Speck and lardo

Jack Spratt could eat no fat. Nor could the vet James Herriott. There is a wonderful account of his being fed by a kindly farmer's wife a cold slice of bacon consisting of pure fat and only managing to force it down by eating it with copious amounts of Picallili. I think I, too, would have struggled to get through it. On the other hand, I am very fond of the thin salty slices from Italy called "Lardo". Delicious on slices of toast. I rediscovered lardo in an Italian restaurant in Sheffield. In Germany, it is known as Speck.

Croissants

I read recently that one of the larger supermarkets has abandoned selling crescent-shaped croissants and will henceforth only be selling straight ones. It sounds rather like one of those outraged articles about EU madness: you know the kind of thing - straight bananas, straight bangers etc etc.

Be that as it may (and I do think that making croissants straight in part misses their point), I am keen on the idea of alternative uses for croissants, such as filling them with clotted cream and jam. Even better than the British scone. Another favourite snack would be croissant with egg mayonnaise and crispy bacon.

Then there is the following delightful moment in the children's book Street Fair:

"Anna sat down and finished her breakfast, taking up the last bit of yellow of egg with the tip of her crescent roll; it looked delicious and John hadn't thought of that."

Sopocka

To my slight surprise, I found on Wikipedia that there was no article on Sopocka. So I created one. I await its deletion or serious editing...

I plagiarised the entry on Kassler to produce my article. What I did not say (as Wikipedia editors are not supposed to include opinion) is that Sopocka is a slightly moist and delicately flavoured ham. I can imagine stuffing a well-buttered baguette with it together with cucumber and mayonnaise.

English ham

It seems slightly bizarre to start this entry with a reference to "Jambon de Paris", but this was a term I first heard my mother use with a contemptuous tone of voice to refer to plasticky ham of any kind.

Even worse than plasticky ham, though, I reckon, is tinned ham. Once a luxury - imagine receiving it from the Americans in World War II! - I associate it with impoverished old ladies. I recall a school friend and I being given it for supper and heating it on a candle which gave it an interesting grilled edge.

Finally, I must confess that although I may receive a rocketing for saying so, I find it difficult to distinguish our various regional hams: Wiltshire ham, Yorkshire ham, Northampton ham for goodness' sake? That is not to say that British ham is a bad thing. Think of a ham sandwich with granary bread, unsalted butter, wholegrain mustard and gherkins for lunch. One of my breakfasts of choice would be poached eggs on ham, the home-cooked, crumbly variety, like my grandmother used to make. She once cautioned me shortly before some guests arrived not to offer them ham, because they were Jewish.

French supermarkets

I love French markets. I love tiny shops in small French villages, selling charcuterie. But, banal though the concept may seem, I adore French supermarkets. Géant Casino, E Leclerc, Auchan, Carrefour, Intermarché...

It is probably down to the fact that they signified we were on holiday: the ritual of our first visit, on our first day, would tell us we had arrived.

In our earlier family holidays, though, we would eat food brought from home: shredded wheat, Fray Bentos pies, meatballs, powdered ice cream.

But later, we opted for a "big shop" in the big supermarket near to where we were staying, on the first day or so of our holiday.

There was Petit Suisse, from which you would peel the paper oh so carefully to keep the shape and then eat with apricot jam and sugar on the side. Flavoured Petit Suisses: pink, orange, yellow... Olive oil (La Fruitée) on "promotion". Huge mountain hams. Meaty sausages. Frisée lettuce. Tins of flageolets. Tubes of mayonnaise. 

Not everything we bought was French. Mini Mars Bars, condensed milk, to be eaten with plain chocolate in bread.

Mountain ham

Jambon de Montagne or mountain ham is unlike some of the other cured hams I identified in a previous piece, because it does not come from a particular location (such as Parma ham, Iberico ham and Bayonne ham, the last of which I do not recall ever having eaten). On the other hand, as I have just discovered, it means precisely the same thing as Jamon de Serrano. I rather like it in Spanish omelettes. Delicious.

French mountain ham, though, is in my view different to its Spanish counterpart. Definitely more robust, less delicate but none the worse for that. My mother occasionally bought an entire mountain ham in the suparket when we were on holiday and there would always be enough remaining on the bone to smuggle home. Delicious. I recall taking a baguette with olive oil and mountain ham - nothing else - which I took on a walk with my mother to an old ruin on a hilltop while my father waited patiently with the car, not fancying the climb.

Less pleasantly but as memorable was the occasion when my aunt CeCe who had brought home the remains of an entire mountain ham and planned to chop some into some pasta discovered to her horror little things wriggling inside which turned out to be maggots feasting away. She placed the entire bone in the middle of the lawn and sprayed it liberally with insect repellent. What a waste. But it has made a good family story - you just have to mention maggots or ham - and for my fortieth birthday, CeCe presented me with a large quantity of packets of mountain ham...into which she had introduced a collection of plastic flies.

Starting to cook

I first began to cook regularly for myself at York University. My mother gave me a crash course. I fear that some of the early efforts I inflicted on friends did not go down well. I presented a beef curry to one such friend and he later dined out (in my presence) on a description of carrots in water. He also slept on the floor of my room and was distinctly unimpressed by the British Rail posters and sleeping bag which I had promised him was extra warm. Unfulfilled expectations, I fear, but we are still on speaking terms.

Although my own early cooking efforts may have been less than adequate, I did at least make an effort to cook things from scratch. Unlike a girl in a nearby corridor who told me proudly of her nightly meal: "tinned mince, tinned potatoes and tinned peas". She would consume half a tin each evening and save the remainder for the next day. Yuck.