In Good Company: A Gourmet’s Delight
...Trying out new dishes is as exhilarating to me as trying on a new outfit. I wish it had the same effect on my tea-time crowd. But George Bernard Shaw was right, ‘there is no love sincerer than the love of food.’ ...
But are Enid Blackburn's family as eager as she is to sample all kinds of food?
Do I live to eat or eat to live? This question is particularly haunting at this time of the year.
I find myself returning all holiday brochures to the library and eagerly searching out all the French cookery books.
Browsing through one of these is almost as exciting as reading a novel. Trying out new dishes is as exhilarating to me as trying on a new outfit. I wish it had the same effect on my tea-time crowd. But George Bernard Shaw was right, ‘there is no love sincerer than the love of food.’
I managed to curb my indulgences during the drought, but all this surplus rain is driving me to the gas oven. Once again I have the seasonal and uncontrollable urge either to smother everything in an exotic sauce or garnish it with parsley. Food is the eighth wonder of my world.
Unfortunately a lifetime of being experimented on has made my other seven less enthusiastic. An air of lingering mistrust hangs over my smouldering concoctions. Even the dog lowers his ears and creeps under the table when I light the oven.
At the moment my fancy is lightly turning to thoughts of cabbage. Although some of my best friends are generous cabbage growers, my family is divided on its merits. Half of them refuse to darken their plates with this nutritious gift. My latest attempt at disguise, cabbage au gratin, directed a la French cookery book, evoked some interesting comments ranging from ‘Don’t give me any,’ ‘Ugh it’s cabbage,’ to the spectacular ‘I could eat this as a main course – delicious!’
They are the sort of gourmets who will eat curry, if I omit the pepper and oriental spices and could exist permanently on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding followed by apple tart and cream. Then to accompany his coffee, our son’s macabre appetite demands a banana teacake.
Fortunately, our eldest daughter shares my adventurous culinary spirit. When she is home from college we are like a couple of ‘Macbeth’ witches cackling over our mysterious brews.
When she goes back it’s curry for two again, me and the dog, when I find him.
Our letters are full of gastronomic inquiries. ‘My liver was all dry and curly last week,’ ‘Did anyone like your kidneys?’ which often confuse the rest of the family.
During last summer we gave a small celebration dinner party. Once the serving difficulties are under control, dinners seem easier to cope with than buffets. It’s just a case of keeping the guests awake between the mad dashes to the kitchen for the next course. Then stifling the indigestion this creates, as you continue your scintillating conversation.
The egg mayonnaise starter and main course chicken with almonds were easily prepared beforehand. The hardest part was buying the garlic. How does one ask for garlic? ‘Can I have a garlic?’ sounds incongruous as ‘Can I have a lettuce?’ I hung about for ages hoping someone else would purchase some. Perhaps it would be easier to ask for a pound. Eventually I solved the problem by picking one up and asking ‘How much?’
The instructions were to crush one clove. I spent a long time crushing the lot piece by piece. After adding half, I tasted. When the blood came back to my lips and the fever had subsided a little, I removed as much as I could, thanking the Lord I had tasted first. A hint of garlic might so easily have become a torrid condemnation!
Boiling the rice proved expensive. The finished product looked like thick porridge. Never mind the children would eat it as a pudding after tea. The second attempt became a rice pudding for supper. It took a course at the Polytechnic to teach me that I was simply overcooking it.
We decided on a lemon syllabub for desert. This sounded easy. Just a simple marination of wine and lemon whipped lightly with fresh cream. Our connoisseur son was invited to taste the result. After a small sip his face shrank like a walnut and his eyes almost disappeared. ‘A bit tangy’ was his verdict. But after all he is a banana teacake man.
All the best cooks learn by trial and error. However many years’ experience you have, there are still new dishes waiting to be tried and several ways of improving the old ones. After countless years of hacking like an impoverished sculpture at the stalagmite remains following a ham and peas session, I have recently discovered that cooking it in a casserole in the oven solves this sticky problem.
Oxfam is not the only waste recycling centre. Once when I was in the last stages of a particularly chunky pregnancy, my smock pocket upturned a grill pan of lamb chops and gravy all over the floor.
I quickly returned the miss-shapes, scooped up the gravy, added a pinch of this and a touch of that and watched my husband and son scoff the lot. They naturally put my loss of appetite down to my condition!
One of the most heart and kitchen-warming pleasures of winter is bread baking. The satisfaction gained from three pounds of dough is immeasurable. This is one lump that really improves with bashing. You can punch your way to perfection. Nothing can compare with the simple goodness of old fashioned home baked bread spread liberally with butter, and if you still have a pot of your own blackberry jam – delicious!
From three pounds of flour I make two twists, one dozen small rolls and after kneading a few currants, spice and sugar into the rest of the dough, we have some hot-cross buns to finish off with. Naturally it makes you fat! Too much of anything is bad for the figure. I try to fast a little when I am busy during the week then go mad at weekend. That is why Fridays are so exciting.
People often tell me they cannot bake bread. This is just not true. Anyone can succeed. It took me loads of heavy dustbins to prove it. During my failures even the birds stopped visiting, and I admit there seemed to be no way of using up the cement-like constructions which threatened the kitchen table (this was before modern art).
But the satisfaction achieved from your first golden crusty batch is well worth the effort. When you have mastered the muffins you can graduate to the delectable world of stolen and other yeasty delights.
Let the children dip in with you, they will play for hours with a piece of dough, before they surrender it to the oven. Then you have the extra pleasure of watching Daddy eat it for tea!
