hot oil and watch the level while you do so, and for at least a minute afterwards. The oil should foam and sizzle quite vigorously as you lower the chips into it but if it gets within an inch of the top of the pan lift the basket out immediately and either lower the heat and wait a bit or just keep carefully and slowly dunking the basket until you can keep all the chips submerged without the oil threatening to ride up and spill over. If your chips are at all wet this will make the oil misbehave badly (vapourising water in hot oil is a dodgy business). Fresh-cut potatoes have a certain amount of natural moisture in them so you must expect an initial degree of liveliness: the trick is to watch it and adjust until most of the moisture has evaporated. At this point the sizzling will settle and you can put the lid on and relax. But do keep an eye on things.

In about five minutes or so your chips should be golden and slightly crisp on the outside, and soft and yielding on the inside. Hoist the basket out of the oil and test one (careful! They will be HOT!) If all is good, turn off the heat and dump the chips into a bowl lined with absorbent paper. Salt them if you are that way inclined (I'm not, but many are), give them a shake and serve. Malt vinegar is, in my view, the only essential condiment.

I've been making chips for so long that it seems as easy as breathing to me but you might need to experiment at first to get the oil temperature and cooking time right. If the oil is too hot when you start, the chips will be overcooked (or burnt) on the outside and not cooked through, which is horrible. If the temperature is too low they will be limp and soggy , which is differently but equally unpleasant. A few trials will make sure you avoid these rookie errors and that you're soon turning out only the most perfect, golden, scrumptious chips.

(Previously) Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Piece and Six

(Next) Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: The Mighty Yorkshire Pud

Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Piece and Six

I grew up in Grimsby. Well, our house was actually in Grimsby's Siamese twin town Cleethorpes (by about two hundred yards) but I always thought of myself as being from Grimsby, and I still do. This is mainly because the Cleethorpes of my childhood was little more than a soul-sucking stretch of stark, flat, polluted beach and bleak residential nullity with pathetic delusions of being a seaside resort, whereas Grimsby was its bigger, uglier, meaner brother which at least had a reputation as the largest fishing port in England. Residents of Hull, just over the Humber in the East Riding of Yorkshire, would dispute this claim but it didn't matter to us. They were Yorkies and they talked funny, wore flat caps and kept whippets. Such people were obviously retarded and not to be taken seriously.

Look at a map of north east Lincolnshire, if you can find such a useless thing. Here, I'll help you. You'll see that Cleethorpes sits immediately to the east of Grimsby on the south bank of the river Humber, right at the estuary. The Humber is a deep axe wound that severs England's spine just over half way up, as if the country had been murderously attacked from across the North Sea by some vicious and doubtless horribly moustachioed German assailant (which is a not entirely inappropriate image, of course.) To the west, the grey Grimsby docks give way to mile upon mile of polluting factory towers and the sinister steel cities of the Humber bank oil refineries. To the south, the bland rolling miles of the Lincolnshire Wolds stretch away and nothing interesting happens until they reach the marshes and canals of the Fens. Oh wait... nothing interesting happens there either. The eastern regions of England are largely flat, uninspiring and thinly-peopled. Life in Grimsby in the seventies was a little like living on an island, and we ain't talking Antigua here.

In the sixties and early seventies Grimsby was all about fishing. My maternal grandfather had skippered a trawler until he was lost at sea after his vessel was sunk by one of those German fellows during the war. I really cannot overstate the extent to which the war's long grey shadow still coloured English life even twenty years after the event. Everyone - everyone - I knew had lost family members during the conflict. It takes a long while for a people to forget that, which is a fact the current US administration seems blithely unconcerned about in regard to its recent Middle Eastern escapades, but woah there Jack, wrong venue for that sort of remark, stick to the point. The point is fish. More precisely, fish and chips.

It's Grim Up North...

... for those of you following Jack's adventures with British cuisine and wondering just how grim it really is up there, check out this classic Harry Enfield piss-take.

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Picture postcard of Freeman Street, Grimsby (early 70s) from the Tappen Family

Bad Teeth and Lousy Food: Life Support

I was popular at school, but only for ten minutes every day. That was the ten minutes between the start of dinner hour and my arrival at the head of the school dinner line. During that period I suddenly acquired friends. Lots of friends: other kids in my class who never normally spoke to me; even the occasional kid out of an entirely different class. They all wanted to be my pals. They'd hurry and hustle to get in line next to me as we waited to be served whatever eldritch slurry and overcooked clots of grey gristle the school kitchen staff were attempting to pass off as nutrition for our skinny, prepubescent British bodies. And we really were all skinny in those days. There was no obesity epidemic in the north of England in the seventies, dear me no. Well, we did have one "fat kid": an unfortunate games-ducking asthmatic who would forever be the sole butt of all the lardarse jokes, but when I look now at my 1973 class photograph I see that this kid would probably pass as "stocky" or "hefty" today, rather than fat. The rest of us were pretty scrawny, and no wonder, given the standard of British food in those days. And school dinners were bad even by that distressingly low standard.

Nevertheless, most of my aforementioned temporary chums were typically ravenous little beasts who just wanted to scarf as much of the lukewarm, coagulating glop into their snaggle-toothed, brace-free gobs as they could. Not me. I disliked food generally, but especially the rank swill we were expected to consume at school. So I gave mine away. All of it.  Every day. And every day the vultures would descend, bicker and grab.

"Jack! Get the spam fritters! Get two! I'll have one and Bonesy can have the other!"

"Bollocks, Wilson, you had his fritters last week. It's my turn. You have the potatoes!"

"Okay, but I'm having his semolina, then!"

"You can have half of it, you greedy sod!"

They clearly loved me for myself. I didn't mind. I found it rather cute. It reminded me of one of my rare childhood holidays: a trip to London, and fond memories of standing in Trafalgar Square, holding out a handful of grain and suddenly being assailed by greedy, threadbare pigeons. I've liked pigeons ever since, and I liked these lunchtime fare-weather friends of mine, too. Sometimes the illusion of popularity is enough.