FOOD
introduction
Some while ago I had ideas that I might try to publish The Really Easy Cookbook but since starting my website I thought it might be easier to put the thing here instead.
Why am I starting this? Well, I like food and I like fresh ingredients - I like the look of them, the smell of them, the colour of them; I like markets, in this country and abroad. I like to know about food, its history and where it comes from; I like cooking; I like writing; and it always surprises me when people tell me they can’t cook. So this is for them really, to help them get started – easy cooking.
And where did my interest start?
When I was a child we were not well off but we did have good food and although there was nothing exotic (no peppers or garlic, for a start) we did have roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and good fresh vegetables every Sunday. Chicken we had at Christmas, because, unbelievably, it was quite expensive and a special treat. Occasionally a friend of my grandad’s would call round with a freshly caught rabbit – which my mother roasted with sage and onion stuffing – and from the garden we had tomatoes, runner beans, potatoes and sprouts, loganberries, gooseberries (an old-fashioned, plum-coloured dessert gooseberry, plump and sweet) and rhubarb; and following on, as night follows day, was loganberry jam, gooseberry jam and green tomato chutney.
And then there are all those memories, some small and some huge and resonating still, of food tasted, meals eaten, drinks drunk in places far and wide, and conversations enjoyed well into the night …
… freshly caught pollack fried over a fire outside my tent in Alderney so many, many years ago; driving through Scotland on the way home from Skye and stopping for a lunch that was so bad we drove on, expecting to go hungry, but then found ourselves driving along the shore of a shining loch and suddenly seeing the Loch Fyne Oyster Company … “a half-dozen oysters and a bottle of white wine, please and … oh go on then, we’ll have another half-dozen”; the best cheese omelettes I’ve ever eaten, in a Lyon’s Corner House in London when I was on the way home at the end of term; a ploughman’s lunch in The Lamb at Burford with a cheddar so strong it burned the roof of my mouth (and after something like that doesn’t beer taste good); the Savernake Forest Hotel (long since gone, alas) and a glorious steak and kidney pie, cooked with port, and served to the Crown Commissioners on their annual visit to collect the rent from the tenant farmers; moules mariniere in Banyuls sur Mer near the Spanish border, the first time I had ever eaten them and hooked ever since; swimming in the sea in Paxos and seeing the owner of the taverna emerging from under the water at my side with an octopus which she bashed on the rocks – and which my wife ate not very long afterwards in a traditional Greek stew, a stifado; a tiny restaurant in a mountain-top village in Samos serving the most delicate baked kid it’s possible to imagine, along with a bottle (or two) of Samian white wine, revered since classical times and really very nice (a lunch that lasted all afternoon, for some reason); cataplana in one restaurant, and crayfish in another, in Burgau in Portugal; and many years later, back in Alderney but this time in a guest house, mackerel for breakfast an hour after it was caught just off the rocks nearby, and coated in the landlady’s special - and secret – oatmeal mixture.
And now, we live in a part of southern England which seems just a little bit forgotten by the rest of the country, where the Romans came for the iron and the hunting dogs, and brought with them wines and vines and olive oil and no doubt spices from the East, and they had their saltpans on the coast nearby and probably hunted the wild boar which have now returned to roam the woods and frighten unwary dog-walkers. We can get freshly shot mallard and pheasant, and we get venison and pigeon from the game dealer. There are smokeries and dairies and cheese-makers, fish - and our famous scallops - straight from the quayside, freshly cut asparagus in late springtime, a spice company, vineyards and hop gardens and small breweries, the famous Romney Marsh sheep, and a friend who brings eggs every Friday, eggs that are dark-yolked and strong and sometimes still warm from the nest.
How can anybody not enjoy all this?
Why am I starting this? Well, I like food and I like fresh ingredients - I like the look of them, the smell of them, the colour of them; I like markets, in this country and abroad. I like to know about food, its history and where it comes from; I like cooking; I like writing; and it always surprises me when people tell me they can’t cook. So this is for them really, to help them get started – easy cooking.
And where did my interest start?
When I was a child we were not well off but we did have good food and although there was nothing exotic (no peppers or garlic, for a start) we did have roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and good fresh vegetables every Sunday. Chicken we had at Christmas, because, unbelievably, it was quite expensive and a special treat. Occasionally a friend of my grandad’s would call round with a freshly caught rabbit – which my mother roasted with sage and onion stuffing – and from the garden we had tomatoes, runner beans, potatoes and sprouts, loganberries, gooseberries (an old-fashioned, plum-coloured dessert gooseberry, plump and sweet) and rhubarb; and following on, as night follows day, was loganberry jam, gooseberry jam and green tomato chutney.
And then there are all those memories, some small and some huge and resonating still, of food tasted, meals eaten, drinks drunk in places far and wide, and conversations enjoyed well into the night …
… freshly caught pollack fried over a fire outside my tent in Alderney so many, many years ago; driving through Scotland on the way home from Skye and stopping for a lunch that was so bad we drove on, expecting to go hungry, but then found ourselves driving along the shore of a shining loch and suddenly seeing the Loch Fyne Oyster Company … “a half-dozen oysters and a bottle of white wine, please and … oh go on then, we’ll have another half-dozen”; the best cheese omelettes I’ve ever eaten, in a Lyon’s Corner House in London when I was on the way home at the end of term; a ploughman’s lunch in The Lamb at Burford with a cheddar so strong it burned the roof of my mouth (and after something like that doesn’t beer taste good); the Savernake Forest Hotel (long since gone, alas) and a glorious steak and kidney pie, cooked with port, and served to the Crown Commissioners on their annual visit to collect the rent from the tenant farmers; moules mariniere in Banyuls sur Mer near the Spanish border, the first time I had ever eaten them and hooked ever since; swimming in the sea in Paxos and seeing the owner of the taverna emerging from under the water at my side with an octopus which she bashed on the rocks – and which my wife ate not very long afterwards in a traditional Greek stew, a stifado; a tiny restaurant in a mountain-top village in Samos serving the most delicate baked kid it’s possible to imagine, along with a bottle (or two) of Samian white wine, revered since classical times and really very nice (a lunch that lasted all afternoon, for some reason); cataplana in one restaurant, and crayfish in another, in Burgau in Portugal; and many years later, back in Alderney but this time in a guest house, mackerel for breakfast an hour after it was caught just off the rocks nearby, and coated in the landlady’s special - and secret – oatmeal mixture.
And now, we live in a part of southern England which seems just a little bit forgotten by the rest of the country, where the Romans came for the iron and the hunting dogs, and brought with them wines and vines and olive oil and no doubt spices from the East, and they had their saltpans on the coast nearby and probably hunted the wild boar which have now returned to roam the woods and frighten unwary dog-walkers. We can get freshly shot mallard and pheasant, and we get venison and pigeon from the game dealer. There are smokeries and dairies and cheese-makers, fish - and our famous scallops - straight from the quayside, freshly cut asparagus in late springtime, a spice company, vineyards and hop gardens and small breweries, the famous Romney Marsh sheep, and a friend who brings eggs every Friday, eggs that are dark-yolked and strong and sometimes still warm from the nest.
How can anybody not enjoy all this?