In Good Company: Soupy Suggestions
"No one ever questioned mother’s ingredients too closely, but we recognised the remains of the Sunday joint, and cabbage played a vital part – the rest was a secret between ma and the stew pot. It tasted so good we were past caring anyway; even if she never did partake of it herself...
Enid Blackburn considers culinary matters.
Most Saturdayz I can be seen loitering with intent over the cookery magazines in the town centre bookshops. You’ve probably fallen over my bags many a time.
One certainly needs a strong stomach for this because some offer the most odious suggestions. Do housewives really insult their lamb roast with items like ‘minty yoghurt sauce’? Or stuff their birds with chestnuts and watercress? Are guests actually supposed to enjoy eating a ‘cheesy onion custard’ between two slices of French bread? And I can’t believe anyone could be cruel enough to conclude a meal with ‘potted’ Stilton.
Some of the soupy suggestions are totally unnerving. In our household, soup was always served with a fork and very often as the main meal. But what a heady brew! The smell was so tantalising we couldn’t hang our coats up quick enough.
No one ever questioned mother’s ingredients too closely, but we recognised the remains of the Sunday joint, and cabbage played a vital part – the rest was a secret between ma and the stew pot. It tasted so good we were past caring anyway; even if she never did partake of it herself.
My own, which I make with fresh stewing beef plus an assortment of vegetables will never live up to the old fashioned ‘stick to the ribs’ broth my mother dished up on washday.
Today’s apologies, delicacies like cucumber soup and lettuce soup offered in the colour mags, seem diabolically tame by comparison.
Every household develops its own culinary secrets; trying to pin some of the crafty oldies down to what they actually put in to their delectable dishes is like asking Prince Charles to name his future bride. Naturally tastes differ–one man’s cheesecake is another man’s indigestion.
Going over my Christmas recipes I realise what a metamorphosis they undergo each year. I find I am always trying to improve on last year’s dinner, leaving out this and adding a little more of that, ever in search of perfection.
We all have favourites: mine are sauces. When they taste delicious enough to be eaten alone, they are a complement for any bird. All my energies go into perfecting them. I have a collection of ancient recipes and most of my sauces are a pot pourri from these antiquities.
My turkey stuffing started life as a sloppy, bitter mush, screaming for adjustment. Today it is almost right and nothing like it was. We favour a crispier, savoury sort, achieved by dividing a mixture of breadcrumbs, onion, suet, parsley and mixed herbs, all moistened with an egg. Roll them into small dumplings and place them around the sizzling turkey for the last half-hour. Turn them after fifteen minutes and they pick up the juices, which helps to brown and flavour them.
Bread sauce seems so bland without the onion so I developed what I think is a tastier version by cooking chopped onion gently in butter, then add bread-crumbs and top of the milk until the mixture looks really sloppy, season and stick with cloves. Keep it going in the oven until needed.
This year I intend to enrich my trifle the Delia Smith way. That is by smearing an egg custard, using double cream, on top of the sherry-soaked sponges before the whipped cream topping. Sounds scrumptuously fattening and supremely irresistible!
